Over the past few days, we reported that some of Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5090 and RTX 5070 Ti graphics cards feature GPUs with ‘missing’ raster operating units (ROPs) and therefore lower performance. Apparently, Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 5080 has also been found to be prone to this problem, according to a Reddit post.
This is the first evidence GeForce RTX 5080 graphics cards, based on the GB203 graphics processor, may come with only 104 ROPs — instead of 112 ROPs — activated. The poster tried to reinstall the Nvidia video driver, but GPU-Z still displayed the number of raster operating units at 104, below the advertised 112 ROPs.
As this is the first report about an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5080 graphics card with a GPU that does not meet specifications, we would wait for further confirmations before damning conclusions. However, since there are GeForce RTX 5070 Ti boards that carry a GB203 processor with missing ROPs, it will not come as a surprise that there are GeForce RTX 5080 cards that feature a GPU with a lower number of ROPs than expected.
Nvidia has confirmed that 0.5% of GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5090, and RTX 5090D graphics cards carry graphics processors with several ROPs disabled, vs the expected specification. The company advises owners of any ‘Lackwell’ cards to return their boards to manufacturers to have them replaced.
“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 official statement of Nvidia reads. “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.”
Although Nvidia confirmed that some of its GB202 and GB203 graphics processors are configured with a lower number of ROPs than it officially set for its GeForce RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 5090, and RTX 5090D products, it never revealed actual reasons why this happened. GPU configurations are set at the factory by Nvidia itself and it is almost impossible for makers of graphics cards to change the configuration of Nvidia’s GPUs. Hence, Nvidia supplied under-spec GB203 and G202 graphics processors to its partners for some reason. The question about the reason how this happened is not a rhetorical one as it may provide an answer to whether this will happen again.
It should be noted that wrongly configured GB202 and GB203 GPUs are not the only issues with Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 50-series products. Among other things, there are melting and overheating power connectors as well as stability issues with drivers, according to reports.