NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 isn't a Rebadged RTX 4080 12GB, To Be Cut Down

[efikkan]

I understand that there can be yield issues. What I don't understand is why it only affects Nvidia so much that they can't (or just don't?) release a single product based on a fully enabled die during the launch of a series. My theory is that they reserve the best chips, so that they can price the defective ones against the market/competition, then sell the good ones later for even higher prices.

Unless you're talking about releasing it just a few months later, then "hording" fully enabled chips would make no sense for Nvidia as their market value will be diminishing quickly. Keep in mind that we would be talking about >100k chips here. Thinking that these could be sold for higher profits 1-2 years from now would be wrong, the competition will only be stronger by then.

 

[cvaldes]

I understand that there can be yield issues. What I don't understand is why it only affects Nvidia so much that they can't (or just don't?) release a single product based on a fully enabled die during the launch of a series. My theory is that they reserve the best chips, so that they can price the defective ones against the market/competition, then sell the good ones later for even higher prices.

Sure, however your theory needs to include the fact that NVIDIA has other businesses beyond gaming. In their most recently reported quarter, Datacenter took the revenue lead from Gaming. With the expected contraction of the latter business over the next year, this isn't going to change anytime soon.

They aren't going to stockpile quarters and quarters worth of full-fat GPU chips so they can sell a handful of 4090 Ti and 4080 Ti boards 10-14 months from now. They are going to put almost all of them in products to be sold to datacenter customers this quarter.

They likely have projections about how many fully enabled dies they'll as the manufacturing yields increase and will slot in a retail upgrade graphics card at suitable times from a strategic perspective. There are probably 4080 Ti and 4090 Ti prototype cards humming along right now in some lab in Santa Clara.

 

[Hofnaerrchen]

Some people just want to own the halo product, even if their usage case would make a lower caliber product a better value.

I have a 3080 Ti. I play games with it. Sure, I could have paid more for the 3090 (or later 3090 Ti) but my usage case doesn't benefit from 24GB of VRAM. So essentially I have a near 3090 with half the VRAM and saved myself a few hundred bucks.

Sure, I paid more per GB of VRAM, but that's not the only consideration to make when contemplating a graphics card purchase. I'll point out that 300 dollars or euros buys quite a few gaming titles.

Some people have so much discretionary income that they can simply buy the halo card without blinking. For more people, an expensive GPU is a serious chunk of change.

This mindset honors you and last generation (especially when considering the massive fluctuations in pricing during the pandemic) this might have made sense but I don't think comparing a 3080ti to a 3090 does even come close to what we will see when comparing a 4080 16GB to a 4090. Without proper reviews it's hard to judge but I think the difference will be much more significant. The 4090 has almost twice the theoretical performance of the 4080 16GB.

Don't take me wrong, I think the 4080 16GB will probably be a potent GPU, but nVIDIAs pricing (especially in Europe) does not make much sense compared to previous generations. In previous generations you did pay a hefty markup for an unsignificant performance gain (like in your example) but I guess this might be different this time. Now you pay a hefty markup across the whole line-up but performance differences will also stand out more.

 

[cvaldes]

This mindset honors you and last generation (especially when considering the massive fluctuations in pricing during the pandemic) this might have made sense but I don't think comparing a 3080ti to a 3090 does even come close to what we will see when comparing a 4080 16GB to a 4090. Without proper reviews it's hard to judge but I think the difference will be much more significant. The 4090 has almost twice the theoretical performance of the 4080 16GB.

Don't take me wrong, I think the 4080 16GB will probably be a potent GPU, but nVIDIAs pricing (especially in Europe) does not make much sense compared to previous generations. In previous generations you did pay a hefty markup for an unsignificant performance gain (like in your example) but I guess this might be different this time. Now you pay a hefty markup across the whole line-up but performance differences will also stand out more.

My guess is that NVIDIA will eventually slot in a 4080 Ti that will be closer in performance to the 4090 than the 4080 16GB model that will debut. There's certainly space for a product with a 320-bit memory bus width which would imply 10GB or 20GB of VRAM.

There's too large of a hole for NVIDIA to ignore; no one is expecting them to release their entire product stack at once.

The pricing for the Ada Lovelace generation is off the rails but the marketplace amply demonstrated that they are willing to pay wheelbarrows full of cash to greedy retailers selling way above MSRP or scalpers.

 

[Bwaze]

I believe the only reason RTX 4080 12GB was "unlaunched" is because Nvidia still has to sell their 3090 Ti, 3090, 3080 Ti and 3080.

And Nvidia told us Ada cards are for now concurrent with Ampere, just on top of them.

