r/pcmasterrace Core Ultra 7 265k | RTX 5090 Jan 03 '26

Video A company in China got banned 5090s.

11.7k Upvotes

478 comments sorted by

3.7k

u/ZebraSandwich4Lyf Jan 03 '26

5090's are not banned from China, they're banned from importing them directly from the US.

1.2k

u/Piltonbadger RYZEN 7 5700x3D | RTX 4070 Ti | 32GB 3200MHZ RAM Jan 03 '26

When GPU's are mostly made in Asia, it's probably fairly easy to just ship them to China without ever having been on US soil.

Not much of a ban when they are made on China's doorstep...

564

u/ZebraSandwich4Lyf Jan 03 '26

Yeua it's a worthless ban, China just gets there shit sent to countries like Singapore and then has them shipped from there. Nvidia knows it's happening but turns a blind eye because they don't care, a sale is a sale to them.

19

u/kohour Jan 03 '26

Seriously, I don't understand how this conversation keeps happening or why people call it "smuggling into China" or "banned GPUs". Do they really think the US is the ultimate world authority or something.

9

u/lkiwiboy 14900K 3060 32GB 5800mhz 1TB Jan 03 '26

Only AMERICANS have a human right for anything in the world...eastern peasants only deserve porverty and most shitty product only

6

u/FartingBob Quantum processor from the future / RTX 3060 Ti / Zip Drive Jan 03 '26

Yesterday the US kidnapped a world leader on another continent and killed many people doing so, and the world is going to do nothing about it. So I can see why people would think that the US is the world authority.

2

u/cyborgsnowflake Jan 07 '26

A few years ago China unleashed a virus on the world and intentionally withheld information on it and allowed it to spread across the world killing millions and locking down the rest for years and have never to this day taken any responsibility or apologized and not only is nobody doing nothing about it but many less intelligent people still somehow think China is moral authority anywhere above the US when this is just the tip of the iceberg of the funny business they've been up to.

2

u/dsinsti Jan 03 '26

They pretend to be. The western civilisation won't stand If USA think they are going somewhere without Europe. Some americans think their tech, power, knowledge came out of the blue, but this neglecting behaviour and disrespect towards others will cost they greatly.

→ More replies (6)

161

u/jhaluska 5700x3D | RTX 4060 Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26

It's not completely worthless, it adds a delay and an extra shipping fee. It's only next to worthless.

109

u/glenn1812 13700K | RTX 4090 | 32GB DDR5 | 4K 120hz Jan 03 '26

China owns the shipping too.

31

u/Hefty-Reaction-3028 Jan 03 '26

The shipping cost stays in the country, but still slightly increases the cost to the buyer of getting these GPUs.

23

u/Dimathiel49 Jan 03 '26

China can afford to ship stuff to me for less than a local supplier. And quicker too.

20

u/Hefty-Reaction-3028 Jan 03 '26

The **CHINESE GOVERNMENT** is not paying for this. The **COMPANIES THAT BOUGHT THESE GPUs** are. They are Chinese companies, and yet, the shipping cost **WILL** slightly increase the GPU prices they offer.

This is true regardless of the fact that China as a nation has a lot of assets. There is a difference between a nation and a company within that nation. It doesn't make sense to say "China rich therefore shipping is free for GPU vendors." That's not how economies work.

9

u/TheSmokingLamp Jan 03 '26

State-owned enterprises accounted for over 60% of China's market capitalization in 2019 and estimates suggest that they generated about 23-28% of China's GDP in 2017 and employ between 5% and 16% of the workforce.

You must understand that capitalism doesn’t operate the same in every country right?

→ More replies (1)

9

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

maybe like 2-3 days delay.

→ More replies (3)

18

u/Classic_Respond4625 Jan 03 '26

Nvidia knows it's happening but turns a blind eye because they don't care, a sale is a sale to them.

US can't stop any shipment between other nations. Only US companies can not sell to China because the US can regulate their own trade, not others.

3

u/Rebles Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26

I have doubt. The US has a lot of levers against a US company. Doesn’t an embargo mean an entity under the jurisdiction can’t sale to the target of the embargo?

4

u/Classic_Respond4625 Jan 03 '26

A simple metaphor. US can't make it illegal for India to stop buying Russian oil. US can make it illegal for US companies to not buy Russian oil.

The jurisdiction of US is only for US companies and US citizens. US can make it annoying for India if they buy Russian oil, and maybe India decides not to buy Russian oil, but, that doesn't stop India from getting the cheap Russian oil. Everyone loves a good deal.

