Nvidia is launching a slower version of the RTX 4090 GPU for the Chinese market

Nvidia has announced the RTX 4090 D video card, intended for the Chinese market. That is a version of the GPU with fewer cuda cores and a lower maximum TBP. The manufacturer designed this version because the regular RTX 4090 can no longer be sold in China due to US export restrictions.

Although Nvidia’s regular RTX 4090 video card has 16,384 cudacores, the stripped-down D variant has 14,592, it shows. the product page of the latter. The total board power is also slightly lower: 425W instead of 450W. This would just fall short of the total processing power, or TPP, allowed under the new export regulations. The precise TPP rating of the RTX 4090 D has not been announced. Nvidia says in a response to Reuters that the card fully complies with the new rules, and that the company has had “extensive” contact with the US government during its development.

According to the manufacturer, the card aimed at China is five percent slower than the banned variant. Most of the other specifications have not changed, although the card does have a slightly higher base clock speed: 2.28GHz instead of 2.23GHz. The GPU costs 13,000 renminbi in China, approximately 1661 euros, which is the same as the initial asking price of the regular RTX 4090. Nvidia wants to supply the card to the country from January.

In October it was announced that Nvidia is no longer allowed to sell the RTX 4090 in China due to the new US export restrictions. Under these new rules, certain high-end AI chips may no longer be supplied to China, as the US fears that the country would otherwise gain access to certain AI techniques, which could be used for military purposes, for example. As the most powerful consumer GPU, the RTX 4090 would be able to drive advanced AI models just like data center cards, and is therefore subject to the same export rules.