ASUS has taken the performance of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090D, a graphics card designed exclusively for China, to new heights. To achieve this enhanced power, ASUS has launched its version of the RTX 4090D under the ROG Strix brand, featuring a higher overclocking threshold.
Due to export regulations, the US has limitations on companies selling high-end GPUs in China. Consequently, Nvidia developed the RTX 4090D, a version of the RTX 4090 GPU exclusive to China with fewer cores and a lower TDP. The 4090D offers 14,592 CUDA cores and 425W TDP, compared to the 16,384 CUDA cores and 450W TDP of the RTX 4090. However, ASUS has managed to overcome these limitations with its customized RTX 4090D model.
After testing ASUS' RTX 4090D in overclocking mode, HKEPC reported a significant performance boost in various GPU benchmarks, surpassing even the original US version of the RTX 4090. ASUS achieved this by introducing a 600W overclocking limit, adjustable through apps like GPU Tweak for the ROG Strix RTX 4090D, one of ASUS' top-tier custom GPU variants. Despite the similarities between the RTX 4090 and RTX 4090D, the latter houses the AD102-250 GPU with slightly fewer cores.
Performance Comparison: Overclocked ROG Strix RTX 4090D vs. RTX 4090
With ASUS' RTX 4090D offering increased overclocking capabilities, users can boost its TDP from 425W to 600W (a ~41% increase) and its memory from 1313MHz to 1500MHz (a ~14% increase). This enhanced performance enables the ROG Strix RTX 4090D to outperform the original RTX 4090 by a noticeable margin. In the 3DMark Speed Way test, ASUS' variant scored 10,818 points when overclocked, surpassing the RTX 4090's factory score of 10,175. Additionally, in the 3DMark Port Royal test, ASUS' variant achieved 26,666 points compared to 26,227 for the original RTX 4090. Although this performance boost is impressive, it remains to be seen if the overclocked RTX 4090D from ASUS will outshine the RTX 4090 in games supporting Nvidia's ray-tracing technology.
By pushing the overclocking boundaries with the RTX 4090D, ASUS is enabling its Chinese customers to potentially match or exceed the performance of the original RTX 4090. This strategic move aims to provide relief to Chinese buyers following the withdrawal of the RTX 4090 from the market due to new US export regulations.