With AI datacenters gobbling up every stick of RAM, every SSD and every graphics chip going, it's no wonder that China is bootstrapping domestic production of GPUs. The flagship Lisuan LX 7G100 is out, and though it struggles to match even old NVidia hardware in benchmarks, it's flying off the shelves.
Although the LX 7G100 graphics card fell short of performance expectations and did not compete directly with the latest generation models, the company nonetheless managed to sell out more than 30,000 preorders. The LX 7G100's remarkable success reflects consumers' appetite for alternatives in a market traditionally dominated by major players like Nvidia and AMD.
The company announced the preorder bonanza on social media; the LX 7G100 has an MSRP of $485 in China. For that you get 12GB of GDDR6 memory, four DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, 8K60 HDR support, broad compatibility, and the power of a mid-range nVidia card from five years ago.
another review from a Chinese reviewer has popped up, and this one puts the LX 7G100 against the RTX 3060 desktop GPU, the mid-range offering from Nvidia that was released in late 2021. In some games, the Chinese GPU comes surprisingly close, which is rather impressive. However, in most of the other games, there's a big performance difference between the two. To be precise, on average, the Lisuan LX 7G100 was able to offer 65% of the performance of the Nvidia RTX 3060.
The Nvidia RTX 3060, which it is compared to, is not so expensive. Techspot reports the $485 tag is close to the 5060Ti, better than either. But it works, it's imminently available, and it's locally-made.
For Chinese enthusiasts, a domestic gaming GPU that can actually launch and play demanding titles has symbolic value. The Founder Edition also has an Nvidia-style limited run, including numbered cards and a signature from Lisuan Tech's co-founder and co-CEO, Xuan Yifang, which should appeal to collectors.
If you're trying to get a deal on a video card in the U.S., well, good luck! The cheapest 5090s are $3,800 and even a 5070 Ti teases a grand. It's a perfect year for retrogaming.
Previously:
• A cheap and easy retrogaming console
• Mac Mini G4 great for Mac retrogaming
• Compare retrogaming portables at Retrosizer
• Vectrex Mini revives ancient vectorbeam game console
• Pocket Vert console offers more power than retrogames could ever ask for
