NVIDIA Responds To Reports Of Missing ROPs On Laptop RTX 50 GPUs
Have you tuned into this season of How The GPU World Turns? I've lost track of what season this actually is, or even which episode for that matter, but there's no shortage of drama, intrigue, and even a bit of comedy (mostly unintentional) unfolding for anyone who cares to watch. If you didn't catch the latest episode, let me fill you in. It centers on the purportedly resolved ROPs situation affecting NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 50 series, but with a plot twist involving laptops.
Let me backtrack. If you're not up to speed, this latest season kicked off with reports of missing ROP hardware on some GeForce RTX 50 series cards, which showed eight fewer ROPs in GPU-Z than what are supposed to be there. NVIDIA issued a statement calling it a "rare issue," saying it only affected 0.5% of GeForce RTX 5090/5090D and GeForce RTX 5070 Ti graphics cards. Roll credits.
In the very next episode, it was reported that GeForce RTX 5080 cards could be affected as well, after a Founders Edition model was spotted with fewer ROPs. NVIDIA subsequently revised its original statement to confirm that yes, a small number of RTX 5080 cards are also affected by same "production anomaly" that results in missing ROPs. Roll credits again.
As series tend to do, the next few episodes shifted to focus on the general shortage of GPUs, AMD's Radeon RX 9070 XT and 9070 launch, and the release of NVIDIA's GeForce RTX 5070 (non-Ti) as some of the more major plots.
Still with me? Good, because that concludes my recap leading up to the latest episode, which ends on a bit of a cliff hanger (sorry folks, I've been binge watching Netflix and Apple TV+ lately and fully acknowledge I'm out of control—plus, it's Friday, so cut me some slack).
The latest episode started with German site Heise Online claiming that notebook makers are aware of missing ROPs on laptop variants (read: mobile) of the GeForce RTX 50 series, and are scrambling at the behest of NVIDIA to check their existing inventories for affected models and pull them before they reach market. According to the site, "several notebook makers" are "currently working extra shifts in the Far East to prevent the drama from moving into the next act." That's via Google Translate, but even if not a perfect translation, I get the gist of what the site is saying.
Confirmed via 3x sources for us directly at laptop manufacturers.
— Hardware Canucks (@hardwarecanucks) March 6, 2025
At least two confirmed NVIDIA is having them open ready-to-ship pallets of laptops to check for GPUs with missing ROPs.
What. The. Actual. Fck. https://t.co/ZLCsvh6biD
Hardware Canucks also made a cameo in the latest episode, stating on X (formerly Twitter, if you missed that season) in response to Videocardz's coverage that it directly confirmed the situation with multiple laptop manufacturers. According to the site, at least two of the three sources "confirmed NVIDIA is having them open ready-to-ship pallets of laptops to check for GPUs with missing ROPs. What. The. Actual. Fck." Yes, WTAF indeed.
At the end of the episode, however, The Verge entered the scene with comments from NVIDIA Global PR Director Ben Berraondo, who denied that there's any issue whatsoever with missing ROPs on laptop GPUs. He did confirm that NVIDIA's partners "continue to run checks as part of our standard testing procedure," but answered "Nope" when asked point blank if the situation had evolved from 'no other GPUs affected' to 'some laptop GPUs are also affected'.
When pressed further to clarify in no uncertain terms that "Nope" means no laptop GPUs are affected by the missing ROP issue, Ben responded, "Correct. no further issues."
And that's how the latest episode ended. Will there be more drama and intrigue next week? Probably. Will it turn out that the unspecified production anomaly does actually affect laptop GPUs, either before or after making it to market? You and I will both have to tune in later to find out, but for now, the answer is "Nope."
