Specifically designed to meet export constraints to China, the GeForce RTX 4090D could in turn be affected.
Could it be that NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4090D is the graphics card with the shortest lifespan in history? In any case, this is what seems to be taking shape for a model announced last November.
Variations of the powerful GeForce RTX 4090, this “model D” seems likely to fall under the revision of the export rules to China imposed by the American government.
Tightening of US regulations
A little flashback. Faced with increasingly fierce Chinese competition, the United States has put in place several barriers to the export of so-called “sensitive” products, including many technological products.
Given their computing power and what can then be done with it, NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards are among the first affected by the new rules. In fact, from October 2023, it became very difficult to find any card from Chinese resellers.
To comply with new American rules and knowing that the Chinese market is a colossal issue for it, NVIDIA has decided to market a card based on a slightly redesigned GPU. With fewer cores, but slightly higher frequencies, the GeForce RTX 4090D was released on the market at the end of December.
No more than 70 TFLOPS of power
The ace ! Relayed by VideoCardz, Reuters tells us that at the very end of last week, the Biden administration decided to review the export rules for technological products to tighten them again.
The document cited by Reuters is a 166-page block whose entry into force must take place from tomorrow, Thursday April 4. One of the main points concerns the new licensing obligation necessary for the export of computers or components with computing power greater than 70 TFLOPS. It is precisely at this level that the very recent GeForce RTX 4090D finds itself in difficulty.
As our colleagues point out, the power of the card is 73.5 TFLOPS and it would therefore be subject to an export ban to China from tomorrow. Knowing that it was designed for the Chinese market (hence the “D” for Dragon), it is difficult to see NVIDIA reorienting it towards other geographic sectors.
Source : Reuters, VideoCardz
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