The guys at TPU have discovered a GeForce RTX 5090 from Zotac with height missing ROPs. The ROPs (render backend units or raster operations pipeline) are used after pixel shader processing for operations like blending, antialiasing and framebuffer update. 8 ROPs missing on the RTX 5090 instead of 176 (around 4.5% in less) can have an impact on rendering speed depending on the game or the application (I'm sure there's a drop in perfs in FurMark).
QuoteWe are working with Zotac to return the affected card, so they can forward it to NVIDIA for investigation. At this time Zotac was unable to provide a statement, citing the fluidity of the situation. As for possible fixes. We hope the issue is localized to a bug with the driver or the video BIOS, so NVIDIA could release a user-friendly BIOS update tool that can run from within Windows and update the BIOS of the affected cards. If, however, the ROPs were disabled at the hardware-level, then there's little that end-users or even AIC partners can do, except initiating a limited product recall for replacements or refunds. If the ROPs really are disabled through fuses, it seems unlikely that NVIDIA has a way to re-enable those units in the field, because that would potentially provide details to how such units can be reactivated on other cards and SKUs from the company.
Source:
https://www.techpowerup.com/332884/nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-spotted-with-missing-rops-performance-loss-confirmed
(https://www.geeks3d.com/public/jegx/2025q1/zotac_rtx5090_rops_missing_gpuz.jpg)
Looks like other RTX 5090 are also defective. According to the source, it's a RTX 5090 D from Manli.
(https://www.geeks3d.com/public/jegx/2025q1/manli_rtx5090d_rops_missing_gpuz.jpg)
(source (https://x.com/9550pro/status/1892940297228759430))
Now a RTX 5090 D from MSI:
(https://www.geeks3d.com/public/jegx/2025q1/msi_rtx5090d_rops_missing_gpuz.jpg)
(source (https://tieba.baidu.com/p/9514103869))
The discrepancy in ROPs among RTX 5090 cards, with some having only 168 instead of 176, is believed to be a hardware-based limitation, and there is speculation that RTX 5090D models intended for the Chinese market may be 'slipping' into the U.S. market, potentially explaining the variation in performance and specifications.
NVIDIA has officially confirmed:
QuoteWe 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.