NVIDIA confirms its flagship GPUs have a 'rare' manufacturing defect
What's the story
NVIDIA has confirmed a manufacturing defect in some of its latest RTX 5090, RTX 5090D, and RTX 5070 Ti graphics chips.
The issue, which was first reported by TechPowerUp, involves the absence of render units in these models.
Ben Berraondo, NVIDIA GeForce's global PR director, said less than half a percent (0.5%) of these GPUs are affected by this problem.
Performance impact
Defect impacts graphical performance but not AI workloads
Berraondo further explained that the defect causes these GPUs to have one ROP (Render Output Unit) less than advertised.
This reduces the average graphical performance by 4%, but doesn't impact AI and Compute workloads.
Affected consumers have been advised to reach out to their board manufacturer for a replacement.
Berraondo assured that this production anomaly has now been corrected.
Partner impact
Manufacturing defect extends to multiple NVIDIA graphics card partners
The manufacturing defect has affected many NVIDIA graphics card partners, including Zotac, MSI, Gigabyte, Manli, and even an NVIDIA Founders Edition card.
Users can use GPU-Z to check if their card is showing the correct number of 176 ROPs. If fewer are shown, they should seek a replacement.
This issue comes as another problem for users of NVIDIA's latest high-end cards, including launch driver issues, melting power connectors, and black screen problems.