Nvidia cards 'sold out' in China

RTX 5090D, Nvidia 's special edition in China, is constantly "out of stock". Photo: Nvidia .

Prices for Nvidia's RTX 5090 series graphics cards are skyrocketing at retailers in China, according to SCMP , with artificial intelligence (AI) companies rushing to stock up on the consumer graphics cards as a possible alternative to the US company's banned H20 chips.

Three Nvidia resellers in China said the RTX 5090 series has seen a steady price increase over the past month. The RTX 5090D GPU, a version of the card with slightly less AI processing power than the RTX 5090 to comply with US export restrictions to China, is particularly popular in the country, with prices rising more than 10%, according to Zhou Da, a Shanghai-based computer parts retailer for Asus.

Launched in January, the RTX 5090 uses 5nm technology and is aimed at gamers and content creators, offering the ability to process “the most advanced models with unprecedented AI power,” according to the company. However, SCMP said the card is not considered an ideal replacement for the H20, which is specifically designed for data centers.

The H20 is a line of chips that Nvidia has tweaked to comply with current US restrictions for sale in China. Although its computing power is limited to AI training, the H20 is “probably the best chip in the world for inference,” said Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser at RAND.

In fact, major Chinese technology companies have quickly "stocked up" with H20 chips worth up to 16 billion USD in the first quarter of 2025, showing that they anticipated the possibility of being limited.

Source: https://znews.vn/dong-card-nvidia-chay-hang-o-trung-quoc-post1553302.html