Leaks suggest Nvidia's RTX 4090D will lack overclocking and be TDP-Capped

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090D— the company's gaming graphics card designed specifically for Chinese market — is on track and its specifications are getting shape, according to recent leaks. Given the fact that the product has never been confirmed by Nvidia as well as the stance of the U.S. Department of Commerce regarding powerful GPUs for China, we can never be sure either about the specs or about the launch of the product at all. But TGP and clock leaks from @Zed__Wang and BenchLife.info we have some information. As ever, take leaks with a pinch of salt.

Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090D is based on the AD102-250 GPU, and likely to have a base clock of 2280 MHz (up from 2230 MHz on the regular RTX 4090D) and posible boost clock of 2520 MHz (same as on the regular RTX 4090), according to @Zed__Wang, a renowned leaker. These clocks heavily suggest that the AD102-250 graphics processing unit will come with a reduced number of CUDA cores and other units, though we are speculating here. 

Now, with similar clocks and reduced number of CUDA cores, a GeForce RTX 4090D could match the performance of an RTX 4090 if overclocked (remember that the AD102 GPU was designed to be overclockable). So, to avoid this, the graphics card will come with total graphics power (TGP) capped at 425W (down from 450W in case of the original RTX 4090) and its overclocking capabilities will be locked, according to BenchLife.info.

The website reports that that Nvidia's add-in-board (AIB) partners are expected to receive samples of the AD102-250 GPU for testing this week, which means that we are going to see leaked specifications of the GeForce RTX 4090D shortly.

Now, while it is plausible that Nvidia is interested in making its $1599 graphics card available in China again,  and is willing to cut-down the performance of its AD102 below the threshold set by the U.S. Department of Commerce. It should be noted that the latter is unwilling to let Chinese have powerful GPUs that could be used for AI training or even technical computing at all. To that end, take any information about Nvidia's RTX 4090D or datacenter-oriented GPUs specifically tailored for China with a large grain of salt as the U.S. DoC could issue export rules and ban exports of these products to China even before their formal launch.