Nvidia’s controversies with its RTX 5000 series continue to pile up, as the tech giant’s recently unveiled GeForce RTX 5090 flagship has been reported to be missing a portion of its ROPs (Render Output Units).
This, coupled with the generally lukewarm reaction to the 5000 series launch, along with an inflated price tag, does not seem to be shaping things well for the company and the industry as a whole in general.
Some Nvidia RTX 5090 cards are missing ROPs, leading to performance deficits
As mentioned in a report by TechPowerUp, Nvidia’s premium, cream-of-the-crop RTX 5090 series has some degree of manufacturing defects associated with it. In short, many RTX 5090 models come equipped with 8 fewer ROPs than the stock, Founder’s Edition RTX 5090 – which in turn results in a small but appreciable decline in performance.
The discovery was first made on the TechPowerUp forums, where many users chimed in on a peculiar instance where GPU-Z would report an incorrect number of 168 TOPs over the usual 176. While this could very well be attributed to a select few units, the issue ultimately appeared to be more widespread – with many users, including the TechPowerUp review team, confirming the same.
The tests were conducted on a Zotac RTX 5090 Solid card, which the reviewers confirmed was indeed missing 8 ROPs, which in turn resulted in an approximate 5% loss in performance across the board. While 5% may seem like an insignificant number at first, keep in mind that this number actually makes a significant difference in real world scenarios, such as gaming.
The thread has now been updated to detail that the anomaly is not limited to just the Zotac Solid version of the 5090, with multiple other vendors also affected by the same. The issue seems to be random though.
Nvidia has already issued a statement regarding the matter, confirming the same. They have mentioned that the RTX 5080 and 5070 Ti models are also affected by the defect, and it appears to be ‘limited to’ 0.5% of the cards in circulation.
This appears to be linked to a production anomaly, which has since been corrected. As such, there (hopefully) won’t be any more defective units being pumped out of production. Nvidia has also instructed those affected by the issue to bring their defective cards to the manufacturer for replacements.
The 5000 series cards affected in this manner allegedly do not have any hit to compute or AI-related workloads – only gaming and the like.
This is just one of the many issues plaguing the RTX 5000 series launch
Nvidia has had a bit of trouble with its RTX 5000 series, with molten connector pins and the like being one of the several issues plaguing the launch. Perhaps the biggest elephant in the room would be its absurd, eye-watering price of $1999.
To add more salt to the wound, the card is barely any better compared to last generation’s 4000 series, and relies heavily on DLSS 4 and AI-upscaling techniques to obtain an appreciable boost in performance.
Assuming these units with ROPs are still in circulation, Nvidia could have a serious problem on their hands. A decrease in performance for no apparent reason, especially when you are paying the full price of the card is ridiculous, and even more so if the condition of these hardware defects deteriorate even further with time.
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