The canceled Nvidia RTX 4080 12GB takes a beating in benchmarks

Nvidia decided to “unlaunch” the 12GB version of the RTX 4080, but those graphics cards were still made by Nvidia’s board partners. This means that, as with any other piece of PC hardware, some benchmarks of these ill-fated GPUs are expected to leak out.

Today, one such set of benchmarks appeared online, giving us our first look at what could have been the RTX 4080 12GB. Spoiler alert: It was beaten by GPUs from the previous generations.

panzerlied/Chiphell

Nvidia’s RTX 4080 12GB, also known as the graphics card that was just not meant to be, appeared on Chiphell forums in leaked benchmarks. Nvidia may have chosen to cancel the RTX 4080 12GB and place all bets on the 16GB version instead, but Nvidia’s board partners were already hard at work preparing the graphics cards for an imminent launch. Even though they won’t make it to the stores under the RTX 4080 12GB branding, these GPUs still exist, and a member of the Chiphell forums took one out for a spin in a series of tests.

We don’t know the exact model of this RTX 4080 12GB, but the leaker provided some information about how it fared during the test. It’s worth noting that it was most likely running on a factory overclock, but this wasn’t mentioned by the tester. The GPU’s clock speed maxed out at 2,820MHz and the maximum power consumption hit 262W. At peak, it managed to deliver 42 teraflops (TFLOPs) of FP32 compute power.

In Cyberpunk 2077, running at 4K with ray tracing enabled, the card maintained an average of 67.52 frames per second (fps). It was also put through a number of synthetic benchmarks, including 3DMark Speed Way where it scored 5,382 points;  3DMark Time Spy Extreme (10,794 points); 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra (13,472 points), and the DXR Feature TEST (66.98 fps).

Wccftech compiled all these results and compared the unreleased RTX 4080 12GB to some of the best graphics cards that are available right now. Unsurprisingly, the RTX 4090 reigns supreme by a landslide so we won’t mention that GPU, but the RTX 4080 12GB was outperformed by RTX 30-series and RX 6000-series GPUs on several occasions.

Nvidia

In 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra, the RTX 4080 12GB gets defeated by the AMD Radeon RX 6950 XT, 6900 XT, and 6800 XT. It scored about the same as the RTX 3090 Ti and barely more than the RTX 3090. It fared better in 3DMark Time Spy Extreme, falling just short of competing against the RTX 3090 Ti. In 3DMark Speed Way, it was significantly worse than both the RTX 3090 Ti and the RTX 3090.

Given the controversies that surround the RTX 4080 12GB, it was probably the right idea for Nvidia to “unlaunch” it, seeing as both the name and the price tag didn’t add up to the performance promised by the specifications. However, it might be a costly choice for Nvidia, which is currently also dealing with a rising number of reports of RTX 4090s melting.

Related posts

Latest posts

I tested the Galaxy S25 Edge camera, here’s what’s good and bad

The Galaxy S25 Edge features a dual camera setup, but lacks a telephoto camera. It turns out that it's both

Samsung Galaxy Watch 8 Classic vs. Galaxy Watch 6 Classic: Blending Classic and Ultra

Samsung is rumored to be making a classic variant of the Galaxy Watch 8 this year, but will it check

Samsung is working on ways to make Now Brief feel like yours

Think Now Brief could be better? Samsung might let you tweak it your way.

Nothing Phone 3 leak hints the iconic design might be gone for good

Nothing Phone 3 leaks, but where the heck are the Glyph lights?

Samsung drops another teaser for its slimmest foldable yet

Samsung again teases upcoming Galaxy Z series, highlighting advancements in design and durability.

There’s a massive ChatGPT outage, maybe it’s time to switch over to Gemini

ChatGPT is experiencing a massive global outage as many reach for AI alternatives like Gemini.

Threads tests Direct Messages, a long-awaited feature likely to come soon

Meta's social media platform, Threads, is beginning to test direct messaging (DMs) in select regions, fulfilling a top community request.

Qualcomm’s new on-device AI chip could change smart glasses forever

Smart glasses are about to get much less reliant on your phone for AI queries, thanks to Qualcomm's new Snapdragon

E Ink phones are amazing, but you might want to keep a camera nearby

The Minimal Phone and the Mudita Kompakt are some of the coolest E Ink phones you can buy, but the

Should you wait to buy the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7?

All signs point to an ultra upgrade for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, and that's reason enough to consider