Some GeForce RTX 5090 Cards Appear To Be Gimped By Missing ROPs Hardware

If you thought "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" was an odd premise, wait until you get a load of the curious case of missing render output unit hardware (or raster operations pipeline, if you prefer—ROP from here on out) on some GeForce RTX 5090 graphics cards that are out in the wild. One of the seemingly affected models landed in the hands of a review site.

That would be TechPowerUp, which checked its own Zotac-branded GeForce RTX 5090 it has in-house for missing ROPs after a reader in its forums posted a GPU-Z screenshot identifying only 168 ROPs on their Zotac card. NVIDIA's specifications call for 176 ROPs, so these affected cards appear to be missing eight ROPs.

This raises all kinds of questions, one of which is if it's possible GPU-Z is misreading the ROP count. That's certainly possible, thought TPU reran some benchmarks showing how the Zotac model "falls behind every other RTX 5090" the site has in its possession, and it has quite a few (eight models, by our count).

Assuming good testing practices (and we have no reason to doubt TPU), the results suggest that the hardware is actually disabled, versus a glitch in communication between the card and GPU-Z. Eight missing ROPs works out to a 5.54% reduction in ROP hardware (a critical component towards end the end of the rasterization process), which is roughly in line with the 5.6% slower performance observed compared to a Founders Edition model. The seemingly affected Zotac card was also 8.4% slower than the faster-clocked ASUS ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 OC model.

Out of the eight cards in its possession, the site says only the Zotac model appears to missing ROP hardware. Review samples from ASUS, Gigabyte, MSI, Palit, and NVIDIA's own FE card all show the correct number of ROPs in GPU-Z. However, the plot thickens.

In a post on X (as spotted by Videocardz), ComputerBase reports that its Zotac GeForce RTX 5090 model is showing the full allotment of ROPs. And like the affected Zotac models by TPU and one of its readers, it's the same non-overclocked Solid SKU. So this doesn't appear to affect all Zotac cards, or even all of Zotac's Solid variant.

It gets even more curious, though. Prominent leaker HXL (@9550pro) posted a GPU-Z screenshot of an MSI GeForce RTX 5090D graphics card that also shows 168 ROPs instead of 176. Even though NVIDIA downgraded the specs on the 5090D model for China, those cards are still supposed to have 176 ROPs.

TPU said it's working with Zotac to return its card, which it plans to then ship to NVIDIA so it can investigate the matter. Zotac is not offering a statement at this time, so all we can do is speculate.

Probably the best case scenario is that a buggy BIOS is the culprit, which could explain why some but not all Solid cards appear to be affected. Having to update the BIOS on a $2,000+ GPU isn't exactly ideal, especially for a less tech-savvy user, but it's better than the worst case scenario, which is an actual hardware issue.

We haven't had a chance to go back and check our own two GeForce RTX 5090 models (Marco, who has the cards, is out sick today), but we'll update this article when get a chance.