RTX 4090 with 48 GB Sold in China for Half the Price of RTX 5090

The sudden appearance of modified NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards with 48 GB of memory on the Chinese market — at a price lower than the RTX 5090 — has caused a stir among tech enthusiasts and AI hardware specialists.

The cards, spotted on Reddit, feature a non-standard configuration: expanded 48 GB of GDDR6X memory, an AD102 chip, and a hybrid cooling system with three fans and a compact radiator. Interestingly, despite the doubled memory capacity, the memory bandwidth remains unchanged — the 384-bit bus and clock speeds are identical to the standard RTX 4090. GPU-Z confirmation has ruled out the possibility of a counterfeit, but the origin of these cards remains a mystery since NVIDIA has never announced an RTX 4090 with this configuration.

48 GB of memory for gaming is overkill and doesn’t improve performance in AAA titles. The surge in demand for these modified GPUs has sparked a wave of scams. Some buyers have reported receiving fakes — empty shells with no chip or memory hidden under the heatsink. Experts warn that many of these cards are assembled from salvaged components, such as memory chips from RTX 3090 Ti cards, which have memory modules on both sides of the PCB.

The risk is that reselling modified GPUs could reduce the availability of chips for gaming models, driving up prices. NVIDIA has yet to comment on the situation, but industry insiders doubt the company will take tough action against customizers. While some see the 48 GB Chinese RTX 4090 as an innovative breakthrough, others view it as a risky experiment.