
Nvidia's upcoming China-focused RTX 5090D is purportedly locked down, preventing users from using the Blackwell GPU for specific workloads. A user on the Chiphell forums reports that after "3 seconds," the RTX 5090D locks itself, preventing users from running particular workloads, overclocking the GPU, adjusting power limit parameters, and even using the GPU in multi-GPU setups.
The RTX "D-series" (for Dragon) is a custom Nvidia GPU explicitly tailored to meet U.S. export regulations based on GPU performance. The previous generation RTX 4090 was too powerful to export to China legally. Hence, Nvidia had to roll out the RTX 4090D, slightly less potent than its vanilla counterpart, to meet regulations. The RTX 5090D is the sucessor to the RTX 4090D.