NVIDIA faced restrictions from the US Federal Trade Commission in October, preventing them from selling the GeForce RTX 4090 in the Chinese market. In response, the company quickly developed a China-specific version of the RTX 4090, known as the RTX 4090D, which adheres to the FTC's limitations on AI inference performance while maintaining similar gaming speeds to the regular RTX 4090. According to VideoCardz, this variant likely has a reduced Tensor core count or a firmware-based performance limiter, similar to LHR (lite hashrate) GPUs that were introduced during the peak of the crypto-scalping GPU shortage. The RTX 4090D is now available for purchase. To prevent users from modifying the GPU to revert it back to a regular RTX 4090, it is likely equipped with a different device ID and other barriers that prevent the transplantation of the video BIOS from a regular RTX 4090. Additionally, overclocking capabilities beyond the maximum boost frequency advertised are disabled. The TGP (Total Graphics Power) has also been lowered to 425 W.
