Leaker believes 'there's a surprise' with rumored new take on Nvidia's RTX 5090 GPU – but if that's a cheaper price, there'll be a sting in the tail

Yahoo

26-06-2025

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Nvidia could have a new spin on its RTX 5090 graphics card
This is rumored to be a new version of the RTX 5090 D for China
A leaker says it'll pack a 'surprise', but the truth could be more mundane
Nvidia is rumored to be planning a new variant on its Blackwell flagship graphics card, potentially an RTX 5090 DD model – and it could come with a 'surprise' according to one leaker.
Tom's Hardware flagged up two separate mentions of this potential GPU (add seasoning with all this) on X, the first of which came from MEGAsizeGPU, who mentioned the RTX 5090 DD and how it will be for China only.
So, the theory is that this is a follow-up to the RTX 5090 D (single D, not double D) for China, a different spin on the standard Blackwell flagship which was produced for that country to get around US export regulations.
Except the goalposts on those restrictions have been moved, and now rule out the RTX 5090 D itself as too powerful (for AI usage) to be shipped to China. It looks like the idea now is to further cut down the graphics card to again make it feasible to supply to Asia, and call it the RTX 5090 DD.
The purported cut-down specs were supplied by another regular on the GPU leaking scene on X, Kopite7kimi, as you can see below.
The key changes are a slightly lower-tier GPU chip (GB202-240, rather than GB202-250 as seen in the original 5090 D), and the video RAM has been dropped to 24GB with a narrower 384-bit memory bus.
That means a 25% hit on the memory bandwidth compared to the RTX 5090 D, but the core count and TDP remain the same (the latter is interesting, and I'll return to why shortly).
Tom's Hardware takes it as read that these two rumors are fully aligned – and they are from what we can see spec-wise – but note that Kopite7kimi has a question mark heading up their post on X, which begins: 'RTX 5090 DD?'
However, this is likely referring to questioning the name, and whether this will really be called the RTX 5090 DD, rather than doubting whether this is actually a new spin on a China-only graphics card. Although we should never take anything for granted from the rumor mill, and maybe the latter could be the case.
At any rate, the most intriguing bit here is Kopite7kimi's mention of a "surprise" from Nvidia with this GPU.
When it comes to the name, yes, making it 'DD' sounds rather implausible, but remember – this is the company that brought you the RTX 4070 Ti Super graphics cards (and similarly clunky bouts of unimaginativeness in the past besides).
As mentioned, the surprise is what we really want to know about, and Kopite7kimi doesn't elaborate on what that might be with any kind of a vague hint, even. So, we're left to guess on that score.
Tom's Hardware theorizes that the surprise could be further cut-backs to the AI powers of the graphics card delivered via the firmware, and that sounds entirely possible. But equally it sounds entirely dull, and the way the leaker teases that "there's a surprise" feels like it's phrased to stoke a bit of excitement here. A minor chop to AI capabilities hardly qualifies in that respect, but what else could Nvidia possibly have up its sleeve here?
For me, this hints that Nvidia is planning a move like cutting the price of the RTX 5090 DD. Or perhaps, most excitingly, offering it outside of China, too? Yeah, okay, that seems unlikely (although as noted, with that question mark, it could be that Kopite7kimi isn't fully sure this is the mentioned Chinese variant). Perhaps more realistically, we could be looking at a fair old bump in clock speeds (hence the TDP staying the same, with the spec being cut down in some key areas).
Hopefully, we'll find out soon enough what Nvidia might be up to here, if anything, as this could all turn out to be so much smoke from the rumor mill (or plans from Team Green that never come to fruition).
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