Thursday, March 6th 2025
NVIDIA to Inspect Laptop RTX 50 Series for ROP Anomalies, Deliveries Delayed to April
After just a few weeks from our initial report of missing ROPs on NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" for desktop, it appears that the laptop versions of these GPUs could also be prone to the same issue: missing ROP (Raster Operations Pipeline) units, which degrades performance by up to 14%. According to the German publication Heise Online, NVIDIA is working with laptop manufacturers to inspect any case of missing ROPs on its GeForce RTX 50 series cards, which the company claims affect only 0.5% of the entire supply. To avoid giving consumers GPUs with missing ROPs, NVIDIA is working overtime with OEMs to ensure that the GPUs are correctly operating and offering the hardware true to the specification sheet.
With NVIDIA Blackwell laptop SKUs announced at CES and pre-orders in February, NVIDIA expected to hand these GPUs through its partner laptop manufacturers to consumers in March, but it's currently scheduled for April, which is a whole month later. Here is what Heise Online said:
Sources:
Heise Online, via VideoCardz
With NVIDIA Blackwell laptop SKUs announced at CES and pre-orders in February, NVIDIA expected to hand these GPUs through its partner laptop manufacturers to consumers in March, but it's currently scheduled for April, which is a whole month later. Here is what Heise Online said:
As we have learned from several notebook manufacturers, they are currently working overtime in the Far East to prevent the drama from escalating into the next act: NVIDIA has instructed manufacturers to inspect already-produced notebooks with the new mobile GeForce RTX 5000 graphics chips. The focus is on GPUs where fewer ROPs are active than specified in the datasheet. This can lead to potentially significant losses in 3D performance.
22 Comments on NVIDIA to Inspect Laptop RTX 50 Series for ROP Anomalies, Deliveries Delayed to April
Honestly don't think we've ever seen a situation quite like this before between no stock (of even old cards), fake MSRP (which was bad to begin with), used card prices skyrocketing, poor generational uplift, faulty products...
I'd be pissed if I purchased any thing like this and come to find out it's defective....then have to play the waiting game to return it or get a refund. That would put a sour taste in my mouth.
A) You really screw up
and
B) People will absolutely roast you over the coals for it.
AMD did this, everyone would just shrug and buy Nvidia anyway... A lot of "just another day at AyyyMD" and such.
I'm soooo glad I have no need for, nor interest in, any dGPU's at the moment...since my mini-me box does all my personal stuff just dandy, and my work machine is only 1 year old, and if & when it gets upgraded, my company pays for it....
Fortunately for them, our IT crew stays up to date on whatever is happening in the tech world, and know when to buy or not buy most items to get the best products for the best prices....
All empires crumble at some point, right. Nvidia's empire expanded almost overnight. I can imagine they're having trouble guarding all the borders.
Meanwhile AI accelerators at $70.000 a pop are flying off the production lines...
The GPU is not literally defective, just sell it under a different name. Would help with supply as well.