Surprise! Nvidia's 12GB GeForce RTX 3080 packs more memory and a bigger GPU - PCWorld

On Tuesday morning, Nvidia quietly and surprisingly launched a new 12GB version of GeForce RTX 3080 that fixes our biggest (albeit minor) gripe with an otherwise stellar graphics card.

The 10GB of VRAM on the original RTX 3080 felt somewhat lacking right out of the gate, as games like Doom already chew up immense amounts of memory with every graphics knob cranked at 4K resolution.

Nvidia also tweaked the GPU configuration of the new 12GB RTX 3080, bumping the CUDA graphics core count from 8704 in the original to 8960 now.

That, combined with the upgraded memory, should make the 12GB RTX 3080 just a wee bit faster than the original, though we would’ve preferred that Nvidia gave this card a slightly different name (like RTX 3080 Super) given the small-but-key GPU tweaks.

The 12GB RTX 3080 XC Ultra Gaming costs $1,250—a $410 markup, and even more than the non-Ultra version of the step-up RTX 3080 Ti XC Gaming, which costs $1210.