Nvidia reimbursing board partners for cost of RTX 4080 12GB rebranding

[midian182]

In context: Now that Nvidia has "unlaunched" the RTX 4080 12GB, many are asking if it will foot the bill for AIB partners who have already made packaging for the now-canceled card. According to a new report, it will be reimbursing companies, though it seems team green won't cover the cost of every expense.

A few days ago, Nvidia decided that releasing a card with 4GB less VRAM, 25% fewer CUDA cores, and a narrower memory bus than the RTX 4080 16GB while pricing it at $900 was a bad idea. Pretty much everyone agreed this was essentially an RTX 4070 under a different name, one that's almost twice as expensive as the RTX 3070 that launched for $500 two years ago. It appears the bad publicity had become too much for Nvidia, leading to the card's so-called unlaunching, which the company blames on consumer confusion over having two cards with the same RTX 4080 designation.

Pulling a card in the run-up to its release will cost board partners a lot of money. Not only will they have to destroy/recycle the RTX 4080 12GB packaging, but they must also repack the cards in new, redesigned boxes under whatever new name Nvidia lands on, resticker/repaint them, and reflash the BIOS to change the name. There are also labor costs to consider.

According to YouTube channel Gamers Nexus, two big AIBs have confirmed that Nvidia is subsidizing all or at least part of the expenses associated with the rebranding.

It's expected that the RTX 4080 12GB will become the RTX 4070 and be priced lower than the current $900—and hopefully without any reduction to the specs via the BIOS. That would leave questions about what would happen to the originally planned RTX 4070, but Nvidia could try to get around this by renaming the RTX 4080 12GB the RTX 4070 Ti.

Nvidia stresses that the RTX 4080 16GB will still launch on November 16. With the time it will take to rebrand and relaunch the RTX 4080 12GB, it's expected that we won't find out details of the new name and launch date until CES in January.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/96338-nvidia-reimbursing-board-partners-cost-rtx-4080-12gb.html

 

[nodfor]

They could try sell the empty boxes at ebay

The GPU that never was

 

[Puiu]

That's just a small portion of the investment.

 

[Uncle Al]

I would say that all those investing partners should make full reimbursement a condition of any further business with Nvidia, especially since they are not at fault for Nvidia's decisions ....

 

[R00sT3R]

Nvidia are going to have the piss taken out them so hard when they reintroduce this card in January.

They basically have to drop the price and answer uncomfortable questions as to why a simple name change merits a price reduction.

 

[takaozo]

Nvidia are going to have the piss taken out them so hard when they reintroduce this card in January.

They basically have to drop the price and answer uncomfortable questions as to why a simple name change merits a price reduction.

I also like to believe that a name change will bring a price change, but this is Nvidia.....

 

[R00sT3R]

I also like to believe that a name change will bring a price change, but this is Nvidia.....

They have no choice, otherwise they have to answer why they tried to hide a 4070 behind a 4080 label, and charge $900.

'So, Jensen, why didn't you just launch it as the 4070, at $700, in the first place?'

Lol..there are no easy answers for Nvidia over this. Whatever they do, they're going to look terribly anti consumer & greed driven.

Of course we all know that but this debacle makes it very obvious & public.

 

[datoek]

It's not team green, it's team greed!

 

[Nobina]

I would say that all those investing partners should make full reimbursement a condition of any further business with Nvidia, especially since they are not at fault for Nvidia's decisions ....

I wouldn't be surprised if Nvidia gets rid of AIBs eventually. They seem to want to be exclusive like Apple. In that case they are hoping for it.

 

[DSirius]

Next step in the right direction of renaming is that Nvidia to change it's name to NGreedia.
All AIB partners agreed to support the cost of replacing packaging name for free

 

[pcnthuziast]

Going to be among the excuses of added costs and other reasons why this gen will be at least every bit as expensive as last, early on.

 

[dipankar]

People should boycott nvidia graphics card unless they are providing in reasonable rates. They are hiking price in such a situation where world is going with lot of issues like pandemic, recession, high inflation, unemployement etc. And these companies are insensitive to these issues, only need profits nothing else.

 

[Avro Arrow]

With nVidia it's always something, eh?

 

[EdmondRC]

I think they should just rebrand it as the "GPU formerly known as a 4080 12GB". They can just slap a sticker over the 4080 branding with this new designation. That would make the first run kind of a collector's edition, haha.