Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) has developed a new, slower version of its industry-leading gaming chip for the Chinese market which complies with recently updated United States export restrictions.
A Nvidia spokesperson confirmed to Reuters that the chip will be available to Chinese customers starting in January, priced at 12,999 yuan (US$1,842).
“The GeForce RTX 4090 D has been designed to fully comply with U.S. government export controls,” the spokesperson told the publication. “While developing this product, we extensively engaged with the U.S. government.”
Nvidia's gaming chip the RTX 4090 was barred from being exported to China by new export rules introduced by the Biden administration in October.
The Nvidia spokesperson said the China-focused RTX 4090 D is "5% slower in gaming and creating" than the RTX 4090 and that it has 11% fewer “CUDA” (Compute Unified Device Architecture) cores than other versions of the chip sold outside China.
Analysts at Wedbush see implications of the new chips as "minimal for now" for Nvidia as its growth in AI-related revenues had minimized the impact of its gaming sales on the company's financial outlook.
They wrote in a note to clients that the more significant question in their view might be how might U.S. restrictions affect gaming in China moving forward.
"While only the highest-end Nvidia part is currently impacted by U.S. policy today, we would expect future more powerful GPU iterations could be more broadly affected if U.S. limitations on performance remain static," they wrote.
"In turn, depending on the success of U.S. restrictions in keeping mainstream client GPUs out of China, such a setup could weigh on gaming development in that region, potentially yielding implications for the broader gaming industry given the importance of China to the gaming industry."
Nvidia shares traded up 0.3% in pre-market trade on Friday at US$497 and have gained 247% in the year to date.
- Updated with analyst comments -