AMD's Radeon & Instinct GPUs including the RX 7900 XTX, 7900 XT, PRO W7900 & the upcoming MI300 are now prohibited from sales in China according to a sales advisory guide that's allegedly been rolled out by Dell.

After NVIDIA's RTX 4090, It's Time For AMD's Flagship Too To Face A Ban In China: Radeon RX 7900 XTX, 7900 XT, PRO W7900 Amongst The List

We have seen that the export restrictions to China continue to increase for US-based companies, especially those making high-end chips that can be used to gain leverage from military & strategic points of view. NVIDIA devised a performance measurement criteria where any chip or GPU that exceeds a 4800 TPP metric should fall under restrictions and countries who still want access to the chip would have to request eligibility under NEC which we shed more light on here.

In its sales advisory report, Dell highlights a range of AMD products that have now been prohibited from sales within China and 23 other locations.

The products that have been banned include the Instinct accelerators that are offered under its ISG (Infrastructure Solutions Group) and Radeon GPUs that are offered under its CSG (Client Solutions Group). The banned Dell "AMD ISG" products include the Instinct MI210, MI250, MI250X & even the upcoming MI300 family.

For the client side, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX, RX 7900 XT, and Radeon PRO W7900 have been included though it should be remembered that these three products fall under "NEC" eligibility as they aren't purely data-center products. So it is very possible that retailers who manage to get NEC eligibility can continue to sell the said cards within the restricted regions same as the GeForce RTX 4090 and the banned RTX "NVIDIA CSG" products. However, the eligibility process will take days & would mean that stocks can dry up really fast, leading to shortages and higher prices on GPUs.

We have already seen the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPUs being affected by the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 ban in China. The card saw a price bump as it is now being seen as the only alternative & high-end 24 GB solution in the market meanwhile the RTX 4090 is being sold for insane rates which is despite there being a good enough stock with several distributors and vendors across the China region. Everyone is simply taking benefit of the whole situation but consumers are paying dearly. In fact, the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 prices are in no way a great showing in the US either where they have reached over $2000 US and are in short supply right now.

For those wondering why the AMD Radeon RX 7900 series had to face a ban, well the fact is that the card is listed with half-precision metrics that are even higher than the RTX 4090 at 122.8 TF vs 82.58 TF so that's one easy way for US authorities setting these import/export restrictions to rate the TPP performance.

In its most recent earnings call, NVIDIA highlighted that China amounted to 25-30% of its AI-based revenue so that's definitely going to take a toll on them in the current quarter however, the green team also believes that the market is wide open in non-China regions and there's a big demand for its GPUs which is why it has set a $20 Billion revenue target for Q4. AMD and Intel will also look to invest in regions outside of China but all three companies will certainly have products that will be made in accordance with US policies for Chinese customers too as we have seen already.