Nvidia denies allegations that laptop RTX 50 GPUs are also missing ROPs

GeForce RTX 50 series laptop
(Image credit: Nvidia)

New reports have surfaced that RTX 50-series laptop GPUs are facing the same missing ROPs problem as all of Nvidia's desktop counterparts. Heise Online (via HardwareLuxx) reports that Nvidia has asked notebook manufacturers to catch bad batches of laptop devices sporting faulty RTX 50-series GPUs with missing ROPs.

However, Nvidia has responded to these claims, stating the exact opposite. Nvidia told The Verge that laptop GPUs are unaffected by the issue of missing ROPs. The Verge asked Nvidia for additional clarification, to which Nvidia stated: "Correct, no further issues."

The original report from Heise Online states that several notebook manufacturers are allegedly working extra shifts in the Far East to catch buggy laptops with GPUs sporting missing ROPs before they get sold to the public. As previously stated, Nvidia (ironically) was allegedly the one to ask these companies to look for these faulty laptop GPUs.

Nvidia's response to these reports does not fully confirm if the issue was ever present or if it was only recently fixed. According to Nvidia's wording, there's a chance RTX 50 series laptop GPUs were, in fact, missing ROPs only to be fixed by the time reports came out stating there were problems.

Regardless, if the reports are true, Heise Online did not disclose how many GPUs are affected. There's not even an indication if certain GPUs or all RTX 50 series laptop GPUs are missing ROPs (after all, most existing desktop Blackwell GPU models launched so far are known to suffer from this issue).

However, the problem (again, if it did actually happen) appeared to have only affected a fraction of laptop devices (just like Nvidia's desktop counterparts). One manufacturer Heise Online spoke to allegedly only mentioned that its first batch of laptop devices had to be fixed. The manufacturer neglected to share if more batches were affected.

Again, if Nvidia's claim is true, it is good to hear it has finally plugged the missing ROPs issue on its latest RTX 50 series GPUs. However, the RTX 50 series laptop GPUs are still suffering from supply chain issues just like their desktop counterparts, forcing manufacturers to postpone their device launches.

High-end devices have reportedly been pushed back from January to March, and mid-range and lower devices have been pushed back from March to April.

The missing ROPs anomaly first started on the RTX 5090 when reports of defective RTX 5090 AIB partner models sporting fewer ROPS than advertised began to spring up in late February. Soon afterward, Nvidia issued an official statement confirming that the issue was real, affecting not only the RTX 5090 but the RTX 5070 Ti as well.

However, after Nvidia's statement, reports of defective RTX 5080s also began to appear, forcing Nvidia to publish another statement confirming RTX 5080s were also affected.

Missing ROPS on a GPU is bad for performance as ROPs (Render Output Units) are part of the render pipeline. Third-party testing confirmed that the RTX 5080, with its missing ROPs, loses up to 11% of its performance compared to its advertised performance. The RTX 5090 likewise also allegedly loses up to 11% of performance, at least in TimeSpy.

Aaron Klotz
Contributing Writer

Aaron Klotz is a contributing writer for Tom’s Hardware, covering news related to computer hardware such as CPUs, and graphics cards.

  • thestryker
    Yeah this is about as believable as when they didn't include the 5080 in their initial acknowledgement. As far as I'm aware the mobile parts use the same die as desktop but tend to be a tier down. That means mobile 5090s would be using GB203 and the rest likely GB205/206. While I'd believe no customers will see laptops that have GPUs with missing ROPs it's completely unbelievable that the issue didn't happen there too.
    Reply
  • tamalero
    thestryker said:
    Yeah this is about as believable as when they didn't include the 5080 in their initial acknowledgement. As far as I'm aware the mobile parts use the same die as desktop but tend to be a tier down. That means mobile 5090s would be using GB203 and the rest likely GB205/206. While I'd believe no customers will see laptops that have GPUs with missing ROPs it's completely unbelievable that the issue didn't happen there too.
    I agree. I do not trust nvidia.
    The 5080 fiasco showcased they either are inept, which I do not think so. Or they are willingly using harvested dies with defective parts on purpose to fill the gaps while moving all great silicon to datacenter.
    Reply
  • King_V
    At the risk of overusing the meme:

    https://media.tenor.com/ojfhuF5QSNIAAAAe/homer-homer-simpson.png
    Reply
  • Pierce2623
    It’s easy to claim they’re “unaffected” when you catch it just in time and mysteriously push back back the release date for “completely unrelated” issues lol. Of course that doesn’t make you look any less foolish when all the other factors are painting that exact picture SMH.
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    There is a lot of "Trust me bruh!" coming from Nvidia lately only to find out the vengeance demon is lying through its teeth. Yeah sorry Nvidia but you're on my naughty list for at least a gen or two like Intel with CPUs. AMD might need to build mind-share in the GPU space but lately Nvidia has been short sighted and kicking rocks with their mind-share like a bored kid on a gravel ridden road. Its just plain stupid and I truly hope it bites them in the back side to the tune of 30 to 40% in the mid range. Maybe then we'll see some sanity return to GPU space but considering AMD has already announced price hikes on their just released and sold out 9070 series, it is unlikely to happen any time soon.
    Reply
  • JarredWaltonGPU
    thestryker said:
    Yeah this is about as believable as when they didn't include the 5080 in their initial acknowledgement. As far as I'm aware the mobile parts use the same die as desktop but tend to be a tier down. That means mobile 5090s would be using GB203 and the rest likely GB205/206. While I'd believe no customers will see laptops that have GPUs with missing ROPs it's completely unbelievable that the issue didn't happen there too.
    I believe both the laptop 5090 and 5080 use GB203, 5070 Ti uses GB205, and 5070 uses GB206. So, we know for certain that GB202 and GB203 had issues with missing ROPS. I'm not aware of any confirmed reports of RTX 5070 (GB205) having any missing ROPS, but that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

    The whole situation is very weird. Something went wrong to have chips get an extra ROPS cluster disabled. It would have been far better to explicitly state what happened IMO. "We had a misconfigured line that had the wrong ROPS values and it affected a batch of chips" would have been far more believable than a nebulous "less than 0.5% were affected" claim with no indication of what actually went wrong.
    Reply
  • Mr Majestyk
    Huang spends more money on his leather jackets than Nvidia do on QC it appears. What a total fluster cluck of a launch, far worse than Arrow-to-the-head Lake. When AMD can come up smelling roses and not screw up a launch, you know how badly things are going for Nvidia, a company that now has total disregard or even contempt for desktop users.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    JarredWaltonGPU said:
    The whole situation is very weird. Something went wrong to have chips get an extra ROPS cluster disabled. It would have been far better to explicitly state what happened IMO. "We had a misconfigured line that had the wrong ROPS values and it affected a batch of chips" would have been far more believable than a nebulous "less than 0.5% were affected" claim with no indication of what actually went wrong.
    Yeah the missing ROPs doesn't really happen by accident, and the 5080 being affected confirms that since it's a fully enabled die. That means at some point this design was intentional and while they don't need to necessarily get into the details something beyond "trust us" would go a long way.

    Originally I thought maybe it was something like the OEM 3050, but it doesn't really make sense that it would only affect ROPs if they were doing some form of die salvaging.
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    But would you -really- recommend an RTX 5000 series laptop over an RTX 4000 series on sale now?
    Reply
  • fybyfyby
    Thats not a problem. Another fake frame solved it.
    Reply