From famine to feast, Nvidia is allegedly restarting production of the GeForce RTX 3080 12GB graphics card first announced in January 2022.
According to Twitter user MEGAsizeGPU, Nvidia has resumed supply of the RTX 3080 12GB part. If true, it would suggest Nvidia has too much inventory of the premium GA102 die also used in high-end cards such as RTX 3080 Ti, RTX 3090 and RTX 3090 Ti, so bringing it back for a relatively obscure part makes sense.
RTX 3080 12GB is, by far, the cheapest graphics card to use GA102. The $799 pricing a whole $400 cheaper than the next model up, RTX 3080 Ti. Bringing the quartet together, here is how they stack up.
| RTX 3080 12GB | RTX 3080 Ti | RTX 3090 | RTX 3090 Ti | |
| GPU | GA102-220 | GA102-225 | GA102-300 | GA102-300 |
| Memory (GB) | 12 | 12 | 24 | 24 |
| Bandwidth (GB/s) | 912 | 912 | 936 | 936 |
| Cores | 8,960 | 10,240 | 10,496 | 10,752 |
| Core frequency (MHz) | 1,710 | 1,665 | 1,695 | 1,860 |
| GFLOPS | 30,653 | 34,100 | 35,581 | 39,997 |
| MSRP ($) | 799 | 1,199 | 1,499 | 1,999 |
GeForce RTX 3080 12GB is a good card at the $799 price point because the extra 2GB memory, 256 Cuda cores, and wider memory bus over and above the base RTX 3080 costs but $100 more.
Of course, Nvidia would prefer not to use GA102 on RTX 3080 12GB as profits are diminished compared to keeping it for the three higher performing and more expensive cards. Needs must, we suppose, and getting shot of GA102 before next-generation 40-series lands is a sensible move.
At the time of writing, punters are able to pick up a GeForce RTX 3080 12GB from £750. If this rumour is true, wait a while longer and you may see models selling for sub-£700.