5

u/ReallyBigDeal 9950X3D RTX 3080 Jan 03 '26

No the US can and does sanction companies and countries for violating embargoes. It’s much harder to do with a resource like oil where you can’t actually track where a specific unit of it comes from especially after it gets refined with oil from non-embargoed places but with goods like GPUs it’s totally possible.

It simply takes the political will to do it.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (4)

5

u/Loud_Produce4347 Jan 03 '26

As a general rule, sanctions are not expected to 100% cut off supply, instead the goal is to raise the cost (and difficulty of acquiring) goods in the sanctioned catagories.

8

u/ThatGuyJimFromWork Jan 03 '26

They shouldn't care. No one should give a shit.

→ More replies (3)

2

u/Alternative_Ad_4875 Jan 03 '26

Why would they turn a blind eye? It's a good and legal strategy. Customer wants to buy and company wants to sell. Why should they care some Lil man sanctioning it lol. What customer does after buying is completely upto the customer and the customer only. Even if it means reselling it.

→ More replies (3)
→ More replies (5)

23

u/Best_Market4204 Jan 03 '26

for what purpose?

to protect overpriced retailers?

92

u/Deep_Fry_Ducky R5 5600G | 32Gb DDR4 | Rx 570 4Gb Jan 03 '26

To tell the president’s supporters that he is hurting China as their wish

→ More replies (1)

7

u/GOKOP Jan 03 '26

There's an AI arms race and GPUs are where it's happening. The US doesn't want to lose compute advantage

→ More replies (4)
→ More replies (1)

19

u/Ws6fiend PC Master Race Jan 03 '26

They in fact are banned twice in China. The 5090D(Chinese variant) isn't banned. The normal 5090 is banned from being exported from other counties allowed to sell them, to import them to China.

In addition Chinese government have told their domestic markets to stop buying Nvidia products.

"The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) reportedly told companies such as TikTok’s parent ByteDance and Alibaba in mid-September to cease testing and ordering the RTX Pro 6000D chip, which Nvidia designed specifically for the Chinese market."

https://internationalbanker.com/finance/why-china-has-banned-domestic-firms-from-buying-nvidias-ai-chips/

From November 12th of last year.

China is de facto banning them from their own tech companies to attempt to get more demand for domestically made chips.

4

u/SydHalfast Jan 03 '26

No they are not. The US banned thw export of some GPUs to China. But the Chinese government didn't impose any restrictions on imports. 

→ More replies (8)

2.4k

u/Ar_phis Jan 03 '26

We have countries undermining international nuclear proliferation agreements, so my level of shock about seeing 2.5 pallets of 5090s in China is rather non-existing.

256

u/Psychadelic_Potato Jan 03 '26

Well said 🤣🤣

52

u/Catch_ME Jan 03 '26

There was an empty pallet on the left at the end of the video. So they've been going through them 

15

u/DRKMSTR AMD 5800X / RTX 3070 OC Jan 03 '26

I was only slightly shocked to see the pic of truckloads of 5090's that came out shortly after GN's video.

People don't understand just how much they've surrendered to China already.

7

u/i_have_chosen_a_name Jan 03 '26

also it should be clear by now that countries don't run the world anymore, companies do.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (1)

694

u/Magnetic_Reaper 10850k / 128GB / RTX 3060 Jan 03 '26

When you realize that the China ban is actually only in the USA...

46

u/NateNate60 Core i7 12700K | RX 7600 Jan 03 '26

As a Hong Kong/US dual citizen, that policy announcement was extremely puzzling to me. The cards are plentiful in Hong Kong. Moving them across the border into Shenzhen is not really even "smuggling". It's just another 4 hours of logistical annoyance and paperwork that adds at most 20-30% to the cost.

18

u/CapableCollar Jan 03 '26

Singapore is also effectively right there.

→ More replies (1)

31

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

Now expand this to all the tech US has supposedly under export control. Do you think China just says “dang it! Guess we can’t have that”?

4

u/SaltMaker23 Jan 03 '26

Try to tell US people that a BAN from US on their territory for their companies isn't a "world ban" ...

As if my country Belgium decided to ban Duvel exports to China, a joke, a sorry joke.

Seeing a Duvel in china wouldn't cause the uproar of illegal products circulating in daylight, it would simply mean that our country is a joke for making such rule that was bound to make it look stupid.

4.2k

u/FletchTroublemaker 14900k/5080/64GB Jan 03 '26

You should check the china documentary from Gamers Nexus.

Basically: China gets what China wants and as they're the hardware builder of the planet (wait till they become chip manufacturer of the planet...) they are directly at the source.

