News Nvidia's sanctions-compliant 4090D gaming GPU for China is overclockable, restoring performance to standard unsanctioned RTX 4090 FE levels

[Admin]

China's sanctions-compliant RTX 4090D GPU can be overclocked, thus restoring it to the full performance of the unsanctioned RTX 4090.

Nvidia's sanctions-compliant 4090D gaming GPU for China is overclockable, restoring performance to standard unsanctioned RTX 4090 FE levels : Read more

 

[Notton]

"Sanctions have backfired."
I don't think "backfired" is the word you are looking for. That would imply that it has the reverse of the intended effect. It would mean the 4090D performs better than the 4090 after overclocking, which it doesn't.

"Circumvention" would be a better fit.

 

[35below0]

Not mentioned in the headline:

- die is cut down
- power consumption exceedes 550W

I also wonder how stable the D is compared to the real thing. In addition, sanctions will be revisited again. This exception may be just one more loophole to close.

"good enough for government work" seems to apply to all three sides here, US, PRC, and nvidia

 

[vanadiel007]

One thing to remember is that making chips specifically to comply with sanctions, will mean increased pricing for other markets that do not have sanctions.

It just does not work for technology the way it works for manufacturing. We the consumer will just keep paying higher and higher prices.

If you want proof of that, just go buy something electronic and compare the price for the same product to 5 years ago. Much higher price than just adjustment for inflation and R&D research.

 

[jlake3]

Isn't the goal of sanctions to drive up the cost and decrease the density of HPC performance, to make things like supercomputing for nuclear weapons simulation or development of autonomous weapons more difficult?

A gamer being able to buy one card and overclock it to match the banned flagship but at a 25% higher power draw than rated TDP doesn't mean sanctions have failed. An AI researcher being able to back-channel import 4-8 cards for their workstation doesn't mean sanctions have failed.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

"Sanctions have backfired."
I don't think "backfired" is the word you are looking for. That would imply that it has the reverse of the intended effect. It would mean the 4090D performs better than the 4090 after overclocking, which it doesn't.

"Circumvention" would be a better fit.

I've tweaked the article (which was written while I was sleeping). Backfire certainly isn't the right word for the 4090D situation, and the reality is that the arbitrarily imposed sanctions limit of 4800 TPP was always basically meaningless. The 4090D has a TPP of 4707 on paper, but what clocks does it achieve in practice?

Our testing of the 4090 shows real-world clocks of 2.7 GHz and above. If the 4090D can hit similar clocks at stock, that would mean its actual TPP would increase to over 5000. Even if it were completely locked down (too late for that, most likely!), does a card that only runs at 4707 TPP actually prevent it from being used in the same way as a card that offers 5285 TPP? Worst-case, China would need 12% more 4090D cards to match the compute of 4090 cards.

It's all shenanigans. Anyone with half a brain already knew that restrictions on the RTX 4090 in China at this stage were far too late to accomplish anything. Plenty of the cards were sold in China before the sanctions came out, and even more were sold right as wind of the upcoming sanctions started blowing through the interwebs. Blocking all sales of H100 in China before those happened was what was needed, and even that would have likely been insufficient.

What will be more interesting to see is how these sanctions impact future Blackwell GPUs. Obviously the RTX 5090 will be much faster than the 4090, so much faster than it's unlikely that any GB202 based card will ever be allowed to be sold (directly) in China. But I have no doubt China will still get its hands on such cards. Will GB203 also be subject to sanctions? Very possibly.

Blackwell B200 has no chance of being allowed for direct sales. It's 7.5X the allowed limit, based on initial specs, so China will need to continue to make do with the H20 from Nvidia (or work around the sanctions through back channels). And so China will also continue to work very hard to make its own hardware that will exceed what it can import. Ten years from now it will probably catch up to Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc. and the sanctions will not matter. And that's when the sanctions will have truly backfired.

 

[Co BIY]

. And so China will also continue to work very hard to make its own hardware that will exceed what it can import. Ten years from now it will probably catch up to Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc. and the sanctions will not matter. And that's when the sanctions will have truly backfired.

If China has to work very hard to overcome the current sanctions, put in place as a punishment for their current behavior, then they may have been effective as sanctions, a punishment.

The goal is to demonstrate that China cannot flout the standards of the international order and expect to be allowed all the benefits of fully participating in that order. The overarching goal of the sanctions is not technological.

They will have backfired if Chinese behavior internationally becomes worse out of anger, fear, perceived isolation, or CCP leadership paranoia aggravated by the sanctions. This is why they are so specific and targeted, designed to not effect a large number of people.

