It's been a long time since we've seen the xx80 Ti / xx90 big kahuna die launch first before the xx80 mid-tier die, even if it was by only a week. With Fermi and older, we had the big dies come first then the mid-tier dies. Then after ATI faltered we've had the mid-tier die come first with Kepler, and now that AMD are back, Lovelace seems to reverse that trend by having the big die launch way out in front of the rest.
Fermi: GF100 (GTX 480) came first before GF104 (GTX 460).
Kepler: GK104 (GTX 680) came first before GK110 (GTX 780).
Maxwell: GM104 (GTX 980) came first before GM102 (GTX 980 Ti).
Pascal: GP104 (GTX 1080) came first before GP102 (GTX 1080 Ti).
Turing: TU104 (RTX 2080) launched on September 20, 2018 before TU102 (RTX 2080 Ti) launched on September 27, 2018.
Ampere: Cut-down GA102 (RTX 3080) launched on September 17, 2020 before not-so-cut-down GA102 (RTX 3090) launched on September 24, 2020.
And now...
Lovelace: AD102 (RTX 4090) launches a month or more ahead of AD103 (RTX 4080), which itself launches a month ahead of AD104 (RTX 4070?).