The card in question is the 12GB variant of the RTX 4080, which the company says is being discontinued because it was not named right. This could indicate that they had originally planned to release it as the aforementioned 4070, but for some released, they decided to instead call it the base-model 4080. This rumour is given credence not only by its relatively low starting price of $899 compared to the 16GB 4080, which starts at $1,199. But also by the extreme discrepancies between the specifications of both models.
For example, the higher-end model features a CUDA core count of 9728, while the 12GB model barely touches 7680. Similarly, the base model features a conservative 192-bit memory bus, while the high-end model gets a 256-bit bus. When combined with the difference in the RAM, the 12GB RTX 4080 would deliver as much as 30% less performance than its 16GB cousin in most real-life conditions. This level of performance gap cannot be justified by the $200 price difference.
So, chances are that this 12GB RTX 4080 was always supposed to be a 4070, and perhaps NVIDIA has finally decided to rename it so. Only time will tell when they will make the actual announcement, considering how, with this cancellation, the RTX 40 series is now even more expensive, with the cheapest offering sitting at a starting price of $1200. Considering you can get an RTX 3090Ti at this price range, the company will be hard-pressed to convince gamers to think of this as a fair deal.
