Chinese NVIDIA board partner Manli has confirmed that a downgraded version of the GeForce RTX 5090D graphics card will soon hit the Chinese market, offering only 24 GB of GDDR7 VRAM compared to the previous 32 GB model. This confirmation follows weeks of speculation after NVIDIA´s reported halt of GB202 ´Blackwell´ GPU shipments to the region and rumors of further restrictions on flagship graphics card supplies. Initial releases of the RTX 5090D with 32 GB VRAM earned praise from both gaming enthusiasts and companies involved in Artificial Intelligence research, despite the cards´ factory-imposed limitations compared to global counterparts.
Reports from early May suggested a complete stoppage of GeForce RTX 5090D sales in China, and further rumors pointed to NVIDIA engineering a more restricted card variant. By mid-May, tech industry insiders speculated the next revision would carry just 24 GB of video memory. This information has now been substantiated by a Manli representative during a web chat, which was shared on Chinese social media platform Weibo. The company expects to make these new graphics cards available around July. Notably, Manli previously marketed flagship RTX 5090D Gallardo (black) and Stellar (white) models in China, both now expected to transition to the lower VRAM configuration.
The Manli representative clarified that the downgraded cards would retain their former price points, which offers some relief to buyers despite the reduction in memory and specifications. However, the sales agent also highlighted ongoing supply issues since the initial launch of the RTX 5090D series, which have made the cards difficult to obtain. The move is widely seen as a response to regulatory pressures and tightened hardware restrictions on advanced GPUs within China, impacting both high-end gaming and Artificial Intelligence innovation sectors reliant on powerful graphics hardware for performance and development.
