Once again NVIDIA are miraculously prepared to handle any any all circumstances as they allegedly prepare to release a revised and or possibly cut-down rendition of the RTX 4090 graphics card to meet the US export restrictions on artificial intelligence chips.
We’ve discussed the trade restrictions in greater extent previously, however the cumulative prohibition of NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4090 was seemingly caught in the crossfire causing street prices of the graphics card to spiral out of control not only in affected regions such as China but even in the United States as well.
Sources close to Techopse proclaim that as of November 27th, typical prices for GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards that have yet to be sold are being offered by Hong Kong retailers for HK$25,000, which roughly converts to ~3200 USD, which is exactly double that of its supposed MSRP or Manufacturer Suggested Retail Pricing.
The trade restrictions have sent RTX 4090 prices into orbit, and according to EXPreview, AMD are capitalizing upon this immensely given a sharp influx of Radeon RX 7900 series sales following retailers hiking up NVIDIA offerings that have since been banned, with AMD actually having trouble keeping up with the demand for Navi 31 based units for Chinese board partners and OEMs.
This is a tremendous issue, not just for Chinese gamers alike but NVIDIA as well, being prohibited from exporting these crucial (high margin) products to a plethora of regions including China, one of the largest consumers of tech produce in the entire world, means that NVIDIA are losing out on a lot of profit thanks to the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration.
Loopholes everywhere, a billion dollar monopoly simply cannot be hindered in pursuit of money, national security be damned I love the communist party! I remember the old saying that a capitalist would sell a communist the very rope they’d use to hang them with.
And much like how AMD previously opted to scamming the Chinese population with the Radeon RX 470 “D” graphics card, despite being named similarly to the already existing RX 470 graphics card, this Chinese exclusive RX 470D contained only 28 compute units versus the 32 CUs featured on the main card, confusing naming scheme with differing specifications and performance figures.
NVIDIA however seemingly wish to pay homage to the long since forgotten Radeon RX 470D by giving Chinese consumers a D of their own in the form of the GeForce RTX 4090 D which is supposed to represent the word dragon, much like how AMD’s OEM/China exclusive RX 7900 GRE stands for “Golden Rabbit Edition”.
Though if I were to have a guess as to what the “D” stands for it would probably be the word “Dumbass” because that seems to be the target demographic for this graphics card, as the RTX 4090 Dragon will be designed primarily to comply with US export restrictions, which impose a Total Processing Performance (TPP) limit of 4800 points.
The initial RTX 4090 model surpasses this threshold, rendering it ineligible for export to specific countries, including China.
In order to adhere to the performance threshold, the card in question will have performance impactive compromises, this could range from impacting its CUDA core specifications in conjunction with lower base clock speeds.
It’s important to highlight that TPP encompasses all compute power, encompassing not only single-precision but also half and double. NVIDIA could just as easily choose to limit these compute workloads artificially.
Just as they had done previously with their GTX Titan XP’s compute performance, or how NVIDIA introduced their “Lite Hash Rate” restriction on various RTX 3000 series graphics card, which provided exactly half their theoretical Ethereum mining performance, only to “accidentally” release a driver update that mitigated LHR outright in version 522.25.
Whether artificially limited or fused off entirely, an altercation must be made to ensure compliance with these restrictions.
Ideally in a manner that doesn’t impact the gaming performance side of things, however this is a lucrative once in a lifetime opportunity for NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang to profiteer from this entire ordeal by giving the Chinese a further cucked rendition of the AD102 core to once again be sold at its normal price tag of ¥13,000 RMB (1600 USD),
Which of course means to Chinese individuals, your RTX 4090 “Dragon” most likely won’t actually be an RTX 4090 at all, with inferior performance and specifications all-round, effectively rendering it as the supposed RTX 4080 SUPER we were previously anticipating however that has simply been altered to utilize the full AD103 core instead.
Chinese gamers can look forward to getting swindled very soon as Jensen Huang looks to bend them over and show China his dragon.