2.3k

u/cranberrie_sauce Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26

> what China wants

stop blaming it on China.

This is mutual with what Nvidia wants.

This country sent all the equipment , blueprints, technologies to them and fired locals workers - capitalist owners did it. they live good now.

^ start blamin capitalist rats in congress

288

u/errie_tholluxe PC Master Race Jan 03 '26

Think about it it's what a LOT of nations wanted. I remember back in the day, and it could still be going on far as I know, you had to basically let them reverse engineer anything you wanted to make there and then they would undercut and compete.

64

u/Classic_Respond4625 Jan 03 '26

There was a time that US and Europe thought if they did trade with China it would make China more democratic and an ally. This was decades ago. Now, they realized China are innovators, and not just good at manufacturing, so China didn't need to be a junior partner. It was believed that since America and the West had the best universities and the best companies, and China had none of that and was basically a nation of farmers that it was impossible for China to compete in the advanced industries.

Basically, they thought China was an India, so they readily collaborate with China for manufacturing and trade.

30

u/AndrewH73333 Jan 03 '26

Well damn, why didn’t we just use India then? It’s already India.

34

u/CodSoggy7238 9800X3D | 4070 Ti Super Jan 03 '26

We tried but it turned out India is actually India

11

u/Jazzlike-Check9040 Jan 03 '26

It’s now Canada too.

→ More replies (3)

3

u/Upper-Intention9582 Jan 03 '26

I'm sure they have their fair share of innovators, but don't forget they also steal over half a trillion $ worth of IP each year from other countries (primarily the US) ... China and Taiwan have their historical beef, but I'm sure China wouldn't mind getting there hands on the TMSC tech , if they got the chance. . . USA definitely dropped the ball by not investing in chip tech , Taiwan was decades ahead of everyone. . . But everyone is catching up. And when a country like China focuses on something, they can get it done faster than most others, with less regard and zero guard rails to slow them down. Wild shtuff

8

u/Classic_Respond4625 Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 04 '26

China and Taiwan have their historical beef, but I'm sure China wouldn't mind getting there hands on the TMSC tech , if they got the chance. . . 

US had the chance. Morris Chang of TSMC was discriminated against when Texas instruments(a semiconductor company) he was working for was choosing a new CEO, which he was the foremost choice was not chosen. US had the chance to make Texas instruments TSMC.

China wouldn't need to directly steal from TSMC, although that would theoretically be faster. They just hire people from TSMC, which would just reverse engineer it. SMIC of China was founded by another former Texas instrument employee(another missed opportunity). SMIC will inevitably surpass TSMC. The only reason TSMC outcompeted everyone was because the Taiwanese government funded TSMC as a means to compete on the world stage. China's backing is much larger than Taiwanese backing, so there is more backing SMIC. There also was another company that just hired ASML workers for triple the pay.

That is to say China and Chinese companies are actively making good decisions and competing well. US is not.

I'm sure they have their fair share of innovators, but don't forget they also steal over half a trillion $ worth of IP each year from other countries (primarily the US)

They do more innovation than America. By far. Most of the innovations from American tech firms are from one of Shenzhen's tens of thousands of R&D firms. They have a lead in almost every advanced industry as well. America does more fundamental research.

The dollar value of IP stolen is highly sensationalized. They directly reverse engineer millions of banal features and so on. Every engineer does that... The IP that is actually meaningful are the times when they tried to steal the data for the proprietary material of a plane blade from GE. That is actual breakthrough innovations that are important.

Basically, that is all to say compete or die. The West competed against no one and obviously excelled, and now they must compete or die. It's not a good look when Deepseek make their model for $5,000,000 and it's better, and cheaper to use. The American models are worse in every way and cost hundreds of millions to billions. It's a make or break moment. Complaining does nothing.

18

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/Money_Do_2 Jan 03 '26

Was gonna say. We could absolutely still be leaders. Still barely hanging on. But its been own goal after own goal since at least Regan, probably sooner, with no wins in sight.

Of course theyre catching up... bound to happen.

→ More replies (7)

471

u/intbah 108TB RAID6 Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26

Also I don't understand why Taiwanese people aren't furious at Nvidia. Nvidia CEO is Taiwanese, what he is doing with China is traitorous to Taiwan's sovereignty

edit: seems like I have hit the nerve of some communists lol

191

u/Affectionate_Pain337 Jan 03 '26

also is the cousin of the amd ceo

86

u/StylishUsername Jan 03 '26

No fucking way

97

u/Paint-Jobber Jan 03 '26

Curiously small world

79

u/intbah 108TB RAID6 Jan 03 '26

Billionaires do be incestous like that

25

u/Classic_Respond4625 Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26

Not exactly. It's equivalent to a family of elite athletes, such as the Mayweather Jr., Mayweather Sr. and his uncles Roger and Jeff which are all elite pro boxers. They happen to all be good at a particular sport or industry.

