It seems that NVIDIA has its hands full in dealing with a growing number of reports of different issues with its flagship consumer GPU. The GeForce RTX 5090 launched on January 30 and has since been scarce due to limited supply but not all those who have managed to obtain one are enjoying them as much as perhaps expected. Following reports of melted cables, and then black screen issues including some bricked GPUs, come new reports of models from multiple vendors with fewer active render units than advertised. TechPowerUp has been following up on reports from its readers on the matter, which include graphics cards from GIGABYTE, Inno3D, Manli, MSI, and Zotac. NVIDIA has responded to TechPowerUp and interestingly included mention of the recently launched GeForce RTX 5070 Ti as well.
Per NVIDIA (via TechPowerUp):
“We have identified a rare issue affecting less than 0.5% (half a percent) of GeForce RTX 5090 / 5090D and 5070 Ti GPUs which have one fewer ROP than specified. The average graphical performance impact is 4%, with no impact on AI and Compute workloads. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement. The production anomaly has been corrected.”
Testing has shown that the missing ROP results in roughly 4.54% less rasterization performance. Depending on the game the performance impact may not be noticed. While NVIDIA’s response states one less ROP it has been clarified by TechPowerUp that translates to 8 ROP units hence why users are reporting 168 units vs the 176 units advertised.
Per TechPowerUp:
“Many years ago, marketing decided that higher numbers = better, so they started to report the number of pixels that can be processed per unit, instead of the actual unit counts. So in this case, one hardware unit is disabled, which mean eight pixels per clock less can be processed, resulting in a loss of “8 ROPs”.”
So as stated above, it seems that NVIDIA has its hands full as drama surrounding the RTX 5090 continues to grow. It will be interesting to see if this latest leads to litigation similar to what happened with the GeForce GTX 970 and its 4 GB VRAM that was discovered to be 3.5 GB.
Discussion (15 replies)
Join Discussion →If I had thier AI CPUS you can bet your ass i would be checking every single one!!!
I would hope a full recall of the bad batch of GPUs r.e. ROPs is pulled. If a user has one, I would hope a full exchange is allowed. The black screen issue can probably be fixed by a BIOS or driver update, and melting issues are what they are due to the low tolerances of the power connector design, and lack of components like shunt resistors that the RTX 30 series had, so to me, the more serious issue is people getting the full hardware they paid for in GPU spec. It's all an issue, but ya know, triage, getting what you paid for is the first step.
Yea I agree. And it's very interesting that NOBODY has noticed a lower ROP count on an FE card. It's almost like Nvidia KNEW they were releasing questionably faulty GPU's.
Not so sure. Nv didn’t mention the 5080
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Their press release I thought did mention some 5080s.
My bad they did not.mentiin 5080s. I'm sure that will be an oops our bad moment.
This is getting rediculous
More than likely a driver issue but . . .
[URL unfurl="true"]https://www.notebookcheck.net/GeForce-RTX-5090-drops-below-RTX-4090-in-high-end-graphics-card-benchmark-chart.966347.0.html[/URL]
Kind of is, but also feels typical. It does bewilders my mind how people pay such steep early adopter tax. Not just money, stuff melting, bad AMD, i mean nvidia drivers, missing chunks of the chip or whatver mistery, and on. It will all stabilize and go away, but wow, so many just want the punishment, at any price no less.
The not-funny-but-funny part is nVidia 100% knows about the ROP issue, and did it anyway figuring people just wont care
It would be one thing if they had distinguished it via a different SKU - but they just tried to sweep it entirely under the rug.
Yea it's a pita and its odd how nvidia controls the market so much it's accepted to happen. If you're not running high end everything you can't have high end anything work well these days. At least thats what it feels like.
Similar to the segmented vRAM issue on the GTX 970 (for which I not only got a partial refund on Amazon, but $20 or $30 from the class-action lawsuit).
I did too except my partial refund was from Newegg. Made the sting having bought 2x 1080s at the time hurt a bit less since SLI basically died right after.
Actually makes sense that the 5080 was affected too given that they mentioned the 5070 Ti in their first response and both use the same die.
I've seen some shit from NVIDIA and ATi, AMD etc. over the years but this generation is probably the worst so far. Take any one of the issues and it would be crappy, but not all that big a deal so long as that issue was addressed adequately. In this case, the issues keep piling up.
Haven't had time to watch this yet but here you go.
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