 

[JarredWaltonGPU]

If China has to work very hard to overcome the current sanctions, put in place as a punishment for their current behavior, then they may have been effective as sanctions, a punishment.

If China doesn't change its behavior, and then proceeds to work around sanctions to the point where the sanctions are meaningless, and this ultimately leads to the sanctions hurting the US instead, that's backfiring. It's the law of unintended consequences. You want one thing to happen and instead something undesirable happens instead. You point a gun and pull the trigger, and instead of a bullet shooting at your intended target, it blows up in your face.

The U.S. (and others) want China to behave "better," and are trying to force the issue via sanctions. Lack of change inherently means the sanctions aren't working — China doesn't have to get worse for the sanctions to have failed, it just needs to continue on its current path. Right now, it's doubling down and resisting change by trying to do things on its own.

And if the sanctions don't work and China eventually reaches the point where it threaten the US and its allies economically, politically, socially, militarily, whatever, that's backfiring. That's what I'm saying, and in essence you've agreed.

China continues to flout "international standards," and with 1.4 billion people, it could reach the point where it eventually just gets to define what those standards should be. "China wins." How would that not be backfiring? The US is trying to send China to "timeout," and it looks like China will get angrier and more stubborn and resistant to US influence. Oops.

I don't even think the US really cares about stopping China, though. What it really wants is short term concessions, and as with the sanctions, the long term impact is harder to nail down and becomes Somebody Else's Problem. We're just trying to erect an SEP field around China for now so we can all go on our merry way. (That's a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference, if you didn't get it.)

 

[LabRat 891]

Uh. Duh...

(This is probably tangentially related to AMD's GRE getting VRAM OCing unlocked, too. )

 

[vbevan]

Isn't the goal of sanctions to drive up the cost and decrease the density of HPC performance, to make things like supercomputing for nuclear weapons simulation or development of autonomous weapons more difficult?

A gamer being able to buy one card and overclock it to match the banned flagship but at a 25% higher power draw than rated TDP doesn't mean sanctions have failed. An AI researcher being able to back-channel import 4-8 cards for their workstation doesn't mean sanctions have failed.

I think it's the opposite?

Sanctions will have zero effect on state actors getting vanilla 4090s, either through international markets or neighboring states.

What it will do is hurt the hobbyist AI researcher. That is where the next generation of AI workers sits, it's actually pretty clever if you think of it that way.

People who say they can just overclock aren't thinking about the problems stability issues will cause. Corrupted frames or even having to reboot is annoying when playing games. When training a model, which can take days to complete, a crash means starting again.

 

[Pierce2623]

I've tweaked the article (which was written while I was sleeping). Backfire certainly isn't the right word for the 4090D situation, and the reality is that the arbitrarily imposed sanctions limit of 4800 TPP was always basically meaningless. The 4090D has a TPP of 4707 on paper, but what clocks does it achieve in practice?

Our testing of the 4090 shows real-world clocks of 2.7 GHz and above. If the 4090D can hit similar clocks at stock, that would mean its actual TPP would increase to over 5000. Even if it were completely locked down (too late for that, most likely!), does a card that only runs at 4707 TPP actually prevent it from being used in the same way as a card that offers 5285 TPP? Worst-case, China would need 12% more 4090D cards to match the compute of 4090 cards.

It's all shenanigans. Anyone with half a brain already knew that restrictions on the RTX 4090 in China at this stage were far too late to accomplish anything. Plenty of the cards were sold in China before the sanctions came out, and even more were sold right as wind of the upcoming sanctions started blowing through the interwebs. Blocking all sales of H100 in China before those happened was what was needed, and even that would have likely been insufficient.

What will be more interesting to see is how these sanctions impact future Blackwell GPUs. Obviously the RTX 5090 will be much faster than the 4090, so much faster than it's unlikely that any GB202 based card will ever be allowed to be sold (directly) in China. But I have no doubt China will still get its hands on such cards. Will GB203 also be subject to sanctions? Very possibly.

Blackwell B200 has no chance of being allowed for direct sales. It's 7.5X the allowed limit, based on initial specs, so China will need to continue to make do with the H20 from Nvidia (or work around the sanctions through back channels). And so China will also continue to work very hard to make its own hardware that will exceed what it can import. Ten years from now it will probably catch up to Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc. and the sanctions will not matter. And that's when the sanctions will have truly backfired.

“Backfired” is still in the secondary title section and it’s just not really the right word considering Nvidia just totally flaunted the regulations by allowing overclock support.

 

[Pierce2623]

I think it's the opposite?

Sanctions will have zero effect on state actors getting vanilla 4090s, either through international markets or neighboring states.

