NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 4090 D GPU was launched late last year in China—this weakened variant (of the standard RTX 4090) was designed with US trade regulations in mind. Chinese media outlets have toyed around with various custom models for several months—January 2024 evaluations indicated a 5% performance disadvantage when lined up against unrestricted models. The GeForce RTX 4090 D GPU is a potent beast despite a reduced core count and restricted TDP limit, but Chinese enthusiasts have continued to struggle with the implementation of worthwhile overclocks. HKEPC—a Hong Kong-situated PC hardware review outlet—has bucked that trend.

The mega-sized flagship ZOTAC RTX 4090 D PGF model has the technical credentials to break beyond the expected overclock increase of "2 to 5%," courtesy of a powerful 28-phase power PCB design and 530 W max. TGP limit. The Expreview team pulled a paltry 3.7% extra bit of performance from ZOTAC China's behemoth. In contrast, HKEPC wrangled out some bigger numbers with a sampled ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 4090 GAMING OC graphics card—matching unrestricted variants: "it turns out that NVIDIA only does not allow AIC manufacturers to preset overclocking, but it does not restrict users from overclocking by themselves. After a high degree of overclocking adjustment, the ROG Strix RTX 4090 D actually has a way to achieve the performance level of the RTX 4090 FE."VideoCardz summarized HKEPC achievements: "ASUS took it a step further by introducing 600 W settings for its ROG STRIX model, which is physically identical to the original model but comes with a new AD102-250 GPU with fewer cores...HKEPC, who tested the GPU, discovered that ASUS provided generous overclocking potential, which can be manually adjusted through software."The summary continued with: "(HKEPC's) reviewer has been able to set the GPU to 600 W mode (a 41% higher power limit) and increase clocks by 200 MHz. The memory was overclocked from 1313 MHz to 1500 MHz (24 Gbps effective). Overall, the observed performance in 3DMark Speed Way goes from 9846 to 10818 points, nearly a 10% increase. This allowed the GPU to surpass the original RTX 4090." The flagship ASUS ROG Strix card seems to be an "outlier" in the Chinese market-specific pack of custom GeForce RTX 4090 D options."

HKEPC's conclusion included some sage advice: "as there are fewer and fewer (unrestricted) RTX 4090 units in stock in the Hong Kong market, the price has become quite expensive. On the contrary, the RTX 4090 D has no hype. If it is cost-effective, it may be higher. Since the United States-Hong Kong Policy Act has been cancelled, the United States is against China. The technology embargo will include Hong Kong. The existing RTX 4090 D is a good substitute...Hong Kong people should face reality."