Nvidia recently introduced its new RTX 40 series of graphics cards, also known as Ada Lovelace, but at first glance this is disappointing at least for the RTX 4080.
It is now known that the RTX 4090 card will be equipped with the AD102 chip which looks great from a technical point of view. But what Nvidia is doing with the other two RTX 4080 cards is pretty underwhelming compared to previous generations.
When Nvidia released the Ampere generation of RTX 30s two years ago, the RTX 3080 card was a slightly stripped-down version of the RTX 3090 using the same GA102 chip and with around 83% of the working units (cuda cores) of its big brother. . . . For its part, the RTX 3070 used the GA104 chip that offered about 55% of the RTX 3090 chip. We can even go back to the RTX 20, but the RTX 2070 offered much more than half of an RTX 2080 Ti.
Now, if we take a closer look, the RTX 4080 12GB uses a different AD104 chip than the 4090 (AD102) and the 4080 16GB (AD103) and offers only 45% of the functional units of the RTX 4090. , which is well under half of the shaders. 7,680 vs. 16,384 (8,704 for the 3080 vs. 10,496 for the 3,090).
Actually this new RTX 4080 12GB is closer to what the RTX 3060Ti was in its day except that the latter had at least a 256-bit memory bus where this RTX 4080 12GB only has a 192-bit bus, so that you make an idea:
RTX 4080 12GB (AD104) die size = 294mm2 / card price: $899
RTX 3060Ti 8GB (GA104) die size = 392mm2 / card price: $399
As you can see, we are close to a scam. And the RTX 4080 16GB is no better despite its 256-bit bus and AD103 chip than the AD104, it falls behind the RTX 3080 compared to the RTX 3090.
You will have understood that this RTX 4080 12GB that has fewer shaders than the 3080 10GB is mislabeled and should be, at most, an RTX 4070 or even an RTX 4060/4060Ti at a lower price.
As for the in-game performance of this RTX 4080 it seems conspicuously poor in raster games (ie the vast majority of games) as opposed to games that use a lot of ray tracing effects and fall back on DLSS3 so if Think the 12GB RTX 4080 is going to be a huge step up over the RTX 3080 in most games, just like the RTX 3080 over the RTX 2080, you’ll be disappointed. For the future, all this is very disappointing and worrying. If this is what the RTX 4080 looks like, what about the RTX 4070? Or the RTX 4060? How pathetic will they be?
Let’s be clear, the AD102 GPU in the 4090 is an amazing chip and if the RTX 4080 were based on that chip, just like the RTX 3080 was based on the 3090, then everything would be very different and Nvidia could have released RTX. Much faster and more powerful 4080s, but a priori they opted for a massively amputated GPU sold at an exorbitant price.
Finally, expecting Nvidia to keep production low for this new generation due to the current overstock of RTX 30 on the market, plus with this idea of keeping prices very high in the long run, it may not work to fix things and the situation. it could get complicated for at least the next two years.