Nvidia dropped an Ada Lovelace family bombshell recently. It had decided to relaunch the GeForce RTX 4080 12GB after the criticism of SKU across the media, social media, and tech forums. Many people thought that the lower-specced RTX 4080 was too cut down to wear the name rightly. Also, the reduced memory quota given away by the product name with a narrower memory bus and 25% fewer CUDA cores was way too much for enthusiasts at the stage of the RTX40 rollout. 

At the stage of a product family launch, Nvidia could not change things without material impacts on its partners. Thus, it is interesting to know about the costs that partners will face in relabeling, reboxing, rebranding, and reflashing what seems to arrive as GeForce RTX 4080 12GB product. Getting new artwork ready, printing, cutting, and folding high-quality boxes is not cheap and also includes labor costs. Then the hardware might require new labels on the cooler or PCB on the basis of what was printed. Also, these GPUs need to be reflashed with renamed BIOS and supported by drivers recognizing them by their new names. 

As per Gamers Nexus, there has been an interaction with contacts at two big AIBs which also claimed that Nvidia would shoulder some of the rebrand costs. With tight margins for AIBs, Nvidia will want to be generous in making up for its marketing gaffe, but it does not cover costs 100%. 

Gamers Nexus flagged a vital problem with skimping on physically rebranding the packaging/hardware. It calculated that some auction site users might peel away stickers in order to do branding on packaging/hardware and get cash from novice buyers. 

In the Gamers Nexus video, there is no new name for the rebranded graphics cards yet. But from the conversation with industry players, it can be anticipated that the name will probably be RTX 4070 or RTX 4070 Ti. There is also a chance of pricing to get a lower-tier flavor too. 

It can be hoped that Nvidia won’t apply any spec cuts in the future with the renamed product, through the new BIOS.  

Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 renamed as RTX 4070 card has a knock-on effect on GPUs lower than the performance ladder. Now, what will happen to the original RTX 4070 and RTX 4060 Ti? There are plenty of questions raised about the Ada Lovelace family’s shape once it is completely crystallized. 

As per the video, Nvidia’s ‘unlaunched’ product, known as the RTX 4080 12GB, will be launched at CES-ish. Only at that time, we will have an idea about its pricing or whether there have been any hardware / BIOS adjustments. Hopefully, the CES show will share information regarding the best-selling RTX 4060 tier. 

The Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 is already launched and is now available. Nvidia would supposedly release the $1,199 RTX 4080 16GB in November. As said earlier, the ‘unlaunched’ product has also been planned for November and is now looking for a CES 2023 launch.