New chip variant might be cheaper, but will any cost savings be significant, and will they be passed on to the consumer?
Nvidia’s RTX 4080 is purportedly getting a new spin on the GPU which could reduce the cost, but any price reduction will likely be very minor, sadly, if it happens at all.
Tom’s Hardware (opens in new tab) flagged up this rumor – and treat it with caution, as with anything from the ever-spinning mill – that originated from HKEPC (opens in new tab) (a tech site in Hong Kong), claiming that while the current RTX 4080 graphics card is built on the AD103-300 chip, Nvidia is going to use a slightly different GPU in the future, namely AD103-301.
There’s now more evidence this is actually happening, Tom’s points out, courtesy of a graphics card maker, Galax, which under its RTX 4080 product details lists the GPU as ‘AD103-300/301’.
Furthermore, VideoCardz (opens in new tab), which also picked up on this, informs us that Gainward, another card maker, has also listed the updated GPU variant AD103-301 in its product specs.
With two separate third-party graphics card makers mentioning this new spin on the GPU in their specs, it seems pretty likely this is actually happening; but of course it remains to be confirmed by Nvidia.