NVIDIA’s RTX 5000 launch hasn’t been its best. Amid issues with the company overpromising on its GPUs’ performance, it also turns out a whole lot of graphics cards are defective. NVIDIA wants to assure you that this is not the case for its laptop GPUs, though.
NVIDIA has firmly denied that any issues with missing render output units (ROPs) are affecting its mobile GPUs, reassuring consumers potentially looking into buying one that all RTX 50-series laptops will deliver the full advertised performance.
The initial concerns arose from reports by German publications Heise Online and Hardwareluxx, which claimed that Nvidia had requested laptop manufacturers to inspect their RTX 50-series equipped devices for a potential shortfall in ROPs. In case you’ve missed it, some units of the desktop versions of the RTX 5090, the RTX 5080, and the RTX 5070 Ti have been dealing with missing ROPs. ROPs are responsible for the final stage of rendering a frame before it’s displayed on your screen, and a reduced number of ROPs can have a noticeable impact on your performance.
To assuage these concerns, Ben Berraondo, NVIDIA’s Global GeForce PR Director, took to news outlets to say that the company pinky-promises that laptop GPUs don’t have any such issues. The Verge also pressed NVIDIA with specific questions, too, just so there’s no ambiguity in any statement. The publication first asked if the situation had evolved from “no other GPUs are affected” to “some laptop GPUs” being affected. The response was a concise “Nope.” A follow-up question sought confirmation that the “nope” meant no laptop GPUs were impacted by the missing ROP issue. Berraondo confirmed, stating, “Correct, no further issues.”
Either initial reports were inaccurate and no RTX 50-series laptop GPUs ever had a ROP deficiency, or any potential issues were identified and rectified during the standard testing procedures before the laptops reached consumers. Considering the fact that the issue was present in not one, but three desktop GPUs, we’d lean more on the latter. The reports from Heise and Hardwareluxx also hinted at potential delays in the release of some RTX 50-series laptops, going on to add that some models initially slated for a March release might be pushed back to April or May. The issue could be explained by what looks like a late release of the final vBIOS (video BIOS) for the laptop GPUs, but we wouldn’t be surprised if the ROPs issue has something to do with it.
NVIDIA has been reassuring users that the ROPs issue is in the process of being fixed on its already-released GPUs, so newer batches might be fine as well. Likewise, the RTX 5070, which is due to launch this month, is seemingly not affected, although we won’t know that for sure unless the GPUs are out and in the hands of customers/reviewers.
The whole ROPs debacle adds to a whole lot of recent woes for NVIDIA. Between constant availability issues and overhyped performance promises for the cards, this hasn’t really been NVIDIA’s best launch to date. The company had been getting a lot of things right over the last few years, so it was bound to stumble at some point, but hopefully it’ll learn from its mistakes for future GPU launches. They’re still some of the best graphics cards money can buy, if you can afford one or if you can even find one.
Source: The Verge
