China's first gaming GPU struggles to match 2012 graphics card, yet delivers a strong strategic message

Time of India

6 hours ago

When a
GPU
debut is wrapped in a flag to rival one of the best performers in the market, expectations soar, as in the case of China's first indigenous-built GPU. It aspired to take on NVIDIA's powerful RTX 4060 but only matches up to a 13-year-old GTX 660 Ti. But performance is not the correct indicator to measure how steep the price of sovereignty can be.
After officially entering the consumer GPU race this month,
Lisuan Technology
, a relatively new domestic chipmaker, powered up the
Lisuan G100
, its first homegrown
gaming GPU
.
Built on a 6nm process, likely through China's foundry SMIC, the chip has drawn global attention not for its performance, but for what it represents in a world increasingly divided by technology and geopolitics.
According to early Geekbench tests, the G100 delivers performance comparable to the NVIDIA GTX 660 Ti, a graphics card first released in 2012.
It features 32 compute units, a 300 MHz clock speed, and 256MB of VRAM. On paper, it's nowhere close to modern GPUs used by gamers or AI researchers today, but it may also be for a prototype. But for Chinese tech watchers, this is not a failure; it's a flag planted.
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A strategic first step, not a specs war
Critics have been quick to mock the G100's outdated performance. But China's ambitions with this chip lie elsewhere. It marks a critical milestone in Beijing's quest for technological self-reliance, especially after escalating US export controls that block access to cutting-edge chips and tools from companies like NVIDIA, AMD, and Intel.
What's more significant is that the G100 uses domestically developed IP and is manufactured within China. This reduces dependency on Western chip designers and overseas fabrication giants like TSMC or Samsung, both of which are subject to US pressure.
The Lisuan G100 may not win gamers over yet, but it's a foundational move like other Chinese companies toward building an independent GPU industry from scratch.
Built under pressure
The G100's debut comes as China races to insulate itself from global supply chain vulnerabilities. Huawei's return to the chip scene last year with its Kirin 9000S, a high-end system-on-chip (SoC) also produced on SMIC's 7nm-class node, offered a glimpse of what was possible under extreme constraints.
Lisuan's move into the GPU space adds another piece to the puzzle.
While the chip's low clock speeds and small memory suggest it's still in an early development phase, its existence proves that Chinese engineers are iterating fast.
Analysts and netizens expect that with better drivers, firmware, and scaling support, future versions could close the gap with low- to mid-tier Western GPUs within a few product cycles.
A message beyond the silicon
Lisuan's G100 is less about serving the current gaming market and more about signaling long-term capability shifts.
Consequently, the release will not shake NVIDIA's market share today, but it sends a clear message: China is done waiting. In the face of tightened export rules and blocked technology access, Beijing is choosing to build, however long it takes.
Whether the G100 becomes commercially viable is almost secondary. Its symbolic weight lies in its defiance, proof that despite sanctions, blacklists, and geopolitical headwinds, China's domestic tech ecosystem is not standing still.
Lisuan aims to ramp up development, improve software support, and bring the chip to commercial scale by late 2025 or early 2026.
Much like Huawei's strategy in the smartphone space, the focus now is on endurance, not instant wins. In the high-stakes race for
semiconductor sovereignty
, the G100 is a starting pistol, not a sprint finish.
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