But by the Nvidia's own charts 4080 12GB is in some games barely on top of 3080 in rasterisation - I'm sure we were meant to look at frame doubled DLSS bar, but peope quickly noticed that Nvidia is addmiting their new $900 card is basicly the same as their outgoing $700 one.

Solution?

Just wait till the RTX 3080 run out.

That's it. No need for renaming, no need to print new boxes.

And no need to lower the price.

Expect an Ampere discounts very soon so they can clear the inventory.

Or, Ampere cards might be even going to the landfill. Preserving high status of an object is very important in such high end.

 

[dcGColts]

You guys got it all wrong 4080 12gb going to be 4060 ti or super maybe even 5060. Or maybe they go full bananas and do 4080 24gb, 4080 super, 4080ti, 4080 ultra. Certainly left plenty of room between 4080 16gb and 4090 to do so lol.

Don't fall for the "4070ti" 4080 16gb. The unlaunched "4060" 4080 12gb has clearly served its purpose if you do. I don't care about die being 104/103 I care about performance difference between top card and 4090 having 106 fps in a game while 4080 16gb has 55fps is unacceptable at its price point. 700$ max. 1200 for the real 4080 sure.

 

[wolf]

Exactly, you have to consider that by the time 5700XT was out

Exactly, it's great and all to call a 5700XT a better buy, but look at this more graphical representation of when that 'better' choice was even possible. Seems pretty easy to believe that the product that launced later was more capable, VRAM deficit aside I suppose.

 

[Vayra86]

Exactly, it's great and all to call a 5700XT a better buy, but look at this more graphical representation of when that 'better' choice was even possible. Seems pretty easy to believe that the product that launced later was more capable, VRAM deficit aside I suppose.

View attachment 266460

Cool graph lol where did you get that

 

[wolf]

Cool graph lol where did you get that

Googled timeline maker hahaha

 

[AusWolf]

Googled timeline maker hahaha

Well, I didn't know that the time before the 5700 XT's launch was the time when you couldn't buy a 5700 XT, so... thanks, I guess.

But yeah, the point came across. The 1080 Ti had been available for 2 years before the 5700 XT launched. If I remember right, the 1080 Ti wasn't even targeted as the 5700 XT's competition - it was the 2070.

 

[medi01]

they really did shelved the 4080 12GB, huh... vendors are gonna waste their money, time and effort again for damage control. Guess that EVGA saying nope to the 40 Series was probably a "good move" on their part. It's no wonder this launch was utter chaos.

I so hope Dr Su can convince them to get back into GPU business, cough.

 

[wolf]

Well, I didn't know that the time before the 5700 XT's launch was the time when you couldn't buy a 5700 XT

I felt compelled to say it because what I was responding to eluded that the 5700XT was the better buy, now I don't deny I might have been, but there was also a hec of a long time when the 1080ti existed and the 5700xt didn't, so it couldn't have possibly been a better buy during that speicifc time frame, which as it turns out, is roughly half the time between today and when the 1080ti launched.

 

[AusWolf]

I felt compelled to say it because what I was responding to eluded that the 5700XT was the better buy, now I don't deny I might have been, but there was also a hec of a long time when the 1080ti existed and the 5700xt didn't, so it couldn't have possibly been a better buy during that speicifc time frame, which as it turns out, is roughly half the time between today and when the 1080ti launched.

Not to mention that the 5700 XT came out roughly with Nvidia Turing, so the 1080 Ti was already used market territory.

 

[xorbe]

Am i the only one that thinks the high end should be no more then 800$

Yeah well motorcycle prices are through the roof too, $1000 jumps year over year with no changes on some models. Don't even think of looking at the used market, it's even worse. I dunno how this economy is still chugging along.

 

[rv8000]

Honestly I hope the 4000 series don’t sell.

We've gone from $449 for the 1070, to $499 for the 2070 and 3070, to potentially getting a 4070 anywhere from $600-900?!

I legitimately hope nothing from this generation sells, the market needs some serious price correction.

 

[AusWolf]

Honestly I hope the 4000 series don’t sell.

We've gone from $449 for the 1070, to $499 for the 2070 and 3070, to potentially getting a 4070 anywhere from $600-900?!

I legitimately hope nothing from this generation sells, the market needs some serious price correction.

I'm not gonna buy anything from it, that's for sure. I already have a Turing card, and since Ampere was just Turing Refresh, and now Ada is just Ampere Refresh, I'm not really interested.

 

[efikkan]

Honestly I hope the 4000 series don’t sell.

We've gone from $449 for the 1070, to $499 for the 2070 and 3070, to potentially getting a 4070 anywhere from $600-900?!

I legitimately hope nothing from this generation sells, the market needs some serious price correction.

