MSI GeForce RTX 4080 12GB VENTUS 3X OC

Legacy graphics chip

During the announcement of the new generation, the guys from NVIDIA decided to cheat a little, using their experience in developing mobile video cards. Therefore, some important technical details hit the press only a day after the announcement. Initially, it was known that the flagship RTX 4090 is based on the AD102 graphics chip. And that was the assumption that both versions of the RTX 4080 are based on the same GPU, right? So right?

Simplified RTX 4080 16GB

As it turned out, no. We follow our hands. The RTX 4080 12GB version includes 7680 CUDA cores and a 192-bit bus. In turn, the RTX 4080 16GB carries 9728 CUDA cores on board, and the bus width has been increased to 256-bit. That is, in fact, these are, as it were, different video cards with the same last name. And if you look under the hood, they are based on different GPUs. The 16 GB version is based on the AD103 chip, while the 12 GB version is based on the previous generation GA104 chip that was used in the RTX 3070.

People's video card at the price of a flagship

In order to hide the cheating, NVIDIA slightly raised the clock speeds of the 12-gigabyte version so that it looked more advantageous against the background of its older brother. So in normal mode, it operates at a frequency of 2.31 GHz, and if necessary, it can automatically overclock to 2.61 GHz. In comparison, the RTX 4080 16 GB operates at frequencies ranging from 2.21 to 2.51 GHz, but it has a wider different core, a wider bus and more CUDA cores, so the performance is higher. But if you don’t know this and you’re accustomed to looking only at frequencies, then it may seem that the younger model is even more powerful. While it's actually more fair to call the 12GB version RTX 4070 and not be disingenuous, it would be hard to sell for $900 if that's the case.