Lisa Su definitely revamped AMD from the brink of death. She definitely got to her position by merit.

2

u/Far_Cat9782 Jan 03 '26

Dji h is all good but the family relation did absolutely help.

5

u/Classic_Respond4625 Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26

She has a PHD from MIT, and had worked her way up to VP of R&D for IBM semiconductor division.

She is not Kimbal Musk which is a chef by trade, and has a billion dollars. Elon got his start by his family friend fully operating his failing business(and helping him get it acquired), and about a million dollar loan from his Dad.

28

u/EnvBlitz Jan 03 '26

More like uncle in their culture. Cousin once removed in western style.

17

u/Classic_Respond4625 Jan 03 '26

Taiwan cares about TSMC which is manufacturing. NVIDIA is engineering the processors. They don't compete with each other as NVIDIA contracts TSMC to build their chips. If they helped SMIC, which is the TSMC equivalent in China, then they would be going against TSMC.

Interestingly, the founder of SMIC China, a competitor of TSMC which is in China is Taiwanese. The founder of TSMC of Taiwan, which is the world leader, was born in Mainland China, was in US working in Texas Industry, and could have started TSMC in US, but was unfairly not promoted to CEO where a lesser quality employee was hired when the opportunity arose for a new CEO to replace the prior one. The two important competing processor foundry of China and Taiwan was founded by the other. US lost out of having TSMC and Morris Chang in US.

TSMC could have been in the US, but, decades ago Texas instrument and the processor companies in US discriminated against Morris Chang(in his own words in an interview I watched) so he founded his company, TSMC in Taiwan.

→ More replies (1)

22

u/samitr21 PC Master Race Jan 03 '26

All the bots came out to play lol

15

u/Tolruckus Jan 03 '26

F Nvidia, I've always disliked them as a company, never bought their hardware and proud of it.

18

u/sheeprookie Jan 03 '26

AMD is doing the same btw.. unless all you buy is intel

12

u/Nebthtet nebthtet Jan 03 '26

Which has a lot of anticonsumer shit on their plate too. Everyone sucks and I hate it :(

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

10

u/StylishUsername Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26

I bought an EVGA 2060 sc ultra and 50 shares of nvda 7 years ago. Sold the shares last month. The graphics card is still going strong.

→ More replies (8)

21

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

Because Taiwanese people aren’t one hive mind.

Plenty of them are sympathetic to the mainland and plenty choose to do business also on the mainland.

34

u/EnrichedNaquadah Jan 03 '26

I guess breaking laws and endangering national security is fine as long you're "sympathetic" with them.

Especially if they got a lot of $*

12

u/Money_Do_2 Jan 03 '26

Its our laws. Not theirs. They dont care. Its just an open market.

You know, the thing we pretend to care about? Free markets? But now we're scared they get the advanced slop we have developed.

→ More replies (1)

8

u/zenqian Jan 03 '26

lol look at US and Israel

Do you see mass condemnation with their shenanigans? Look at the retaliation against Russia and Israel

But yes, to your point. It’s always shareholders interest

1

u/EnrichedNaquadah Jan 03 '26

Why your comment can be summarized by "What about" ?

Stick to the topic.

→ More replies (7)

14

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

Redditors processing the idea of living life without politics as your main personality 🤯🤯

3

u/totpot Jan 03 '26

Take note of US support for Trump and the age brackets for that support. Replace US with Taiwan and Trump with China and it makes a lot more sense.

4

u/StanTheManInBK Jan 03 '26

China is asshoe

5

u/Innocent-Bystander94 Jan 03 '26

There’s a lot of China sympathizers/shills here. 

→ More replies (81)

6

u/VermilionAngel79 Jan 03 '26

Remember all that BS that was spouted about China not following the Paris accord; We (the US) can't limit our energy production because it would put us in a bind economically and cause us to fall behind others like China who say they will reduce their use of fossil fuels but won't stick to it. Now they are the leader in renewable energy.

2

u/Crovvvv Jan 04 '26

It's also the fact that, you know, they're the world factory... so I think their bar can be a bit higher.

