Blackwell launch gets even worse as Nvidia confirms some RTX 5090 and RTX 5070 Ti GPUs are underperforming in games – here's how to check if you're affected

Yahoo

24-02-2025

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Nvidia has confirmed that approximately 1 in 200 of its RTX 5090 and RTX 5070 Ti GPUs have an issue with their graphics chips
The problem is a loss of ROPs, a key element of the inner workings of the GPU
Nvidia says those with an affected graphics card should contact the maker to arrange a replacement
Following reports of some RTX 5090 GPUs failing to perform as well as they should in gaming, Nvidia has confirmed that there is an issue with the chips in the Blackwell flagship, as well as the newly arrived RTX 5070 Ti GPU.
This is a hardware-level problem, meaning it's a fault deep in the chip which can't be fixed, and it's slowing down these graphics cards by an appreciable (albeit variable) amount.
In a statement addressing the matter, Nvidia told The Verge: "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."
Your first question may well be: what's a ROP, then? ROP stands for Raster Operations Pipeline, and this is hardware that's a key part of the process of rendering the graphics for your PC games. (It's a lot more complicated than that, in reality, but that's all you really need to know).
With fewer of those pipelines available to deal with the relevant graphics processing tasks during gameplay, unsurprisingly, performance is a bit slower.
Also, if you're wondering about the mentioned RTX 5090D, that's the variant of the Blackwell flagship sold in China, which was involved in the initial reports of this issue – notably the RTX 5070 Ti wasn't, though.
This whole episode unfolded yesterday, having first emerged courtesy of TechPowerUp's review of a Zotac RTX 5090 Solid graphics card (via VideoCardz).
In its review, the tech site found that this third-party model was somehow underperforming versus an Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition (the performance baseline used by TechPowerUp in gauging the relative power of the flagship GPU variants).
Indeed, the Zotac RTX 5090 was around 5% slower than Nvidia's own model, while running at the same clock speeds, which obviously didn't make much sense. Not until TechPowerUp investigated and found this wasn't an issue pertaining to faulty cooling (or other likely-seeming root causes), but in fact that the Zotac GPU was missing ROPs.
The RTX 5090 graphics card was showing 168 ROPs enabled (in the GPU-Z utility) rather than the expected count (and official spec) of 176 ROPs.
All vendors are potentially affected by this gremlin in the works, of course, as this is an issue with the chips produced by Nvidia, and sent to third-party partners to be used in the manufacturing of their graphics cards. That was swiftly shown yesterday as reports started to come in, as folks started checking their boards for this issue.
While in its statement, Nvidia mentions the lack of one ROP, it is referring to one block of them, so as observed, the ROP count is reduced by eight (the number in a block) with graphics cards that have this issue.
To check your RTX 5090 or 5070 Ti, you can fire up a tool that peers deep into the innards of your hardware, monitoring and reporting back on multiple elements of the spec. Obviously what you're looking for is the ROPs count, and that can be provided by GPU-Z as already mentioned, or an alternative utility like HWiNFO (and probably other software out there, no doubt).
In GPU-Z, you'll find the ROPs number listed in the Graphics Card tab, on the seventh line down, over on the left-hand side (we've got an explainer here, if you want further details on GPU-Z). For the RTX 5090, the number should be 176, whereas 168 is what the impaired flagship models are showing. With the RTX 5070 Ti, the correct spec is 96 ROPs, so in theory, it will be reduced to 88 ROPs (but I haven't seen confirmation of that yet, so perhaps it could have less of an impact).
If you do have an RTX 5090 or 5070 Ti with this problem, how much will it affect you in practical terms? Well, that varies as I already mentioned, although as stated the average impact is a performance loss of something in the order of 5% (or thereabouts – Nvidia is saying 4%).
However, you may not notice any difference at all in some cases, as one game may use the mentioned pipelines (ROPs) more heavily, while another may hardly touch them at all. So some games could be slowed down by more than 5%, and others may have a negligible loss in frame rates (such a low impact you'd never be able to tell).
However, before you go thinking that maybe this isn't such a big deal after all, rest assured, it is. A fault like this should not have cleared quality assurance and made it into production hardware in the first place. And when you recall how much buyers have forked out for the RTX 5090 in particular – the MSRP is a true wallet-worrier, and many folks have overpaid beyond that – well, you can start to see how this is a big letdown.
If you have an RTX 5090 or RTX 5070 Ti, check your graphics card in GPU-Z as outlined above. If your model is showing a loss of ROPs, as advised by Nvidia, contact your board manufacturer and begin the process of having the graphics card replaced.
That could be a troublesome matter, though, for those who may have sold their old GPU when they upgraded (if they need to send the faulty Blackwell graphics card back, before receiving a new one – and are left with a gaming PC without an engine, essentially). The other worry is that it's not like fresh stock is going to be easy to come by, either, right now.
Future GPUs shouldn't suffer from this issue because as Nvidia observes, the 'production anomaly' here has been fixed, as you would hope.
Nvidia is investigating reports of crashes plaguing RTX 5090 and 5080 GPUs, with possible driver issues maybe hitting RTX 4000 models too
Finally, some good news about Nvidia's new GPUs: RTX 5090 stock levels rumored to surge in a month or so
Where to buy an Nvidia RTX 5070 Ti - your best bets for getting the upper-mid-range GPU