Nvidia explains the missing ROPs — defective silicon in 0.5% of RTX 5090 and 5070 Ti GPUs

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Nvidia says that a few GPU chips passed inspection with defective ROPs.

Blackwell silicon
(Image credit: Nvidia)

Several Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series GPUs have been missing ROPs, suggesting that some GB202 and GB203 chips used in those cards are defective. This has led to many graphics cards from different manufacturers, including Zotac, MSI, Gigabyte, and even Nvidia’s Founders Edition GPUs, having eight fewer ROPs than specified. The company has stated Tom’s Hardware, saying this only affected a few of its GPUs.

“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,” an Nvidia representative told Tom's Hardware. “Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement. The production anomaly has been corrected.”

So, the problem is indeed caused by an issue in production and quality control, which allowed a few defective GB202 and GB203 chips to pass inspection and be installed on GPUs. It’s a good thing that the issue was caught early, though, as Nvidia said that even its RTX 5070 Ti GPUs, which were released a couple of days ago, were also affected. Consumers who bought any affected cards would not get the expected performance.

Team Green said those affected by the missing ROPs should contact their board manufacturer to RMA their less performant GPUs. Hopefully, they won’t have to wait long to get a proper replacement despite the ongoing RTX 50-series shortage. A few retailers expect supply to stabilize in four months.

This has been one of the many issues plaguing the RTX 50 series since its highly anticipated launch. A major concern returning from the RTX 4090 is the melting power cable problem, which the company has previously claimed was already fixed. Several RTX 50-series GPUs are also experiencing crashes and instability, resulting in BSODs and black screens. Nvidia said it’s already investigating the issue but hasn’t yet released a timeline for a fix.

Many gamers and enthusiasts are predictably disappointed with this launch. Many say that the performance improvements do not match the price increases. With all these issues cropping up less than a month after their release, Nvidia has its hands full, trying to fix them.

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Jowi Morales
Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

49 Comments Comment from the forums
  • alceryes
    So, they're going with incompetence instead of deceptive, malicious intent. This is as expected.

    These cores are validated, under NVIDIA's guidance, before they leave the fab. The missing defective ROPs would definitely show up - just as easily as they do in GPU-Z. Someone made the decision to release them as 5090s anyway.

    I'm wondering if any other models (other than 5090, 5090D, 5070Ti) are affected. What if this was also a rare issue with the RTX 4090??
    Reply
  • magbarn
    Ooops, looks like some of the stockpiled 5080Ti refresh chips being saved for next year accidentally got mixed in the 5090 batch! Seriously, this was deliberate, A penny pinching, control freak Nvidia did not release these chips on accident.
    Reply
  • YSCCC
    alceryes said:
    So, they're going with incompetence instead of deceptive, malicious intent. This is as expected.

    These cores are validated, under NVIDIA's guidance, before they leave the fab. The missing ROPs would definitely show up - just as easily as they do in GPU-Z. Someone made the decision to release them as 5090s anyway.

    I'm wondering if any other models (other than 5090, 5090D, 5070Ti) are affected. What if this was also a rare issue with the RTX 4090??
    THey announced that only 5090 and 5070Ti are affected, sounded like the downbinning have issues occurred and they knew that's 0.5% out there is slightly defective, but "hey, it have no effect on AI, plus most users won't notice, let's just sell it as if they're all good"
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    “Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement.

    when?
    New gpu's are basically gone moment they restocked.
    What they gonna replace em with?
    Reply
  • acadia11
    alceryes said:
    So, they're going with incompetence instead of deceptive, malicious intent. This is as expected.

    These cores are validated, under NVIDIA's guidance, before they leave the fab. The missing ROPs would definitely show up - just as easily as they do in GPU-Z. Someone made the decision to release them as 5090s anyway.

    I'm wondering if any other models (other than 5090, 5090D, 5070Ti) are affected. What if this was also a rare issue with the RTX 4090??
    Exactly, they made the decision to either meet launch date, hope it goes unnoticed, get the oops do over I’m sorry … or at worst face the inevitable class action lawsuit … which they could easily quash before it got to that point. The fact is they did not intend to waste this silicon as they diverted some of the more lucrative AI silicon to fulfill this launch. Let’s be real the chances of them missing such an easy check is about reasonable as someone on an auto assembly line not noticing you are missing a cylinder. I mean this is one the key differences in gaming Blackwells vs AI only center chip components … and you don’t notice it’s not complete? These are basic automated checks. They chose to deal with the issue afterwar, period.
    Reply
  • -Fran-
    The GTX970 laughing in a corner of the Asylum.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • spiketheaardvark
    I'll be glad to help take these defective cards off of Nvidia's hand. Just need to line my case with fire retardant.
    Reply
  • Giroro
    If they already know what percentage of the GPUs are missing the ROPs, then that means they were tracking how many lower specced GPUs were leaving the factory.
    Did any reviewers get sent one? I bet not!

    Usually Nvidia loves releasing different performing GPUs as the same model, but typically they only do it for the low end cards.
    Although since Nvidia is an AI company who only cares about AI, to them a $2000 RTX 5090 is a low end card, especially with it's razor-thin 400% profit margins.
    Reply
  • txfeinbergs
    alceryes said:
    So, they're going with incompetence instead of deceptive, malicious intent. This is as expected.

    These cores are validated, under NVIDIA's guidance, before they leave the fab. The missing defective ROPs would definitely show up - just as easily as they do in GPU-Z. Someone made the decision to release them as 5090s anyway.

    I'm wondering if any other models (other than 5090, 5090D, 5070Ti) are affected. What if this was also a rare issue with the RTX 4090??
    You had me scared there for a second. I just ran GPU-Z and my 4090 does have the correct number of ROPS i.e. 176. Not like I would have been able to do anything about it at this point.
    Reply
  • thestryker
    Given that nvidia supposedly knows the quantity of incorrect chips (and that it affects the 5070 Ti too) that leads me to believe it's one of two things: someone didn't do their job in QA or someone figured who'd notice and shipped it anyways.
    Giroro said:
    Did any reviewers get sent one? I bet not!
    TPU actually had the same model as the person making the original report on their forums and found it had the same problem. This is likely what amplified the message about missing ROPs and caused an official statement to land already.
    Reply