The greatest challenge of Nvidia with RTX GeForce 5090 yet

The Nvidia RTX GeForce 5090, part of Nvidia’s latest lineup of graphics cards, has been making headlines for both its impressive performance and some unexpected issues. While the card boasts cutting-edge technology and significant improvements over its predecessors, it has also encountered a few notable problems that have left some users frustrated.

Underperformance and Missing ROPs

One of the most significant issues reported with the RTX 5090 is underperformance due to missing ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines). ROPs are crucial components in a GPU that handle tasks such as anti-aliasing, Z and color compression, and writing pixels to the output buffer. Essentially, they play a vital role in rendering graphics in PC games.

Nvidia confirmed that a small percentage of RTX 5090 and 5070 Ti GPUs were shipped with one fewer ROP than specified, leading to a performance drop of around 4%. This issue affects less than 0.5% of the units, but it has caused noticeable performance degradation in affected cards. Users have reported that their GPUs are underperforming compared to Nvidia’s Founders Edition and other custom designs.

Another problem plaguing the RTX 5090 is frequent crashing during gameplay. Users have reported that their games crash to the desktop, often accompanied by error messages related to the GPU. This issue has been linked to driver problems, with some users experiencing black screens, freezes, and system reboots. Nvidia has been working on driver updates to address these issues, but the problem persists for some users.

What are ROPs?

ROPs, or Raster Operations Pipelines, are an essential part of a GPU’s architecture. They are responsible for several critical tasks in the rendering process, including:

Anti-Aliasing: ROPs help smooth out jagged edges in images, making them appear more realistic.
Z and Color Compression: They handle the compression of depth (Z) and color data, which helps improve performance and reduce memory usage.
Pixel Output: ROPs write the final pixel data to the output buffer, which is then displayed on the screen.

In modern GPUs, the number of ROPs can significantly impact performance, especially in graphically intensive applications. A higher number of ROPs generally means better performance, as the GPU can handle more rendering tasks simultaneously.

While the Nvidia RTX GeForce 5090 is a powerful and advanced graphics card, it has faced some challenges since its release. Issues such as underperformance due to missing ROPs and frequent crashing have affected a small percentage of users. Nvidia has acknowledged these problems and is working on solutions, including driver updates and replacements for affected units.

Despite these setbacks, the RTX 5090 remains a top choice for gamers and professionals seeking high-performance graphics capabilities.