Getty Images
Last Friday, Nvidia decided it would “unlaunch” the low-end 12GB version of its upcoming GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card so that it could be renamed and released at a later date. This was good news for those who care about this sort of thing: the $899 12GB RTX 4080 and $1,199 16GB RTX 4080 were significantly different cards with many different levels of performance. Giving them both the same name could have caused unnecessary disappointment and confusion to buyers of the cheaper card.
The problem for GPU makers is that Nvidia planned to launch those cards in mid-November, and partners had already started manufacturing and packaging them so they could be shipped to retailers. Gamers Nexus has spoken to sources at two of Nvidia’s board partners about some of these logistical hurdles, reporting that existing boxes for 12GB RTX 4080 cards were “collected and destroyed” and that Nvidia “will at least replace the boxes, or some of them subsidizes”. , be replaced.” The relabeled GPUs will reportedly be reintroduced or relaunched (or unintroduced?) around CES in January 2023.
There will also be other costs for board partners, both for GPUs that have already been produced and those that will be produced after Nvidia finds a name (Gamers Nexus says it didn’t, but “4070” or “4070 Ti” seems like most likely). GPU coolers usually have the card’s name and model number printed on them, sometimes in a prominent place with programmable LEDs underneath. These coolers must either be relabeled, reprinted, or replaced to replace the old RTX 4080 branding with the new branding.
The BIOSs on the cards also need to be re-flashed so that the GPUs correctly identify themselves (for both drivers and operating systems) with their new model number instead of appearing as RTX 4080 cards. Gamers Nexus and its sources weren’t sure if Nvidia would also change the card’s specs to match the new model name, though Nvidia’s post from last week makes it sound unlikely.
“The RTX 4080 12GB is a great graphics card, but it doesn’t have the right name,” reads the original blog post. Changing the specs just because the name changes could risk making it less “fantastic” and likely trigger the same consumer reaction that prompted Nvidia to change the name in the first place.
Finally, Gamers Nexus says Nvidia will “also lower the price” of its revamped GPU to reflect the new name. This can be tricky for partners who have already created cards with the old retail price in mind, especially since the profit margins for these board partners are reportedly already quite low. If you built GPUs for (say) $700 or $800 and expected to sell them for $900, you’d only have so much room to drop the price before you started losing money, and we don’t know if Nvidia has some sort of would offer a discount or reimbursement to partners who have already purchased those GPU dies.
Asked by Ars about the fees, an Nvidia spokesperson told us the company had “nothing to add”.
A partner who is not bothered by this? EVGA, which severed its long-standing ties with Nvidia in September due to an alleged lack of communication and competition from Nvidia’s first-party Founders Edition cards. There were other sides to this story – EVGA’s profit margins on GPUs were presumably lower than some of Nvidia’s other board partners because they didn’t make their own circuit boards or coolers, for example – but if you wanted to prove that Nvidia could be hard to work with , “renaming a GPU weeks before release and only partially compensating partners for the issues” is a pretty good example.
