China’s First 6nm GPU Aimed to Rival NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4060, But Fell Short Against the Decade-Old GTX 660 Ti

China’s domestic GPU efforts aren’t going out too well, as the nation’s first 6nm GPU has managed to rival an NVIDIA offering, but it’s the decade-old GeForce GTX 660 Ti.

Lisuan’s G100 6nm GPU Did Come With Huge Expectations, But Early Benchmarks Show Disappointing Performance

Since the US export restrictions came in, China has been engaged in the race for self-reliance in every tech sector, whether AI or GPU computing. The nation has managed to build alternatives, but we won’t talk much about how competitive they are. Similarly, the Chinese firm Lisuan has managed to produce the nation’s first GPU to be built on a 6nm process domestically, and while it certainly looks like an optimistic project, Geekbench testing shows that the GPU has failed to compete with modern-day options from NVIDIA/AMD. Not just that, but its current performance is equivalent to the GeForce GTX 660 Ti, which is almost a thirteen-year-old GPU.

Based on what we know so far, Lisuan announced last month that they had been developing a 6nm GPU that had reached the operational stages. The company claimed that the GPU should rival the performance of NVIDIA’s RTX 4060 GPU. However, the GPU was spotted at Geekbench, and interestingly, the OpenCL score positioned the model as one of the lowest-performing ones in the Geekbench database, scoring 15,524 points. The performance was equivalent to decade-old options from AMD and NVIDIA, and while this might sound negative for the company, it isn’t for now.

The Geekbench result reveals that the GPU has 32 CUs and 256 MB of VRAM, which is simply not the current figure, given that a 6nm GPU is much more capable. The test was likely done in sampling stages, which is why the GPU underperformed, and the actual performance of the “consumer-ready” model could be much higher. Lisuan likely utilizes SMIC’s 6nm node, which has made huge strides with Huawei’s Kirin SoC, so this marks the first instance where a Chinese GPU company integrated the process, which is undoubtedly an achievement.

One important area where Chinese GPU manufacturers have significantly lagged is having proper GPU drivers. Companies like Moore’s Threads and Birentech have shown disappointing performance simply due to unrefined drivers. Lisuan should work towards optimizing and refining its drivers before releasing its products to the public, and then it could really tackle NVIDIA’s reputable GPU options in the market.

News Source: Tom’s Hardware