NVIDIA’s Gaming Comeback in China: The GeForce RTX 4090 D
Last month, the U.S. government tightened export controls on cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) chips. With the updated regulations, not only the computational cards used in data centers but also consumer-grade GeForce RTX 4090 gaming graphics cards were impacted, significantly hindering chip design companies like NVIDIA from selling high-performance chips to China. Consequently, NVIDIA has removed the GeForce RTX 4090 from its official website in Mainland China, where it will no longer be displayed.
However, NVIDIA seems undeterred in relinquishing the lucrative high-end graphics card market in China. According to Wccftech, NVIDIA is planning to launch a special edition of the GeForce RTX 4090 D specifically for the Chinese market, replacing the previous GeForce RTX 4090 model. The “D” suffix might stand for “Dragon”, symbolizing the revered and culturally rich Chinese mythical creature. This naming approach mirrors AMD’s earlier release of the Radeon RX 470 D, also a China-specific model. As for the release timing of this new graphics card, it’s highly probable that it will coincide with the upcoming Lunar Year of the Dragon.
It’s worth noting that the performance difference between the former RX 470 D and the RX 470 was only about 10%, with the RX 470 D’s core being a modified version of the RX 470, reduced in CU units and limited through BIOS. However, this could be overridden through a BIOS reflash, effectively “unlocking” the card’s potential and minimizing the performance gap.
Currently, NVIDIA is preparing to introduce three new models in the Ada Lovelace architecture-based GeForce RTX 40 series SUPER lineup: the RTX 4080 SUPER, RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, and RTX 4070 SUPER. The top-of-the-line RTX 4080 SUPER is expected to feature the AD103 chip and will be equipped with 10,240 CUDA cores. The performance of the GeForce RTX 4090 D is likely to surpass that of the RTX 4080 SUPER, but the exact specifications and performance enhancements remain to be seen.
