NVIDIA Reportedly Restarts RTX 3080 12GB Production To Burn Through Leftover GPUs
Nvidia has restarted GeForce RTX 3080 12GB production, according to a well-known Twitter tech tipster. It is thought that this particular graphics card will be a good vehicle for Nvidia and partners to burn through remaining large stocks of GA102 GPUs, due to its original scarcity and the favor it has found with hardware enthusiasts in recent months.
The 12GB variant of the RTX 3080 was launched at the height of the crypto-boom, but it was never even given an official MSRP. Its street price reflected its relative desirability though, with a premium over its 10GB sibling in excess of 40% during the ETH mining heydays.
Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 3080 12GB doesn’t only offer 2GB more VRAM than the 10GB variant, there are some important (mostly positive) differences to the CUDA core configuration and to the memory bus width. One slight change which might be considered for the worse is that the 12GB version of the RTX 3080 Nvidia scaled back the base clock, though it retained the same boost clocks. Lastly, the new 12GB model had a slightly raised reference TDP of 350W (vs 320W).
Tallying all the differences, the CUDA core quota and memory quantity/bus advantage meant that the 12GB version of the GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card was the one to covet, especially when gaming at higher resolutions like 4K. Though Nvidia and partners reportedly ceased production of the RTX 3080 12GB about two months ago, its reputation as a choice Ampere product probably helped get it once again rolling along production lines.
The consumer GPU business is under pressure right now, with prices spiraling down. This has already started to be evidenced by recent financial reports from the likes of Nvidia. GPU makers and their partners are hoping to sell off remaining stocks yet must rush to do this before buyers decide to just wait for the next generation. At the weekend we reported on a wide range of Nvidia and AMD graphics cards bargains, and it all looks like good news from the consumer side for the next few months anyway.