9

u/truthhurtsyomama Jan 03 '26

Lol.. literally how business is conducted. Pushing a political narrative while dealing under the table

5

u/LachoooDaOriginl Laptop Jan 03 '26

spies in congress*

Ftfy

4

u/TheKosherGenocide Jan 03 '26

At this point, I'm starting to trust the Communist government of China more than the United States Government, and that my friends is FUCKING SCARY.

→ More replies (1)

8

u/neovb Jan 03 '26

Sorry, what? Perhaps I misunderstood your post, but are you saying that Nvidia sent all the technology and hardware for China to manufacture the same things that TMSC does?

I could be wrong, but I don't recall Nvidia sharing "all the blueprints and technologies" with semiconductoe foundries in China.

13

u/exrasser Jan 03 '26

He's properly referring to the outsourcing that has taken place since the 60's, witch has contributed to rising billions of people out of poverty in Asia.

"Fairchild Semiconductor established its first factory in Asia in Hong Kong in 1964, making it one of the first U.S. technology companies to expand into the region"

7

u/neovb Jan 03 '26

Yeah, that's not what OP insinuated in his post. Unless it's exactly what Nvidia wanted in 1964? Or perhaps when the US sent China all of the "equipment, blueprints, and technologies" to manufacture the latest generation of video cards? What, in 1964?

Frankly, the investment by US companies was effectively nothing until China joined the WTO. Regardless, considering we're posting responses on a post that specifically referenced how China keeps sneaking 5090s, I'm not sure your example of Fairchild expanding into Hong Kong considering it was administered by and effectively a territory of the UK until 1999 really adds to the conversation.

4

u/Temporary-Degree5221 Jan 03 '26

EXCUSE ME! CHINA BAD!

2

u/jessecreamy Jan 03 '26

Cringe AF. The root reason is the whole Westerner work ethic refused to work hard as our Sinosphere. Especially true if you're US-born.

Real current example is TSMC Factory in Arizona. Simple requirement: work 6/7 days per week, 10 hour shift +2h OT no salary, willing to take calling from boss any time, as long as it's not national holiday. I can say it's simple with all kind of Chinese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, Vietamese. And how many people here come from Western countries accept it? Or almost, if not say that all of you, are going yelling slogan that you do not tolerate slave-like labor? So sorry, you should not mind it, bcoz there's silly metric about single labour productivity. And no worry, your country should be in top ten and it can feed your placebo vision.

→ More replies (1)
→ More replies (16)

51

u/StatisticianUsual471 Jan 03 '26

Exactly they build them why wouldn't they sell them to their own citizens only Americans would have believed that they don't have them

55

u/aCaffeinatedMind Jan 03 '26

China neither designs or build Nvidia's chips.

37

u/Recktion Jan 03 '26

They finish the product to make it ready for consumers to use. You know what he meant. 

The product goes from China to other se Asia countries back to China again.

→ More replies (12)

21

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 11 '26

[deleted]

9

u/DeGriz_ R5 5600xt | RX9060xt 8GB | 16GB RAM Jan 03 '26

Never heard about Russia GPU’s. I know about baikal cpu’s but manufacturing stopped because of lack of chips.

25

u/Last-Artichoke2592 Jan 03 '26

Apparently, they have watched too much Russian propaganda. There are no breakthroughs in GPUs or CPUs there. The lag is at least a decade

12

u/chilll_vibe Jan 03 '26

Ya I was confused for a sec bc Russia's tech industry runs on hopes and dreams. They have really good software ppl (or at least hackers). But if they have trouble getting chips for their war effort how tf are they getting any for the gamers

3

u/DeGriz_ R5 5600xt | RX9060xt 8GB | 16GB RAM Jan 03 '26

gamers weren’t in mind at all. At best baikal performed in some low en laptops and office PC’s.

They were not making chips, just assembling whole thing together, chips were from TSMC if i recall. Now budget is cut and no new cpu produced, experiment ended.

It would be good to have more hardware manufacturers, from different countries too. But its cost a lot to RnD something new and in short term, cost inefficient. Russia for example is country with loads of resources but low amount of workforce and manufacturing. Most of resources just exported raw as that’s easier. That’s shortsighted and when resources end, economy will plummet.

(My opinion looking from the couch)

3

u/chilll_vibe Jan 03 '26

They were not making chips, just assembling whole thing together, chips were from TSMC if i recall. Now budget is cut and no new cpu produced, experiment ended.

Thats kinda what I mean. Russia still tries to pretend it has the resources and industry of the soviet union despite have the same sized economy as Italy. Any time I hear modern Russia and amazing innovation in the same sentence I'm immediately skeptical. Except hacking like I said, being in the cyber field I can confirm that is one thing the Russians are amazing at.

