Update: TechPowerUp revealed this was actually an April Fools Joke of their own. The saddest part is that given the amount of fails with the RTX 50 launch, it was truly plausible.
Owners of one of the world’s most expensive consumer-grade graphics cards may have an unexpected perk with their purchase. It’s never a dull moment when it comes to the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5090 GPU. It all begins with the hunt for what in essence is a technological bigfoot, then upon finding one, the search for funding to acquire said mythical beast, and then the adventure begins to navigate any number of hurdles involving driver issues (now a mostly resolved thing), potential fire hazard with melting power cables (something we haven’t heard much of lately), or fewer enable ROPs resulting in lower than advertised performance. However, turns out there could be a lucky few who’ve obtained a graphics card capable of more performance as spotted by TechPowerUp who received a review sample with extra ROPs enabled.
TPU received their ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 LC, which retails for ~$3719.99 at Micro Center, and upon initial inspection was found to have two additional ROPs, at 8 per partition this equates to 16 total, enabled for a total of 192 ROPs. Previously there were various RTX 50 series GPUs found with 8 fewer ROPs while this one has crossed over to the other side with 16 more. Those GPUs were found on average to have around 5%-11% performance drops in some games depending on the model, while this card, which has only briefly been tested, is showing roughly an 8% gain. Some of this could be attributed to the card’s liquid-cooled factory overclocked GPU but some is assuredly believed to be from the extra ROPs.
Per TechPowerUp:
“We are not sure how the performance scales with ROP count—if you recall, the loss of 8 ROPs resulted in a 5% performance drop, however a gain of 16 ROPs only results in an 8% gain (also accounting for other factors such as superior cooling and power limits).”
As insane as it may seem to spend $3K – $4K on a gaming graphics card, or more if paying a scalper or retailer that has higher prices, it could be considered a bargain when that price is compared to NVIDIA’s Prosumer Blackwell-based RTX Pro 6000 which can go for upwards of $9K and features the same GB202 silicon and ROP count, albeit up to 96 GB VRAM vs 32 GB. Call it a GPU loot box, or maybe a Willy Wonka edition model (although unlikely anyone is getting a free trip to NV headquarters and with a tour by its CEO), but one thing is certain, you never know what you’re in for when purchasing an RTX 5090.