The export ban on RTX 4090 GPUs to China on November 17th has had the somewhat expected effect of causing AMD’s top products to sell out faster than AMD or its partners can produce them. It has also been rumored that AMD’s top offerings will soon face the same fate. Anticipating the worst, it is reported that some OEMs, including Dell, have already placed self-imposed limitations on the export of Radeon and Instinct cards to China. Although vendors and customers alike sense an impending storm and are unable to obtain RTX 4090s, insiders in board channels have not yet received an official warning that they can no longer sell RX 7900 XTXs or XTs to DIY markets. Instead, they are grabbing up as many of the high-end Radeons as they can.

According to reports, AMD’s production capacity has not kept up with the recent surge in sales, and supplies to Chinese board partners have only recently started to arrive. Restrictions or not, the lack of incoming supply of Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT is leading to a card shortage in China that is predicted to affect most of Q1 2024 and the remaining portion of Q4 2023. As long as AMD’s top cards are not anticipated to face any immediate restrictions, they may respond by increasing exports to meet demand, but that could be dangerous if AMD is attempting to evade being singled out.