There’s an issue with some of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 50-series graphics cards, and it’s down to the very components inside the GPU. Nvidia said it has identified a “rare issue” with a small number of RTX 5090 and RTX 5070 Ti graphics cards that makes them run at a lower performance than they should. The good news is that Nvidia promises manufacturers that it will replace the impacted cards. The bad news is you’ll still struggle to buy one, even while some users complained their cards failed to work on startup or—in one case—literally caught on fire.
RTX 5090 owners have been complaining online for over a week that some cards shipped with fewer ROPs, AKA render/raster output units than they should have. The RTX 5090 review units supposedly have 176 ROPs enabled, according to Nvidia’s white paper on the RTX 50-series, but some AIB variants may be carrying Blackwell architecture with fewer functioning ROPs. On Saturday, Nvidia confirmed board owners’ worst fears with The Verge, saying the issue impacted .5% of the RTX 5090 and RTX 5070 Ti cards sold so far. The company said this led to around “4%” worse graphics performance. The issue with the Blackwell infrastructure also impacted the China-centric RTX 5090D. Nvidia said it has fixed the manufacturing issue.
Owners need to figure out for themselves whether their ultra-expensive graphics card is underperforming. TechPowerUp, which helped identify the issue, cited the Zotac RTX 5090 Solid cards were underperforming using the site’s GPU-Z tool, which can spell out the number of ROPs in your card. TechPowerUp identified eight ROP units missing on the 5090, resulting in 4.5% raster capabilities with the Zotac card. The raster output units, which assist in the final pieces of the RTX rendering pipeline, were either missing or defective. ROPs are more important for tasks like anti-aliasing and texture rendering, so users may not experience as big a drop in some games as others.
The RTX 5070 Ti is supposed to have 96 ROPs, as our review unit supports. Some forum users (via Tom’sHardware) claim some cards have shipped with 88 ROPs, leading to a supposed 10% drop in performance in some games. To remedy the situation, users will need to contact these separate companies and work with them on replacements. Gizmodo reached out to Zotac to identify how users can seek GPU replacements, and we’ll update this story when we hear back.
The issue may be present on Founder Edition cards and the full range of AIBs from Asus, MSI, and Gigabyte, to name a few. If Nvidia could correct the issue with software updates, it would. This indicates the issue is a flaw with at least a few of the Blackwell GB202 chips themselves, which indicates the problem stemmed from Nvidia as the original manufacturer.
The RTX 50-series launch has been met with more than the usual number of hangups. The so-called “Cablegate” 12VHPWR cable melting SNAFU of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 launch seems blasé compared to this wild west of GPU controversies. Still, there is a growing sense among the Nvidia user community that the latest cards are stretching what a regular consumer-end PC can handle, even without the 12VHPWR connector.
On Reddit (via VideoCardz), one user claimed that they were using an Asus ROG Astral RTX 5090 and experienced a catastrophic failure where his board “caught on fire.” The Astral is a massive four-slot, four-fan variant of the top-end GPU that costs more than $3,000. The user inquisition claims they had played some games on their PC and were browsing the web when the PC shut down. On a restart, smoke started coming out of the case, and they discovered burn marks on the GPU and motherboard.
Without jumping to conclusions, there’s not much to go on about why that GPU would burst into flames, though judging by the images, the issue did not start on the power connector. As some originally speculated, YouTuber Buildzoid blamed the GPU’s power stage, not the capacitor. That issue appears to be on Asus rather than Nvidia’.
Nvidia clearly needed to rethink its stock and quality assurance plans before the 50-series launch. Reviewers expect some growing pains during the review process for a new product, especially one as technical as a GPU. While testing the RTX 5090 and RTX 5070 Ti, we experienced multiple issues where the PC would load to a black screen after booting from shutoff or after an extended sleep period. Nvidia said it repaired those issues with its latest driver update, 572.47, though users continue expressing discontent on the official Nvidia forums. Nvidia reps told users they are still investigating the issue. The fix may have to come in a driver or VBIOS update.