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Nvidia revives canceled RTX 4080 as 'new' 12GB RTX 4070 TI

Hopefully it comes with a 'new' competitive price, too

Nvidia this week quietly, and perhaps unintentionally, revealed the previously canceled RTX 4080 12GB would be reborn as the RTX 4070 TI.

The GPU-giant pulled the card shortly after its launch at GTC this fall, after facing backlash for launching two RTX 4080s based on entirely different GPU dies and sporting a hefty $300 price difference.

"The RTX 4080 12GB is a fantastic graphics card, but it's not named right. Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing. So, we're pressing the 'unlaunch' button," a news release from October read.

Many had speculated the card would reappear, reborn as the 4070. And this week, Nvidia confirmed those suspicions after the RTX 4070 TI appeared on the company's 40-series product page.

A glance over the specs reveals no real surprises here. The card boasts 7,680 CUDA cores, a 2.52GHz boost clock, and 12GB of GDDR6X memory. You may recall, those are the same specs promised by Nvidia's lower-spec RTX 4080.

The "new" 40-series card's full spec sheet hasn't been published yet, but it's safe to say it'll use Nvidia's AD104 GPU die, have a 192-bit memory bus, and a 285W TDP. It appears the card's details may have been published early by mistake, but as of Friday morning Nvidia had not removed them for their site.

What we don't know is what the card will retail for. At launch the 12GB 4080 had an MSRP of $899. However, in the months since GTC, the PC market has changed considerably. GPU demand has plummeted in the wake of the crypto-crash, Ethereum merge, and other inflationary pressures.

With the launch of AMD's RDNA-3 GPUs last month, Nvidia is facing stiff competition, particularly when it comes to pricing. Team Red's flagship card, the $999 RX 7900 XTX, undercuts Nvidia's RTX 4090 by nearly $600. The more pedestrian RX 7900 XT, meanwhile, retails for $899.

As it stands, Nvidia's cheapest 40-series card — the 16GB RTX 4080 — has a suggested retail price of $1,199. And while it appears you can actually find cards at that price — at least in the US — we've also seen board-partner cards selling for more than $1,700.

Given how poorly Nvidia and the broader PC market have performed in recent quarters, it wouldn't be surprising to see the RTX 4070 TI introduced at a lower price this time around. This week, the industry watchers at Wccftech, citing multiple unnamed sources, claimed the card would instead launch at $799.

It's also not clear when the card to hit will be available. Nvidia's website claims, rather unhelpfully, that the card is "coming Month XX." But, given the timing of the cards appearance on Nvidia's site, a CES launch early next month seems a likely bet. ®

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