Nvidia Allegedly Reimburses Partners For RTX 4080 12GB Cancellation

Nvidia dropped an Ada Lovelace family bombshell this week: The company unlaunched the GeForce RTX 4080 12GB after widespread criticism of this SKU across a broad spectrum of media, social media, and tech forums. In essence, many folks thought the lower-specced RTX 4080 was too cut down to wear the name rightly. Beyond the reduced memory quota given away by the product name, a narrower memory bus and approximately 25% fewer CUDA cores was too much for enthusiasts to swallow at this stage of the RTX40 rollout.

At this point, Nvidia couldn’t change things up without material impacts on its partners. Thus it is interesting to hear about the costs partners will face in relabeling, reboxing, rebranding, and reflashing what appears to arrive as GeForce RTX 4080 12GB product. Getting new artwork ready, printing, cutting, and folding high-quality boxes isn’t cheap, and also adds to labor costs. Then the hardware might need new labels on the cooler or PCB, depending on what was printed. Last but not least, these GPUs will need to be reflashed with appropriately renamed BIOS, and supported by drivers recognizing them by their new names. Could renamed hardware launch at CES 2023?

Gamers Nexus said that it had talked to contacts at two big AIBs and that Nvidia would shoulder some of the rebrand costs. With purportedly tight margins for AIBs, Nvidia will want to be generous in making up for its marketing gaffe, but it seems not to be covering costs 100%.

Gamers Nexus flagged a potential problem with skimping on physically rebranding the packaging/hardware. It reckoned some auction site users might be tempted to peel away stickers or other easy fixes to branding on packaging/hardware to make cash from novice buyers.

Elsewhere in the Gamers Nexus video, the YouTuber claimed that there is no new name for these rebranded graphics cards yet set in stone. However, it understands from conversations with industry players the new name will probably be RTX 4070 or possibly RTX 4070 Ti. Pricing will get a lower-tier flavor too, but by how much, we aren’t sure.

There is hope that Nvidia won’t implement any further spec cuts with the renamed product, via the new BIOS, for example, as that would see goodwill gained from the zapping of the RTX 4080 12GB SKU evaporate.

Of course, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 being renamed as an RTX 4070 card has a knock-on effect on GPUs lower down the performance ladder – what will happen to the original RTX 4070? What will happen to the RTX 4060 Ti? Many questions have been raised about the Ada Lovelace family’s shape once it is fully crystallized.

According to the video report, Nvidia’s ‘unlaunched’ product, formerly known as the RTX 4080 12GB, will be launched at CES-ish. Only then might we know its pricing and whether there have been any hardware / BIOS adjustments. Since it is a few months away, let’s hope that any CES show will also share information about what could be the best-selling RTX 4060 tier.

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is already launched and is generally available. Nvidia is scheduled to release the $1,199 RTX 4080 16GB in November. As mentioned above, the ‘unlaunched’ product, also initially planned for November, is now looking likely for a CES 2023 launch.