Update (23 February 2025, 3:51PM): We checked and our RTX 5090 FE has the full 176 ROPs.
Original article below:
NVIDIA has confirmed that some units of its GeForce RTX 5090 and 5070 Ti had shipped out without the full suite of their Render Output Units or Raster Operating Pipelines (ROPs). By right, the flagship Blackwell GPU should ship out with 176 ROPs, while the 5070 Ti should have 96 ROPs.
NVIDIA was prompted to issue a statement regarding the missing ROPs after a report by TechPowerUp (TPU) went live.
“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.”
TPU’s investigation found that an NVIDIA RTX 5090 – in this case, a Zotac 5090 Solid – with less than the full 176 ROPs could perform as much as 5.6% slower than a Founders Edition variant and 8.6% slower than the ASUS ROG Astral RTX 5090 OC, currently the fastest AIB custom-cooled variant of the GPU.
MSI 5090D😅 https://t.co/Ij48LQ98hD pic.twitter.com/EfHgPcMi2k
— HXL (@9550pro) February 21, 2025
X user MEGAsizeGPU chimed in on the issue, stating that the issue is not related to the BIOS but a defect in a small batch of GB202 chips. We’ll be checking our system to see if our own NVIDIA RTX 5090 is a few ROPs short of the full Monty.