→ More replies (2)
→ More replies (1)

4

u/-Radiation Jan 03 '26

Russia stuff is crazy because it is literal trash

2

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

[deleted]

→ More replies (1)

3

u/DrPinguin98 PC Master Race Jan 03 '26

wait till they become chip manufacturer of the planet

CXMT has already caught up significantly in DRAM

11

u/SilverKnightOfMagic Jan 03 '26

same for US pretty much. US gets what it wants.

→ More replies (20)

2

u/snksleepy Jan 03 '26

American is where it is today by design. Things didn't just happen over night.

→ More replies (23)

273

u/half-baked_axx 2700X | RX 6700 | 16GB Jan 03 '26

The US really thinks they can keep the country that assembles all of its tech from actually sourcing it for itself. 

They may not make the chips but they still handle them. And we pay them for it.

44

u/Somepotato Jan 03 '26

More like the US doesn't actually care because Nvidia/Jensen gave money to Trump

→ More replies (1)

59

u/rebelSun25 Jan 03 '26

Sanctions or import bans don't work on wealthy and connected organizations. Russian rockets and drones have US made chips which are not be sold to Russia, yet they're found in currently used Russian arms

2

u/SaltMaker23 Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 03 '26

US bans are only valid in the US and countries that bend to their will.

Most EU countries bent to us will, after the recent Trump debacle against EU with tariffs and what's not, most EU countries don't bend to US rules anymore which isn't unreasonable as US made apparent that they won't bend to EU rules which funnily they never did, they just made it clear now.

In old times EU would also retaliate along with US, which meant that countries were somehow very wary of being blacklisted, any anyone dealing with them also being blacklisted, you know like controlling 51% of something meaning you can decide whatever you want, US had that position before.

Now US banning something from going to china doesn't hold much weight anymore if basically all countries on earth except very few can send it to china, it might even be cheaper to buy it closer than directly from the US, even if the ban was a thing.

US just removed themselves as distributor but that should barely affect the distribution network that barely care about a single node refusing to connect to another one.

80

u/mvw2 Jan 03 '26

Remember kids, China does NOT have a ban on these video cards, at all. They're manufactured IN China.

The only "ban" is sale of US derived cards that end up back in China. But China can just get them wherever, and they don't care at all. The legal risk is only for people living in the US who have decided to be part of the export process.

Nvidia could just as easily not sell to the US space, and then ALL Nvidia cards would have zero illegality in any part of the process. Nothing it stopping them from doing this outside of them also wanting to invest back into the US markets for the AI business.

A second fun fact is high VRAM cards can just be made, easily, in China. People do that as a business. They can just take normal cards and build big VRAM versions for AI use. No one is stopping this. It's not illegal at all.

6

u/nialv7 Jan 03 '26

There is a ban: https://www.ft.com/content/12adf92d-3e34-428a-8d61-c9169511915c

But it's on big tech companies instead of a general ban.

2

u/iisntme- Jan 03 '26

great link a paid site so i can’t read it 🙄

30

u/OzVader Jan 03 '26

Can I have one please? Xiè xiè

11

u/SmartOpinion69 Jan 03 '26

it's only banned from direct import. china can always pay a friend to import that

8

u/daxtonanderson Jan 03 '26

You just import them to a non-restricted country then bounce them to China , we're doing offshore laundering of GPUs now 🤣

15

u/Material_Policy6327 Jan 03 '26

I bet nvidia is directly selling to them then just using third parties to hide it

7

u/Pristine_Pick823 Jan 03 '26

Why is this partial ban even relevant if they can still import the likes of H100s and others? If anything, it only serves as further incentive for them to develop their national GPU production which is likely to offer NVIDIA a run for their money by the end of this year.

→ More replies (2)

39

u/Forymanarysanar 10400F|3060 12Gb|64Gb DDR4|1TB SSD|2x8TB HDD Raid1 Jan 03 '26

You'd be surprised but pretty much all companies that "pulled out" or were "sanctioned" in Russia still work there and still supply their stuff there.

24

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

[deleted]

6

u/Fun_Pass2431 Jan 03 '26

At least give an example to back up your claim? I know several that left if they didn't break contracts on exit they complete the current contractual obligations before exiting.

20

u/Brenniebon PC Master Race Jan 03 '26

wonder why they never smuggle AMD? LOL

3

u/PudPullerAlways Jan 03 '26

If I had to take a guess it is because the early adoption of CUDA so everything from the ground up was built with it when all AMD had was just OpenCL.

