Gaming World in Uproar! The Best-performing Consumer Graphics Card Banned for Sale: NVIDIA’s 4090 Graphics Card Completely Delisted.
The Chinese gaming world is in chaos. Who would have thought that even gaming would be sanctioned by the United States?
4090 Graphics Card Completely Delisted
Unexpectedly, the Biden administration in the US, aiming to regulate the export of AI chips, has planned to prevent companies like NVIDIA from exporting advanced AI chips to China. As a result, even the high-end consumer graphics card 4090 was banned, and the gaming community is furious.
According to the latest public documents submitted by NVIDIA to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the U.S. government has issued an updated and amended interim final decision.
The controlled items include but are not limited to NVIDIA A100, H100, A800, H800, L40, L40S, RTX 4090, and the DGX/HGX systems integrated with these high-performance computing cards.
Notably, the U.S. government has added the consumer product, RTX 4090, to its export controls, implementing a ban on sales of RTX 4090 to China.
The A100/H100 are NVIDIA’s best-performing computing cards, and A800/H800 are versions intentionally downgraded by NVIDIA to be exportable to Chinese enterprises.
However, what’s most surprising is the ban on the RTX 4090, a consumer graphics card. It’s currently the best-performing consumer graphics card, affecting both gamers and video creators. Consequently, even if users want this card for gaming or video rendering, they might not be able to purchase it at regular prices through regular channels.
Currently, both official and unofficial versions of the RTX 4090 are progressively being delisted, with stores out of stock. Prices for the 4090 through various channels have skyrocketed. It’s entirely out of stock on JD.com, with searches for RTX 4090 only showing other models like RTX 4070.
Some third-party stores on Taobao still have stocks, but prices have generally doubled, ranging between 20,000 to 30,000 RMB.
According to related documents, any GPU chip that meets one of the following conditions will be subjected to export restrictions.
Analysts suggest that for gaming purposes, a 4090 graphics card is overkill in terms of performance. No game seems to fully utilize the immense power of the 4090. This card is primarily used for AI graphics and computational power. The RTX 4090 is among the most powerful GPUs globally, widely used in high-performance computing, virtual reality, deep learning, etc.
Analysts point out that the U.S.’s reason for controlling the export of the 4090 card is to shift focus from restricting “communication speed” to limiting “performance density.” This move is to prevent companies from using Chiplet technology to circumvent restrictions on entire chips.
On October 18, the Ministry of Commerce’s spokesperson responded to questions regarding the U.S. Department of Commerce’s final rules on semiconductor export controls to China.
The spokesperson stated that China is firmly opposed to the U.S.’s frequent misuse of the concept of national security, its abusive export control measures, and its unilateral bullying behavior.
The semiconductor industry is highly globalized. The improper regulations by the U.S. significantly hinder the regular trade between chip, chip equipment, materials, and parts enterprises worldwide. It seriously disrupts market rules and the international trade order, posing a threat to the global supply chain’s stability. Both U.S. semiconductor companies and semiconductor companies from other countries are affected.
The U.S. should immediately lift the export controls on Chinese semiconductors, create a fair, just, and predictable business environment for enterprises worldwide, including Chinese ones, and collaborate with all parties to build a safe, efficient, open, and mutually beneficial global supply chain system. China will take all necessary measures to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.
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U.S. stocks fell. NVIDIA plummeted by 3%. ASML, the photolithography giant, also fell sharply.
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