NVIDIA rumored to launch new version of RTX 4090 GPU surprisingly early - next week in fact

NVIDIA's purported new spin on the RTX 4090 graphics card is set to go on sale come December 28, according to a fresh rumor.

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Jensen's masterplan to get back into the Chinese market with the RTX 4090 is about to kick off it seems (Image Credit: NVIDIA)

This is the RTX 4090 D which is for the Chinese market only, a cut-down version expressly produced for the purpose of side-stepping the ban on powerful AI GPUs which has also prevented NVIDIA's standard RTX 4090 from being shipped to China.

The rumor comes from Chinese site Expreview - so heap on the skepticism here, as it's not one of the more reliable channels on the grapevine - and it's surprisingly early.

We weren't expecting the RTX 4090 D to turn up until next year, admittedly early on, but still, the graphics card arriving before December is out, well, that's a definite surprise.

Then again, it makes sense that NVIDIA would want to push to get this one released quickly, because time is money, and Team Green is definitely missing out on profits in China right now due to the export ban.

We already know that the RTX 4090 D will be based on the AD102-250 chip, a considerably cut-down version of the AD102-301/300 found in the vanilla RTX 4090 flagship.

We're also told that wattage will be cut down to 425W (from 450W) and overclocking won't be supported with the RTX 4090 D. That's to prevent people from juicing up the card to attempt to make up for the lost performance from the CUDA core reduction.

The RTX 4090 D will keep its configuration of 24GB of VRAM and supposedly it'll sell for an MSRP of 12,999 yuan in China (which is just over $1,800).

Due to the situation in China - and the shift to move stock of RTX 4090s over there, when prices were skyrocketing before the ban came into force - price tags on the Lovelace flagship have shot up in the US (and elsewhere to some extent).