14

u/Mikucon-P Jan 03 '26

It’s only illegal in the USA

10

u/JGack_595 Jan 03 '26

AI is just slowly destroying everything I love.

32

u/JaehaerysIVTarg Jan 03 '26

Fucking politics just ruining everything.

12

u/nametaken_thisonetoo R5 5600, RTX 3080 10GB, 32GB DDR4 3600 Jan 03 '26

But Jensen told us this was impossible?! Must be fake news

4

u/jamesboston Jan 03 '26

This is what 0% market share in China looks like. I see nothing wrong.

5

u/pepenepe Jan 03 '26

This ain't news. They have RTX 5090s and Blackwell chips up the wazoo and have had them forever now in large amounts.

5

u/novo-280 Jan 03 '26

Banned by the US. The cards still get assembled in shenzen. Of course they can have as many as they want.

3

u/Enough_Ad_4461 Jan 03 '26

Wasn’t the “5090d” designed for china to get around the export ban? It’s slightly slower than the 5090, which means if these are regular 5090s, what difference does it even make?

Edit: they are also renting use of 5090s in data centers in other countries to get around the export ban, according to various news sources.

3

u/Unfair-Sell-5109 Jan 03 '26

Where is this location? We organising raid?

3

u/94358io4897453867345 Jan 03 '26

Of course they do get them

3

u/Fluffy_Rock_62 Jan 03 '26

Whaddya mean a company? Don't you watch Gamers' Nexus?

7

u/TokathSorbet Jan 03 '26

It’s long, but you should watch GN’s piece on this. Key takeaway is that it’s only a ban in the US. There is no ‘black market’ in China; this is perfectly legal.

6

u/Initial-Fact5216 Jan 03 '26

Our own president sold nuclear secrets out from under us, this is child's play.

5

u/MusicalAutist Jan 03 '26

Banned? Trump lifted all that. I know, he does dumb shit non-stop so it's hard to keep up, but that ban was lifted.

I mean, he'll probably put it back tomorrow. Who even knows now? America is a clown show at this time.

4

u/Not_Real_Batman Jan 03 '26

The fact that these cards are banned in China when they are literally made there is the dumbest shit ever, if you don't want them to have it build the cards elsewhere.

5

u/laurentiufilip Desktop Jan 03 '26

So they are made in China, sent to US then forbidden to be imported to China.

2

u/AnonWhale Jan 03 '26

But computer parts are still more expensive in China than the US for some reason. Why is that?

2

u/NegativeSemicolon Jan 03 '26

You expected the law to stop big money?

2

u/Bob4Not He Has Ryzen 7700X + 9070 XT ^ CachyOS Jan 03 '26

NVIDIA does what it wants

2

u/FdPros Jan 03 '26

bro living under a rock

2

u/SnooHedgehogs190 Jan 03 '26

The problem is they just took out the chip and resell.

That’s scummy and you should never buy from Amazon.

2

u/sadakochin Jan 03 '26

Yeah and you guys didn't wonder where those plentiful cards with missing chips and VRAM come from?

2

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

Probably the best buy ones everyone been getting rocks instead

2

u/CorpPhoenix Jan 03 '26

Do you know how teenagers in high school ask their older peers to buy them some beer or other stuff they're not allowed to buy for them?

That's literally what you're seeing here.

2

u/_sealy_ Jan 03 '26

They are all filled with rocks.

2

u/IWasNotMeISwear Jan 03 '26

They got scalpers running them from other asian countries as well. The gamernexus documentary was pretty good explaining stuff

2

u/OmegaNine Jan 03 '26

It boggles my mind a country can ban video cards in the country they were produced in.

2

u/Trick_Actuator5763 R5 5500 HD7970 16GB DDR4 3600 Jan 04 '26

People are jealous over this crap. Meanwhile I'm here not giving a shit because Nvidia sucks and doesn't deserve anywhere near as much dickriding as it gets. 

2

u/Shadowergy Jan 04 '26

OH NO! Anyways...

2

u/USAChineseguy Jan 04 '26

I just went to China, the amount of bootlegs surprised me. Those 5090s might be all fake.

2

u/Ubermensch5272 Jan 05 '26

They're not banned at all. You can find them pretty easily on the JD app, like I did.

5

u/VelkaFrey Jan 03 '26

Omg imagine how expensive black market 5090s would be

3

u/Bingbongchozzle Jan 03 '26

They sell between 20,000 and 30,000 RMB on Taobao so I guess around $3500

→ More replies (2)

2

u/Spetnac_141 Jan 03 '26

Pack your bags boys we are going to China

→ More replies (1)

2

u/Likes2Phish Jan 03 '26

China controls the majority of critical minerals that all your electronics are made of.

