RTX 5080 now tested with missing ROPs, loses even more performance than the 5090
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Last week, a TechPowerUp forum user made an interesting discovery, stating that their Zotac RTX 5090 Solid had missing ROPs, resulting in a 4.54% performance loss compared to other RTX 5090 models. Soon after, more reports began surfacing, with users noticing fewer ROPs than the official specifications on China-exclusive MSI RTX 5090D and Manli 5090D cards.
In response, Nvidia told Tom's Hardware that this is a rare issue affecting less than 0.5% (half a percent) of GeForce RTX 5090, 5090D, and 5070 Ti GPUs. Since the RTX 5080 wasn’t mentioned, we assumed there wouldn’t be any bad news about it. However, it turns out that it also has a defective chip. This comes from Reddit where an RTX 5080 Founders Edition owner reported facing the same missing ROPs issue.
Missing ROPs result in over 14% performance loss for the 5080
In the original Reddit post, the user mentioned that their RTX 5080 Founders Edition is 8 ROPs short, meaning that instead of the 112 ROPs NVIDIA intended, their card only has 104. At first, other users pointed out that the RTX 5080 owner had not selected the Vulkan support box in GPU-Z, but even after enabling it, GPU-Z still showed only 104 ROPs.
Naturally, the buyer decided to put their underpowered card to the test to see how much of a performance difference this actually makes. They published a Time Spy benchmark result, and when compared to a GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition featuring all 112 ROPs, the underpowered RTX 5080 is 14.5% behind. So, performance takes a big hit due to what seems to be just 8 missing ROPs.
Luckily, you can get a replacement
On the bright side, Nvidia has stated that “affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement,” though this was specifically in reference to the RTX 5090 and 5090D missing ROPs that surfaced earlier. Since the RTX 5080 issue is new, it hasn't been directly addressed, but given the similarity, Nvidia will likely offer replacements for affected RTX 5080 owners as well.
That said, Nvidia also mentioned that the production anomaly has been corrected, meaning no future RTX 50 series models will ship with this problem. However, if you already own an RTX 50 series GPU, it's worth checking the ROP count—you might be one of the “lucky” few with an underpowered card.
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