Let’s take a look back at the ban on exporting cards to China. NVIDIA is reacting, not on the pro segment, but on the consumer side. The company is preparing an RTX 4090 D that complies with US export policies.
RTX 4090 D: a sanction-compliant variant!
As you’ll have gathered, the company’s aim here is to comply with U.S. export policy. To achieve this, the card is based on an AD102-250 GPU, whereas the original card uses the AD102-300-A1. In the process, the card will lose a few cuda cores, but this will enable it to go under 4800 TPP (Total Processing Performance).
On the other side of the coin, TechowerUp reports that the card could also suffer artificial limitations on its AI capabilities. This flange would operate in a similar way to the LHR implemented by the Chameleon during the mining crisis. The aim being to undermine the performance of cards on algos used to mine crypto. It remains to be seen what will actually happen.
In any case, this is good news for Chinese gamers, who will be able to get their hands on a top-of-the-range card again. What’s more, this new version will arrive at a price similar to that of the original version: 12,999 yuan. Finally, the D will stand for “Dragon”, an exclusive product.
As for AMD, we still don’t know whether the company is planning a replacement for its banned cards.