Some correction may be needed, but there is also some historic levels of inflation going on. Throughout most of the west it's >20% over the past couple of years (yes, the official numbers are a bit lower, but just look at the price of pretty much anything and you'll see this to be correct, but let's not dive into politics).
If AMD's next gen is competitive and supplies are good, even if it's just up to ~4070 levels, then we can expect some price drops. Nvidia does have some decent margins on these GPUs.

I'm not gonna buy anything from it, that's for sure. I already have a Turing card, and since Ampere was just Turing Refresh, and now Ada is just Ampere Refresh, I'm not really interested.

They aren't really refreshes, but rather evolved architectures. (e.g. GTX 700 was a refresh of GTX 600)
But you shouldn't buy unless you "need" to; if your performance is good enough or you don't have the money to spare, then stick with what you got.

I'm still rocking my GTX 1060 3GB, which was only intended as a stop-gap when a card died. But I haven't replaced it yet, not be cause I can't afford to, but because I haven't needed to. My needs are likely to change soon, but I'm awaiting what level of performance I need before upgrading.

 

[AusWolf]

They aren't really refreshes, but rather evolved architectures. (e.g. GTX 700 was a refresh of GTX 600)
But you shouldn't buy unless you "need" to; if your performance is good enough or you don't have the money to spare, then stick with what you got.

I'm still rocking my GTX 1060 3GB, which was only intended as a stop-gap when a card died. But I haven't replaced it yet, not be cause I can't afford to, but because I haven't needed to. My needs are likely to change soon, but I'm awaiting what level of performance I need before upgrading.

I have the performance that I need with my 2070, but I want to buy something, too - just out of pure interest. I really wanted an Arc GPU, but they're priced way out of their performance range, and there is only one shop here at the UK that has them on a pre-order basis, so I think I'll pass. I'm also thinking about trying out RDNA 2 with a 6750 XT. I mean, I've tried the 6400 and 6500 XT, which are great, but I'm curious about RDNA 2 at decent performance levels. The reference 6750 XT is not a lot more expensive than a 6650 XT. I know that RDNA 3 is coming, but I'm sure it won't be cheap, and I'm also sure that it will be at least 5-6 months before the 7700 XT is available as AMD will most definitely roll out the big guns first. Nvidia has almost completely lost my attention with the pricing of Ada.

 

[efikkan]

I have the performance that I need with my 2070, but I want to buy something, too - just out of pure interest. I really wanted an Arc GPU, but they're priced way out of their performance range, and there is only one shop here at the UK that has them on a pre-order basis, so I think I'll pass. I'm also thinking about trying out RDNA 2 with a 6750 XT. I mean, I've tried the 6400 and 6500 XT, which are great, but I'm curious about RDNA 2 at decent performance levels. The reference 6750 XT is not a lot more expensive than a 6650 XT. I know that RDNA 3 is coming, but I'm sure it won't be cheap, and I'm also sure that it will be at least 5-6 months before the 7700 XT is available as AMD will most definitely roll out the big guns first. Nvidia has almost completely lost my attention with the pricing of Ada.

If you're itching for something new, then set some price notifications on various products that you're interested in but cost slightly more than you're willing to pay for (I'm sure the UK market have such services too). Over 2-3 months there will probably be some significant discounts, especially as new products are coming in.

And for your old part, let it trickle down to your other systems, or to a family member in need.

 

[AusWolf]

If you're itching for something new, then set some price notifications on various products that you're interested in but cost slightly more than you're willing to pay for (I'm sure the UK market have such services too). Over 2-3 months there will probably be some significant discounts, especially as new products are coming in.

That's a sound idea. I'm not worried about the price, as I go through a lot of stuff just out of curiosity, so they usually don't have time to devalue much. Also...

And for your old part, let it trickle down to your other systems, or to a family member in need.

That's also something I do a lot. If I ever upgrade my motherboard + CPU (I'm thinking about that too), my 11700 will probably migrate to my HTPC because it has an Xe IGP with brilliant video decode capabilities. Then I can sell, or just save the Ryzen 3 system as spare parts (I'll have to see which one is more beneficial economically). This is also a reason why I'm not worried about price. I prefer repurposing stuff to selling it. If I sell something, I only get scraps for it, then I end up missing it a few months down the line. If I buy the 6750 XT, my 2070 will go onto the shelf just in case I end up needing an Nvidia-exclusive feature at any point.

 

[Patriot]

I couldn't agree more - except that I don't even look at them as "source" (maybe source of pointless speculation, but nothing else).

It hurts me that people use him at this point...

 

[Opex]

30 series cards just stay winning. The whole 40 series debacle will make wait until 60-70 generation cards until I'm even slightly interested in upgrading with NVidia