Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPUs spotted with missing ROPs – Missing performance confirmed

RTX 5090 GPUs uncovered with missing performance

TechPowerUp has spotted an issue with their Zotac RTX 5090 graphics card. In some tests, it performed notably worse than other RTX 5090 GPU models. Looking at GPU-Z, it was uncovered that the GPU has fewer listed ROPS than other RTX 5090 graphics cards. Their Zotac RTX 5090 Solid has 168 ROPS, while others have 176 ROPS.

We have looked through all of our RTX 5090 review data and can confirm that all of the RTX 5090 GPUs that we have tested have 176 ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines). This includes Nvidia’s Founders Edition, MSI’s RTX 5090 SUPRIM SOC, and ASUS’ ROG Astral LC RTX 5090. So far, TechPowerUp has found that only their RTX 5090 SOLID from Zotac has this issue.

Performance Impact

In Elden Ring, TechPowerUp has reported that this reduction in ROP count can result in a notable performance loss. Compared to Nvidia’s RTX 5090 Founders Edition, a performance loss of 5.6% was found. However, it is worth noting that not all games are negatively impacted by this change. Not all games have their performance limited by Nvidia’s ROPS.

Currently, it is unknown if this problem is exclusive to Zotac’s RTX 5090 Solid GPUs or if it also affects GPUs from other manufacturers. Can a BIOS or driver update restore these missing ROPS? Either way, it is a strange issue to get past quality control.

Over the coming days, we expect to hear more about this situation as it develops. Currently, it is unknown how this issue was caused or how many GPUs are affected by it. If these ROPs were disabled in software, a BIOS or GPU driver update could fix this issue. If not, affected RTX 5090 models may need to be recalled and replaced to give gamers the performance they paid for.

You can join the discussion on RTX 5090 GPUs being found with lower ROP counts on the OC3D Forums.