News AMD's high-end GPU sales surge in China following RTX 4090 ban - shortages may extend into 2024

[Admin]

Following the ban of Nvidia's RTX 4090 and other high-end Nvidia cards, many Chinese consumers are turning to AMD RX 7900 GPUs. This is causing a shortage for Chinese board partners that threatens to spill into 2024.

AMD's high-end GPU sales surge in China following RTX 4090 ban - shortages may extend into 2024 : Read more

 

[bit_user]

The only upside I see to this situation is AMD finally getting some good volume on RDNA3 cards. For the past year, I think the graphics business has been a big loser for them, stemming initially from oversupply of RDNA2, in combination with a demand collapse coinciding with the launch of RDNA3 and a much better showing from Nvidia than they made with Ampere.

Let's just hope AMD didn't scale back their RDNA4 plans and activities too far.

 

[vanadiel007]

I enjoy my 7900XTX, and I believe I made the right choice with FSR3 and especially the Adrenalin software package. It's so much better than Gforce now and that 1990 Nvidia control applet that sits in the system tray.

It might sound odd, but in my opinion AMD software support is years ahead of the Nvidia software support.

Looks like I got it before the price hikes, making it an even better deal.

 

[thisisaname]

All good for AMD until they too get banned their export restricted.

 

[Order 66]

All good for AMD until they too get banned their export restricted.

I don't think they necessarily will though as the main focus of the export restriction was AI GPUs, last I heard, AMD's AI GPUs weren't as good as Nvidia's.

 

[thisisaname]

I don't think they necessarily will though as the main focus of the export restriction was AI GPUs, last I heard, AMD's AI GPUs weren't as good as Nvidia's.

True not as good as Nvidia but does the US government think they are too good to allow the Chinese to have?
An answer to that question I think neither of know but in time we will find out, we live in interesting times 🤔

 

[bit_user]

All good for AMD until they too get banned their export restricted.

It'll hit the RTX 4080 and RTX 4070 Ti, first.

According to the formula, here are their respective TPP scores.

Nvidia:

Model	Tensor fp16 TFLOPS​	TPP​
RTX 4060	60​	960​
RTX 4060 Ti	88​	1408​
RTX 4070	117​	1872​
RTX 4070 Ti	160​	2560​
RTX 4080	195​	3120​
RTX 4090	330​	5280​

AMD:

Model	Boost (GHz)​	CUs​	Tensor fp16 TFLOPS​	TPP​
RX 7600	2.66​	32​	43​	696​
RX 7700 XT	2.54​	54​	70​	1125​
RX 7800 XT	2.43​	60​	75​	1194​
RX 7900 GRE	2.25​	80​	92​	1471​
RX 7900 XT	2.40​	84​	103​	1652​
RX 7900 XTX	2.50​	96​	123​	1966​

I included the Boost clocks and number of CUs, because I used this formula to compute the Tensor TFLOPS for AMD:

How to accelerate AI applications on RDNA 3 using WMMA

This blog is a quick how-to guide for using the WMMA feature with our RDNA 3 GPU architecture using a Hello World example.

gpuopen.com

Even the RX 7900 XTX is well below the current threshold of 4800. They'd either have to restrict it by some other metric or way lower the threshold.

 

[_Shatta_AD_]

It’s just going to move down the food chain, next they’ll ban 4080, 4070 Ti and soon it’ll be 4060s and their AMD counterparts. All these ineffective policies are only hurting us the consumers and causing chaos and instability in the supply chains.
Scalpers and back channels will benefit the most while artificially driving up a pseudo hike in prices.

 

[bit_user]

It’s just going to move down the food chain,

I'm not sure about that. The RTX 4090 is really a lot more powerful than the others. I'm not saying it's definitely the last to get banned, but it certainly could be.

I will go so far as to say the RTX 4070 Ti is quite likely safe, both on the basis of its memory capacity and bandwidth. These are very important factors for AI.

All these ineffective policies are only hurting us the consumers and causing chaos and instability in the supply chains.

Its price already made it non-viable for most consumers. So, the consumer impact should be a lot less than if they started banning the sub-$1000 cards.

 

[watzupken]

All good for AMD until they too get banned their export restricted.

If US block say the RX 7900 XTX, they will likely block the RTX 4080 as well. You need to remember that the purpose of the block was meant to limit China from hardware that accelerates AI. So with Nvidia having dedicated Tensor cores on their GPU and therefore, better AI performance, this is now working against them.

 

[bit_user]

If US block say the RX 7900 XTX, they will likely block the RTX 4080 as well.

If they continue using the TPP metric, then the RTX 4080 would actually be next. However, the 7900 XTX has more memory capacity and bandwidth, which are also relevant. See my table, in post #7.

You need to remember that the purpose of the block was meant to limit China from hardware that accelerates AI. So with Nvidia having dedicated Tensor cores on their GPU and therefore, better AI performance, this is now working against them.

If Nvidia had it all to do over, I'm sure they wouldn't change a thing. When he started out, Jensen probably never even dreamed of this happening:

Nvidia to become the world's largest semiconductor firm in 2023, according to TSMC chairman

As long as the AI boom isn't a bubble.

www.tomshardware.com

Let's not forget that we've been down this road before. Prior generations of CPUs, GPUs, and even the Sony PS3 were banned for export to certain countries, because it was thought they had enough compute power to be useful for nuclear weapons development.

 

[Co BIY]

Let's not forget that we've been down this road before. Prior generations of CPUs, GPUs, and even the Sony PS3 were banned for export to certain countries, because it was thought they had enough compute power to be useful for nuclear weapons development.

This is a much bigger deal as it effects trade with the second largest economy in the world and the world's largest manufacturer.

Similar in kind but not scope.

Also, the targeted country poses a much larger and credible threat.