Nvidia says around 1 in 200 of its new Series 50 GPUs are missing some render units
Affected RTX 5090, 5080 and 5070 Ti cards will have poorer performance as a result
Nvidia has confirmed user reports that some of its new Series 50 GPUs are missing some render units, affecting performance.
Last week users started suggesting that their new RTX 5090 graphics cards were arriving with fewer Render Output Units (ROPs) than they should.
Specifically, the RTX 5090 is supposed to have 176 ROPs, but some users have been reporting that their card only has 168, eight fewer than it should.
Others then pointed out that their new RTX 5070 Ti cards, which are supposed to have 96 ROPs, instead only had 88 – again, eight fewer than on Nvidia‘s official specs.
TechPowerUp then checked its review unit of the RTX 5090 and confirmed that it too was also missing eight ROPs, something it estimated results in a performance drop of 4.54%.
After testing Elden Ring running at 4K with maxed out settings, the site found that its affected RTX 5090 was producing an average of around 174 frames per second, compared to around 185-190 FPS on unaffected cards.
While at the moment a difference of 10-15 FPS may seem negligible given how high the numbers are, as games continue to get more graphically detailed over time and these average frame rates begin to drop the difference in performance may become more noticeable.
The company has now confirmed that there is an issue with some of its cards, and that the issue affects all currently released 50 Series models. It estimates that less than 0.5% of cards are affected, meaning around 1 in 200.
“We have identified a rare issue affecting less than 0.5% (half a percent) of GeForce RTX 5090 / 5090D, RTX 5080, and 5070 Ti GPUs which have one fewer ROP than specified,” the company said in a statement to The Verge. “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.”
Nvidia’s global PR director Ben Berraondo also told The Verge that no other Nvidia GPUs are affected, and neither is the soon-to-be released RTX 5070.
Users who have an RTX 5090 / 5090D, 5080 or 5070 Ti can download GPU-Z – a small system utility which shows information about the installed video card and graphics processor – and run that to check whether their card has the right number of ROPs.
If the card is unaffected, a 5090 should have 176 ROPs, a 5080 should have 112 ROPs and a 5070 Ti should have 96 ROPs.
If it’s instead showing 168, 104 or 88 ROPs respectively, the card is affected. Users can then either contact the card’s manufacturer for a replacement, or keep it and make do with its reduced performance.
Nvidia started released its 50 Series of GPUs last month, with the RTX 5090 – its most powerful graphics card ever – retailing for $1,999.
