After years of dominance over PC gamers, there’s potentially a new rival to Nvidia and AMD in town. The upcoming Loongson 9A2000 graphics card is launching in China with up to ten times faster performance than the 9A1000 it’s replacing. That sounds good, but the devil is always in the detail, and there’s a catch here.
That’s because, according to reports, the Loongson 9A2000 is comparable in performance to an RTX 2080, Nvidia’s former flagship card from two generations ago that launched back in 2018. Gaming has moved on a long way since then, so a card with similar performance isn’t likely to appeal today unless it’s very cheap. It’s certainly not going to challenge the best graphics cards out there from Nvidia today, especially as the 9A2000 lacks support for DirectX 12.
Loongson’s chairman Hu Weiwu spoke about the 9A2000 chip in an interview with investors to share some of the details, in comments reported initially by Chinese website IT Home. Aiming to grab the attention of Chinese gamers, Hu specifically mentions that the 9A2000 “should be able” to support Black Myth: Wukong. If performance really is on par with an RTX 2080, that would make sense, as the recommended Black Myth: Wukong system requirements list a GeForce RTX 2060 or better.
The Loongson 9A2000 is certainly an upgrade for the Chinese market if Loongson’s claims stack up, especially as it says the earlier 9A1000’s performance is similar to that of the Radeon RX 550, a low-end GPU that is now seven years old. However, much will lie in real-world performance once consumers get hold of this card. With no DX12 support, modern PC gaming is going to leave the 9A2000 behind, although Hu does suggest that it might offer support in the future.
One caveat to point out is that these claims come straight from Loongson. There’s no independent data to back it up, and we’ve not benchmarked this GPU ourselves. For Chinese consumers, it’ll be a shot in the dark to see how well the card performs. One pressure point will be whether or not the drivers for this graphics card offer good performance in modern AAA games, where developers are less likely to think about supporting it.
Let’s be honest: this isn’t a card that’s ready to compete with what we’d expect to see in the West. What it does show, however, is that Chinese manufacturers are starting to slowly catch up with Nvidia and AMD. The Loongson 9A2000 isn’t competing with an RTX 4080 Super, nor could it, but future chips might. What the 9A2000 does provide right now is a home-grown alternative for Chinese customers that, if it’s priced right, could do well in budget systems.
Unless you’re in China, the Loongson 9A2000 isn’t going to be your next graphics card, but if you’re in the market for a low-price upgrade, you might want to take a look at our AMD Radeon RX 7600 review instead. At around $260, it’s a solid budget card with DX12 support, and it’s going to be a much better bet for PC gaming than Loongson’s offerings (for now, at least).