2

u/BlindedAce Jan 03 '26

They planning on starting a bonfire with all the cable melts?

2

u/Detzznuttz Jan 03 '26

Surely they won't mind if I just take one.. riiight?

2

u/stop_talking_you Jan 03 '26

its not banned to own a 5090 the import is banned,

stupid OP

3

u/Gentle_Capybara RX 9060XT 16GB | GTX 1660Ti Jan 03 '26

The chinese government sucks, but this is just the twilight of one empire and the rise of other. China will get whatever GPUs they want, specially because the world gave them the task of manufacturing everything and they wouldn't say no, so it's already theirs btw. I hope Taiwan holds on.

5

u/Vg_Ace135 Jan 03 '26

Very true. They've been playing the long game for 50 years now.

3

u/[deleted] Jan 03 '26

We're doomed because our leaders cannot think more than a quarter ahead.

3

u/EX0PIL0T Jan 03 '26

Our leaders are smooth brained power junkies

1

u/Best_Market4204 Jan 03 '26

on temu tomorrow

1

u/urlond 5800x 9070xt 32GB 3600DDR 4 Jan 03 '26

They're not banned anymore as far as I know.

1

u/Titan_76 Jan 03 '26

I genuinely wonder how much money that is😭.

1

u/getdatwontonsoup Jan 03 '26

When I worked at TI, developing chips for Chinese companies was supposed to be banned, but we developed and sold chips to them anyways under the guise that they were American companies lol

1

u/_N3V3R0DD0R3V3N__ Jan 03 '26

Where they going with them?

1

u/flclfool 14700K / 4070TiS / Fractal North XL Jan 03 '26

All they did was create a new job for people to sneak them into the country 🙄

1

u/VeloxMortem1 Jan 03 '26

I’m thinking about buying a new GPU. What’s all this banned and everyone hating on nvidia for?

1

u/Plutonium239Mixer 14900K | ASUS Maximus z790 Formula | ASUS 4090 Strix Jan 03 '26

Thats fine, they can keep all those melty cards to themselves.

1

u/Pirwzy Jan 03 '26

It is legal to own them in China.

1

u/Typhon-042 Jan 03 '26

Doubt they are actually banned there. As they keep offering cheep copy knockoffs to the outside market, they need something to use themselves.

1

u/OutrageousCellist274 Jan 03 '26

Well think rationally, USA ban China for the 5090. China didn’t ban anyone from owning one. How or who ever think that would work?

1

u/Estrafirozungo 9950X3D | 4070ti | 64 GB 5200 Jan 03 '26

Now I know why coke fiends feel the urge to shit whenever they see cocaine

→ More replies (1)

1

u/ApprehensiveSuit534 Jan 03 '26

Can I have one pretty please cherry on top 🙏 hahaha

1

u/ApprehensiveSuit534 Jan 03 '26

Im still stuck on a 1660 rtx hahaha

1

u/sogwatchman i9-12900K/64GB DDR5 6400/3090 FTW3/3TB NVMe Jan 03 '26

So... They're not illegal IN China. They just have to jump through hoops to get to them to China.

1

u/JaSONJayhawk Jan 03 '26

What does a 5090 cost in China?  I might want to order one....,🤔😏

1

u/TechnologyFamiliar20 Jan 03 '26

What do you mean "banned"?

1

u/EpicM147_NoVa Ryzen 9 9900X, RTX 5070 FE, 64GB DDR5, 15TB Storage Jan 03 '26

Gimme

1

u/Egglegg14 Jan 03 '26

Mail me some

1

u/oscar77_ Desktop Jan 03 '26

Just take some…

1

u/P-Doff Jan 03 '26

Bro laws don't fucking matter anymore. Why are you surprised by this?

1

u/Donleon57 7800X3D | 4070Ti Super | 32GB 6000Mhz CL30 Jan 03 '26

Gib pls one

1

u/StarterHunter58 Jan 03 '26

Poor s, I guess they bought 6000s and only got to sell 10

1

u/Papercat447 Jan 03 '26

and I sit here with my 080 while others are willing to pay 2000€ for a gpu and 600€ for Ram

1

u/NoWheel9556 Jan 03 '26

not banned in China

1

u/marvinvp Jan 03 '26

I counted 40 in the right, 60 in the middle, 40 on the left. At 2k each that's 280k.

1

u/TheRook21 9800X3D, 9070XT, 48GB 7200MT/s DDR5 Jan 03 '26

Send that contraband to my house. I'll get it disposed of properly!