A year ago, due to US sanctions aimed at limiting China’s access to powerful artificial intelligence acceleration, Nvidia began selling a stripped-down model of the RTX 4090D instead of the GeForce RTX 4090 in the local market, as the high-end gaming GPU was already hitting the performance limits imposed by the sanctions. Logically, the new generation Blackwell will have the same problem. Nvidia is also preparing a special Chinese RTX 5090D model in it, but the performance is supposed to be unlimited.
That Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090D is in the works has now been confirmed by a Chinese leaker with the nickname MEGAsizeGPU, who showed on (former) Twitter a logo design apparently coming from Nvidia materials. The marking will therefore again indicate the “D”. There is no news yet about a possible RTX 5080D model, so this model (GeForce RTX 5080) may not need modifications due to sanctions.
After that, the first detailed details about the GeForce RTX 5090D appeared on the Chiphell forum. According to a fairly proven leaker with the nickname Panzerlied, this model should have the same configuration as the Western or global GeForce RTX 5090 model, i.e. 21,760 shaders (170 CU blocks) as well as full memory capacity and throughput. It even states that there will be no hardware difference at all between the GeForce RTX 5090 and the “Chinese” RTX 5090D. Therefore, some Tensor Core units for AI acceleration will not even need to be deactivated, which would otherwise be offered as a solution.
GeForce RTX 4090D specifications on Nvidia’s Chinese website, where the card replaced the original RTX 4090
Instead, Nvidia seems to just software-limit performance in some (artificial intelligence-type) applications, presumably with some sort of solution similar to what was used during the crypto-mining bubble to slow down graphics in “mining” tasks. At the time, graphics cards labeled “Lite Hash Rate” (LHR) had modified firmware to only accept drivers that had the appropriate cryptographic signature, and detection of various cryptomining software was implemented in these drivers. If the card detected them, it reduced the performance.
Will software protection be of any use?
The GeForce RTX 5090D graphics will probably have something similar. It raises doubts about whether the measure will be effective. The protection against mining on LHR cards was broken quite quickly. There were probably more ways around it, changes in mining programs could deceive detection, and cryptographic protection against the use of hacked unlimited drivers relies on the fact that no one will manage to find a vulnerability that manages to get hacked firmware into the card. In practice, such security is often overcome sooner or later.
In addition, signed drivers can leak directly from Nvidia, in which the restriction will not be active and at that moment the protection is out of the game forever – this is exactly what happened in the case of LHR cards. In this case, the adversary will not only be speculators and individuals, but directly a state actor, so the deployment of sophisticated espionage or agents can also break the protection for Chinese state authorities.
What exactly the protection will look like, however, is not yet clear, so the results cannot be fully predicted at this time. The GeForce RTX 5090D graphics will probably be released in January 2025 at the same time as the standard RTX 5090 model. So it will probably also be sold at the same price. But it is not yet known – it is quite possible that Nvidia will increase it again against the $1,600 it officially wants for the RTX 4090 as a high-end gaming graphics model today.
Source: www.cnews.cz
