NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090D For China Spotted With Crypto And AI Locks
NVIDIA is once again readying a special version of its flagship consumer graphics card for the Chinese market, which be called the GeForce RTX 5090D. As we saw with the GeForce RTX 4090D, a special version of the previous generation flagship for China, there will be some limitations so as not to run afoul of US government restrictions on chip exports.
The card itself hasn't materialized, but there's apparently a reference to the upcoming part in NVIDIA's drivers for the GeForce RTX 50 series. A forum post over at Chiphell (via user "Omonob") breaks down some key limitations imposed at the driver and presumably firmware level for the GeForce RTX 5090D, one of which prevents users from running multiple graphics cards at the same time.
As it applies to gaming, multi-GPU setups went out of style a long time ago. However, they can still benefit cryptocurrency mining and AI workloads. Speaking of which, there are restrictions on both of those fronts as well, according to Omonob.
Source: Chiphell (via Omonob)
One of those is said to be a 3-second performance lock for certain workloads and tasks. For example, whenever it's detected that a user is trying to run multiple GPUs, mine cryptocurrency, or perform AI tasks, the 3-second lock kicks in that effectively limits the card's power consumption (and performance). It basically gimps an otherwise flagship GPU, likely reducing clock speeds in a significant way. That's what we infer from a Google translation of the post, anyway.
We suspect this won't have any impact on gaming-related AI features, with NVIDIA leaning heavily into its latest generation Deep Learning Super Sampling 4 (DLSS 4) technology with Multi Frame Generation. If you haven't already, check out our deep dive on Blackwell as it pertains to the GeForce RTX 50 series, which covers the nuts and bolts of the underlying architecture, neural rendering tricks, DLSS 4, and much more.
What it could do, however, is severely limit the appeal of the Chinese SKU for professional tasks, making it only of interest to gamers. That's basically the entire point, with US restrictions imposed over national security concerns (which is a whole other topic to explore, especially light of the looming and controversial TikTok ban).
That said, there's always the possibility that modders will find a way around NVIDIA's restrictions to unlock the full capabilities of the GeForce RTX 5090D (Omonob claims the power limit can't be modified), regardless of workload. That's especially interesting this round because, unlike the strategy employed with the GeForce RTX 4090D, the GeForce RTX 5090D will have the same number of CUDA cores. Many of the other specs are the same as well, such as clock speeds and employing 32GB of GDDR7 on a 512-bit bus.
Curiously, however, NVIDIA's product page for the GeForce RTX 5090D does show a notable reduction in AI TOPS—2,375 versus 3,352 for the regular (read: non-D) model.
