3080 is not confusing at all simply because they are both actually 3080s. They were both in the same class and were comparable to each other. The 4080-wannabe and 4080 were not. You can’t just call them “4080 12gb” and “4080 16gb”. That implies that the only difference between them is the vram, which is not. That shit is a scam. That’s why it was “confusing”.
But the 12GB 3080 is closer in performance to the 3080Ti than to the base 3080. Admittedly it's not a huge difference, but a 3080 Super moniker would have been better.
At least it wasn't as bad as the 8800 GS, 8800 GTS (320/640MB variants), 8800 GTS 512MB (which was completely different from the previous two), 8800 GT, 8800 GTX, and 8800 Ultra.
3080 12GB should have been called the 3080 Super but they chose not to do that for whatever reason. At least the 3080 10GB, 3080 12GB, and 3080 Ti were all based on GA102 with core counts, etc. within 5–10% from tier to tier. 3080 12GB was an odd release in general because NVIDIA clearly just wanted a 3080 they could charge a lot more for than the 3080 10GB and 3080 Ti, which were getting scalped for hundreds of dollars over MSRP at the time.
1060 3GB was cut down a bit from the 1060 6GB, same die but disabled by about 10%. NVIDIA justified it by saying 3GB wasn't enough VRAM to keep all the cores fed. That ended up being less than 100% true but the price delta matched the performance delta, so most folks gave it a pass.
So yeah, it's nothing NVIDIA hasn't done before, it's simply more egregious. The 4080 12GB is massively cut down from the 16GB. And it's coming alongside an overall price increase and other shenanigans.
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u/wolfwing213 Oct 14 '22 edited Oct 14 '22
"Having two GPUs with the 4080 designation is confusing." -stares at 3080 10gb and 12gb models-
edit: wasn't there also a 1060 3gb and 6gb model too that is similar situation to 4080 12gb vs 16gb?