An overclocked ASUS RTX 4090D managed to narrowly surpass benchmark scores for its reference model counterpart when power limits were maxed out. A hardware reviewer at HKEPC obtained an ASUS ROG Strix RTX 4090D for testing that showed some interesting results. The GeForce RTX 4090D is NVIDIA’s solution to be compliant with the Department of Commerce’s regulations which banned the export of the RTX 4090 to China. The RTX 4090D features a different GPU die with a lesser core count that equates to ~11% fewer CUDA cores. Most models also do not allow overclocking and if they do, are usually limited by locked-in power limits. However, the unit that the reviewer tested was able to use the maximum 600 Watts giving it more overclocking headroom.
Machine translated Per HKEPC (via VideoCardz):
“Although most RTX 4090 D are restricted from being able to overclock and adjust the upper limit of power consumption, the ROG Strix RTX 4090 D Non-OC regular version tested this time has lifted the restriction of not being able to overclock, and the TGP power consumption can be liberated from 100% 425W to the highest 141% 600W, default GPU Boost Clock is 2520MHz.”
The memory frequency was increased to 1500 MHz making it effectively 24 Gbps and the boost clock was raised by 200 MHz and seen reaching 3045 MHz using the ASUS GPU Tweak overclocking software. Testing then showed the overclocked ASUS RTX 4090D beating the reference model scores in Port Royal by 2% and by 6% in Speed Way.
While this isn’t much it is interesting to see given the core count reduction. Given that games rarely push a GPU the same ways that synthetic benchmarks do it is unlikely that anyone would notice the difference between the two during actual gameplay. It should also be noted that the ASUS ROG STRIX 4090D is an exception with both its ability to be overclocked and raise the power limits (that is at least the unit the reviewer had on hand as it’s still not known if all are capable of this). HKEPC also shared how NVIDIA has said that since most games rarely utilize all available GPU cores the difference between the 4090D and 4090 wouldn’t be as noticeable as the core count difference may lead some to expect.