Author丨Cai Shuyue Intern Lu Jia
Edit丨Guo Meiting
Picture Source丨TuChong
NVIDIA "40 Series" graphics card, which has a bad start.
On October 15, 2022, Nvidia announced on its official website that it will cancel the release of GeForce RTX 4080 12GB graphics card model in the 40 series graphics card release on November 16.
Regarding the reason for canceling the release of this graphics card, Nvidia said: "RTX 4080 12GB is a very excellent graphics card, , but its name is not right. The appearance of two 4080 graphics cards with different GPUs seems to have brought confusion to everyone. Therefore, we pressed the 'Cancel' button for the release of this product."
price and performance are incompatible with
On September 20, Nvidia announced three new generations of "40 Series" graphics cards to be released, namely RTX 4090, RTX 4080 16GB and RTX 4080 12GB.
However, as the relatively lowest parameter model among the "40 Series" graphics cards, the RTX 4080 12GB has been controversial since its debut - the RTX 4080 16GB, which is the same series, has an official performance gap of up to 30%. Compared with , RTX 4080 16GB, RTX4080 12GB is far from the same memory capacity, CUDA core number, and GPU specifications.
(Comparison of parameters of the three graphics cards of "40 Series" Source/Nvidia Official Website)
In addition to the large differences in parameters and performance under the same series, the pricing of RTX 4080 12GB is higher than the product performance, which is the core factor that it attracts user criticism.
It is reported that the price of RTX 4090 is RMB 12,999, the price of RTX 4080 16GB is RMB 9,499, and the price of RTX 4080 12GB is RMB 7,199. Compared with the previous generation 3080 model's priced at 5,499 yuan, the 4080 is divided into two levels, among which the RTX 4080 12GB price has increased by about 31%. In contrast, the pricing of the flagship 4090 has only increased by 1,000 yuan, which is less than 10% higher than the price of the previous generation 3080. The 30% price of
RTX 4080 12GB increased is obviously not convincing enough. An analyst in the consumer electronics industry pointed out in an interview with 21st Century Business Herald reporter that judging from the official disclosed parameters of RTX 4080 12GB, it is more like a graphics card used by Nvidia to benchmark the previous generation of RTX 3070Ti.
Among them, the width of the video memory bit is the biggest flaw of this graphics card. The RTX 4080 12GB 192-bit's memory bit width is not only far lower than the other two "40 Series" graphics cards, but it is even half that of the previous generation RTX 3080 12GB graphics cards (384-bit). At the same time, with a memory speed of 21Gbps, this graphics card has only 504 GB/s bandwidth, far lower than the previous generation's 921 GB/s.
"At present, it is not certain whether Nvidia will rename and launch the graphics card in the short term, but for consumers, the focus is more on whether the re-launched RTX 4080 12GB can bring a price that matches its performance," the analyst pointed out.
On the other hand, the decision to temporarily cancel the listing of RTX 4080 12GB also affected its partner AIC (NVIDIA partner with R&D and manufacturing capabilities) manufacturers. According to media reports, Nvidia is willing to reimburse the packaging box fee of the RTX 4080 12G graphics card for relevant AIC manufacturers. Since this graphics card is no longer released, the content on the packaging boxes and promotion channels that have been produced need to be completely destroyed and deleted.
high pricing may lay the foundation for the "30 series"
It is worth noting that Nvidia recently canceled the mining restrictions on RTX 30 series graphics cards in the latest 522.25 driver, that is, it deleted the LHR (Lite Hash Rate) that limits mining performance from the latest drivers.
Judging from the test results of overseas players, the RTX 3080 Ti is no longer affected by mining restrictions and can achieve a mining speed of 112 MH/s. In addition, the RTX 3060 v2 can also achieve a speed of 47MH/s using the latest drivers.
In 2017, the price of cryptocurrencies soared. Because "mining" cryptocurrencies requires a lot of computing power, the sales of graphics cards have increased sharply. According to Gartner statistics, the market size of PC GPUs has almost doubled from US$2.7 billion in 2015 to US$4.7 billion, and the total GPU revenue has also soared from US$3.82 billion to US$6.45 billion.
Previously, in 2016, Nvidia released the new generation of GeForce GTX 1060 graphics cards. Because the graphics card canceled the output interface, it has gradually become the first choice for miners to mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. At the end of 2017, Nvidia re-wrote the driver to optimize the performance of the graphics card and launched the P106 and P104 series professional mining cards based on this. They have stronger computing power, but only support OpenGL. This also means that this series of mining cards cannot be used for gaming, and the price is also lower than that of conventional graphics cards.
As mining demand continues to increase, Nvidia's market value increased from US$14 billion to US$175 billion from 2016 to 2018.
However, on September 15, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced that Ethereum has officially completed the merger. This marks the formal transition of Ethereum blockchain from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS). In addition, the Ethereum Foundation pointed out on its blog that the Ethereum network merged after will run completely under the PoS algorithm and will no longer be able to perform PoW mining. This also means that the era of relying on graphics cards for mining is about to become a thing of the past.
In multiple contexts, some market views believe that the high price release of the "40 Series" graphics card is also one of the solutions for Nvidia to clear the inventory of the "30 Series". New Street Research report shows that since 2021, miners have purchased graphics card . After PoW mining was no longer mainstream, a large number of second-hand graphics cards flocked to the market to compete directly with new products. How to solve the inventory of RTX30 series graphics cards has become a problem that Nvidia has to face.
"If it is not used for mining, a player who pursues high performance and high configuration only needs 3090." A user holding an RTX 3080 graphics card told 21 reporters.
21 reporter noticed that the price of RTX "30 Series" graphics cards continued to decline in the second half of this year. On October 19, the reporter checked the quote provided by Best Buy, a partner seller of Nvidia North America official website, and found that the "30 Series" flagship card RTX 3090 Ti is currently priced at US$1,099.99, which is US$900 cheaper than the official suggested retail price, and the price reduction is as high as 50%.
(October 19, pricing of RTX 3090 Ti in BestBuy)
is not difficult to predict that the "30 Series" graphics cards after a sharp price reduction in the future may flow into the hands of ordinary players in large quantities.
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Editor of this issue Jiang Peipei Intern Lin Xiying
