Nvidia to reimburse repackaging costs for board partners following RTX 4080 12 GB unlaunch

The original RTX 4080 12 GB sported 7,680 CUDA cores and 12 GB of GDDRX memory for US$899. In a rare move, Nvidia "unlaunched" the RTX 4080 12 GB after a lot of criticism from the community and press alike. Many felt that the RTX 4080 12 GB should have ideally been called the RTX 4070.

In fact, during the Editor's Day call with the press shortly after the launch, Nvidia said,

The RTX 4080 12G is a high perf GPU, 3x faster than a 3080, so we think it deserves it to be called a 4080." 

All that is passé now with Nvidia having realized that calling this card a 4080 is a recipe for marketing disaster. However, board partners have already prepared the packaging and literature for the RTX 4080 12 GB given that the card was originally scheduled for availability in November. This packaging would have to be destroyed since it cannot be used in the final product on retailer shelves.

We now get to hear that Nvidia could be compensating or reimbursing its add-in board (AiB) partners for the packaging costs of the RTX 4080 12 GB, according to Gamers Nexus citing industry sources. It is not clear what the RTX 4080 12 GB will be eventually called — word on the street is that it could either be rechristened the RTX 4070 or an RTX 4070 Ti — but AiBs will have to spend for repackaging, and possibly additional labor costs. 

Though less likely, these cards might also have to be flashed with a new BIOS or at the very least, have the new nomenclature reflected in the driver. 

This seems to be somewhat of a repeat of the RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB fiasco last year. The RTX 3080 Ti 20 GB was shelved in the last minute for the 12 GB version although some cards did make their way to Russia.