Nvidia RTX 4070 Ti Incoming

WHEN NVIDIA OFFICIALLY announced its Ada Lovelace architecture, it revealed plans for three graphics cards: RTX 4090 as the king of the hill at $1,599; RTX 4080 16GB as the step-down prince for $1,199; and the RTX 4080 12GB at $899. To say people weren’t pleased with the pricing and specs would be an understatement. Nvidia “unlaunched” the 4080 12GB, stating that “having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing.”

To be clear, we weren't offended by the name so much as other aspects of the card. The problem was in the specifications and potential performance, as well as the large jump in generational pricing.  Nvidia's own numbers show the 4080 16GB delivering 30 percent higher performance than the 12GB variant. That's not a minor difference in performance; it's a gaping chasm.

Let's put things in perspective. By our own figures, the RTX 3080 12GB outperforms the original RTX 3080 10GB model by just 10 percent on average at 4K ultra-less at lower settings and resolutions. A 30 percent gap is what we're used to seeing between different GPU families, like the 3080 Ti versus the 3070 Ti, where there's a 30-45 percent gap. By that token, renaming the 4080 12GB as the 4070 Ti solves part of the problem.