Thursday, December 7th 2023
No Overclocking and Lower TGP for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 D Edition for China
NVIDIA is preparing to launch the GeForce RTX 4090 D, or "Dragon" edition, designed explicitly for China. Circumventing the US export rules of GPUs that could potentially be used for AI acceleration, the GeForce RTX 4090 D is reportedly cutting back on overclocking as a feature. According to BenchLife, the AD102-250 GPU used in the RTX 4090 D will be a stranger to overclocking, as the card will not support it, possibly being disabled by firmware and/or physically in the die. The information from @Zed__Wang suggests that the Dragon version will be running at 2280 MHz base frequency, higher than the 2235 MHz of AD102-300 found in the regular RTX 4090, and 2520 MHz boost, matching the regular version.
Interestingly, the RTX 4090 D for China will also feature a slightly lower Total Graphics Power (TGP) of 425 Watts, down from the 450 Watts of the regular model. With memory configuration appearing to be the same, this new China-specific model will most likely perform within a few percent of the original design. Higher base frequency probably indicates a lack of a few CUDA cores to comply with the US export regulation policy and serve the Chinese GPU market. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 D is scheduled for rollout in January 2024 in China, which is just a few weeks away.
Sources:
Benchlife.info, via VideoCardz
Interestingly, the RTX 4090 D for China will also feature a slightly lower Total Graphics Power (TGP) of 425 Watts, down from the 450 Watts of the regular model. With memory configuration appearing to be the same, this new China-specific model will most likely perform within a few percent of the original design. Higher base frequency probably indicates a lack of a few CUDA cores to comply with the US export regulation policy and serve the Chinese GPU market. The NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 D is scheduled for rollout in January 2024 in China, which is just a few weeks away.
34 Comments on No Overclocking and Lower TGP for NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 D Edition for China
AMD and others are not allowed to sell GPUs/Accelerators of the same class either. The difference here is the fact that Nvidia made something like $400M last quarter from China and others... didn't. :) LHR was not mandated by anybody. It was done and imposed by Nvidia. If 4090D is restricted in similar way - which I seriously doubt - and someone provides a way to make it open both Nvidia and whoever did it are in deep deep shit. That is a serious motivator not to try something like that.
Or, let me put it another way. If the 4090 had originally come into the world designed precisely as this "D" model is, would that configuration have made it any less suitable or desirable for AI purposes?
Begun the GPU wars have.
I have no brand loyality, and over the years I have bought a mixture of nVidia and Ati/Amd. Were it not for the high power consumtion, I would own a 7900 now instead of the 4080 atm.