Sales are unaffected, as we know dividing zero by any number still remains as zero.
Due to the recent imposition of fresh export restrictions by the United States and its Biden regime, specifically aimed at high-performance graphics chips such as the NVIDIA’s Hopper data-center solutions such as the H100 and H800, other graphics chips such as the gaming oriented GeForce RTX 4090 has also been impacted by these sanctions.
Their updated policy seeks to obstruct the flow of artificial intelligence chips that make their way into China, with a specific emphasis on GPUs. This raises concerns regarding potential repercussions as a result of these restrictions on traditional gaming focused GPUs, which are commonly utilized as “substitutes” for AI offerings.
As of today, the consequences of this ban are becoming increasingly evident, with nearly all Chinese retailers substantially raising the prices of NVIDIA’s flagship GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards.
According to the ECCN 3A090 and 4A090 documents published in the US, any GPU or graphics chip boasting more than 600 GB/s of memory bandwidth and or exceeds 4800 TOPS will face export restrictions to China.
It’s not only China who are getting a taste of FREEDOM through the prohibition of high performance AI hardware, the other countries this new policy impacts are as follows.
Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Belarus, Burma, Cambodia, Central African Republic, China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Cyprus, Egypt, Eritrea, Georgia, Haiti, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, North Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Libya, Macau, Moldova, Mongolia, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, Republic of Sudan, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen and Zimbabwe.
Major players here. Such as China, Russia (shocker) but obviously not Ukraine, a large chunk of the middle-east including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, but not Israel. Transcontinental countries such as Georgia and Azerbaijan are getting the short end of the stick but not Turkey or India.
The ECCN 3A090 and 4A090 includes the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, which doesn’t qualify as producing 4800 TOPS, hell not even NVIDIA’s H100 is capable of producing that figure or at least not yet. However the RTX 4090 does exceed the 600 GB/s memory bandwidth threshold peaking at 1,008 GB/s effectively.
The RTX 4090 made its debut in October 2022 with a price tag of ¥13,000 Yuan. (~1770 USD)
Yet, the most affordable price available at present, inclusive of shipping, stands at just ¥26,000 Yuan (~3550 USD), which is already twice the original cost.
Certain users have even mentioned instances of prices quadrupling. Notably, official stores have taken down their product listings, including NVIDIA’s own Founders Edition, which arrived in China considerably later than in other global regions.
As the new US trade policies come into play, stockpiles of such items might plummet to historic lows. Nevertheless, based on NVIDIA’s past practices, it’s reasonable to anticipate that Chinese retailers will shift focus to alternative products such as the RTX 4070 Ti and RTX 4080 which might see a slight increase in sales.
And in all honesty I couldn’t really care less about these imposed restrictions upon China, I consider this to be a marvelous thing to prohibit high-end flagship products to be shipped to the region, resulting in more products remaining available across all other worldly regions.
This is merely payback for the immense GPU drought brought on upon gamers by the likes of the Chinese and their large scale cryptocurrency mining operations to the point where NVIDIA themselves repurposed older silicon as dedicated HX Mining GPUs.
Middle Eastern nations as well as China essentially smuggled and bought up all available GeForce graphics cards during Ethereum’s mining boom from 2021-2022 resulting in piss poor availability for gamers and absurdly high prices, so limiting flagship hardware to China is a blessing in my eyes, plus it serves as a lucrative opportunity for crooks to earn a swift CCP execution for smuggling RTX 4090’s into the country to undercut these inflated prices.
Think of it as a lucrative business opportunity.