What it will do is hurt the hobbyist AI researcher. That is where the next generation of AI workers sits, it's actually pretty clever if you think of it that way.

People who say they can just overclock aren't thinking about the problems stability issues will cause. Corrupted frames or even having to reboot is annoying when playing games. When training a model, which can take days to complete, a crash means starting again.

They’re just overclocking back to the original stock performance. That’s not causing any sort of instability. The whole point of the 4090D was that instead of reducing shader count, they just reduced clock speeds. That way, enabling overclocking support just totally flaunts the regulations. I personally think Nvidia should get a MASSIVE fine. Like a billion dollars massive, at the minimum.

 

[Nicholas Steel]

You missed a D

"The RTX 4090 has a TPP (Total Processing Power) rating of 5,285, while the RTX 4090**D** skirts just under the 4,800 sanctions-imposed limit and lands at 4,707."

 

[NightKev]

They’re just overclocking back to the original stock performance. That’s not causing any sort of instability. The whole point of the 4090D was that instead of reducing shader count, they just reduced clock speeds. That way, enabling overclocking support just totally flaunts the regulations. I personally think Nvidia should get a MASSIVE fine. Like a billion dollars massive, at the minimum.

Did you read nothing but the title? Right in the damn article it shows that it has *the exact same clocks* but *cut down SMs*/etc. Maybe you need glasses.

 

[35below0]

Did you read nothing but the title? Right in the damn article it shows that it has *the exact same clocks* but *cut down SMs*/etc. Maybe you need glasses.

That's rude.

 

[NightKev]

That's rude.

It's quite tame if you're not a small child.

 

[digitalgriffin]

Welcome to the black list 4090D

 

[digitalgriffin]

One thing to remember is that making chips specifically to comply with sanctions, will mean increased pricing for other markets that do not have sanctions.

It just does not work for technology the way it works for manufacturing. We the consumer will just keep paying higher and higher prices.

If you want proof of that, just go buy something electronic and compare the price for the same product to 5 years ago. Much higher price than just adjustment for inflation and R&D research.

It's not a unique chip. These are defective die 4090 that have internal fuses burnt off to prevent them from using the defective cu/sm/mc etc.

 

[digitalgriffin]

I've tweaked the article (which was written while I was sleeping). Backfire certainly isn't the right word for the 4090D situation, and the reality is that the arbitrarily imposed sanctions limit of 4800 TPP was always basically meaningless. The 4090D has a TPP of 4707 on paper, but what clocks does it achieve in practice?

Our testing of the 4090 shows real-world clocks of 2.7 GHz and above. If the 4090D can hit similar clocks at stock, that would mean its actual TPP would increase to over 5000. Even if it were completely locked down (too late for that, most likely!), does a card that only runs at 4707 TPP actually prevent it from being used in the same way as a card that offers 5285 TPP? Worst-case, China would need 12% more 4090D cards to match the compute of 4090 cards.

It's all shenanigans. Anyone with half a brain already knew that restrictions on the RTX 4090 in China at this stage were far too late to accomplish anything. Plenty of the cards were sold in China before the sanctions came out, and even more were sold right as wind of the upcoming sanctions started blowing through the interwebs. Blocking all sales of H100 in China before those happened was what was needed, and even that would have likely been insufficient.

What will be more interesting to see is how these sanctions impact future Blackwell GPUs. Obviously the RTX 5090 will be much faster than the 4090, so much faster than it's unlikely that any GB202 based card will ever be allowed to be sold (directly) in China. But I have no doubt China will still get its hands on such cards. Will GB203 also be subject to sanctions? Very possibly.

Blackwell B200 has no chance of being allowed for direct sales. It's 7.5X the allowed limit, based on initial specs, so China will need to continue to make do with the H20 from Nvidia (or work around the sanctions through back channels). And so China will also continue to work very hard to make its own hardware that will exceed what it can import. Ten years from now it will probably catch up to Intel, AMD, Nvidia, etc. and the sanctions will not matter. And that's when the sanctions will have truly backfired.

Doing work while half awake. Then you wake up the next day and look at what you did and think "What was I thinking?"

Welcome to the club.

 

[digitalgriffin]

“Backfired” is still in the secondary title section and it’s just not really the right word considering Nvidia just totally flaunted the regulations by allowing overclock support.

Hey we all been there. Grace is important.

 

[The Historical Fidelity]

So by allowing the sanctions-immune 4090D to be overclocked, Nvidia is allowing Chinese firms the power of a 4090 when overclocked, but using 24% more electricity than a 4090. So basically all the 4090D accomplishes is even worse air quality in China thanks to their reliance on coal fired power plants. I thought the West cared about the planet lol.