Nvidia launches gimped RTX 4090D for China market

NVIDIA has launched a gimped version of its RTX 4090 GPU dubbed the “RTX 4090D'' specifically for sale in the Chinese market. NVIDIA says the card has been designed in close co-operation with the US government in order to comply with its export restrictions related to sale of cutting-edge chips destined for China. Interestingly, Nvidia says the RTX 4090D is only around 5 percent slower in gaming and content creation workflows, so it doesn’t look like Chinese customers will be substantially worse off – at least on the surface.

As we previously reported, the U.S. government is aiming to restrict China’s ability to develop AI for military purposes and has already banned the export and sale of NVIDIA’s high-end server H100 GPUs in China. It was only in October that the company was forced to cease the export and sale of the regular RTX 4090 to China, necessitating the launch of the RTX 4090D. With the sale of the H100 banned in China, the Chinese AI sector had been dismantling and re-purposing the regular RTX 4090 for AI development. 

The new RTX 4090D differs from its regular counterparts in a few key ways, although it retains the underlying NVIDIA ‘Ada Lovelace’ architecture. The CUDA core count has been reduced from 16,384 to 14,592 while power consumption peaks at 425W instead of 450W. There’s no shortchanging on the RAM, however, which is retained at 24GB of the latest GDDRX type. The NVIDIA RTX 4090D will go on sale in China this month for ￥12,999 (Approx. $1,836 USD).