Nvidia Confirms Manufacturing Flaw in Early RTX 5080 Graphics Cards

Nvidia has officially confirmed that its RTX 5080 graphics card is also affected by the same rare manufacturing flaw that previously impacted the RTX 5090, RTX 5090D, and RTX 5070 Ti. The issue, which leads to one fewer Render Output Unit (ROP) than specified, results in a minor graphical performance drop of around 4% in affected GPUs. However, Nvidia reassures that AI and compute workloads remain unaffected.

Initially, Nvidia had only acknowledged the issue in three of its RTX 50-series cards, but following additional investigations, the company confirmed to The Verge that an early production batch of RTX 5080 GPUs also suffered from the same defect. Ben Berraondo, Nvidia's Global PR Director for GeForce, stated, "Upon further investigation, we’ve identified that an early production build of GeForce RTX 5080 GPUs were also affected by the same issue. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement."

Nvidia also clarified that no other RTX GPUs, including the upcoming RTX 5070, have been affected by the problem. Additionally, the company reassured customers that the manufacturing anomaly has been corrected and that newer batches of these GPUs will not have this issue. Berraondo also emphasized that Nvidia was not aware of this flaw before launching the affected GPUs.

The full statement from Nvidia reads: "We have identified a rare issue affecting less than 0.5% (half a percent) of GeForce RTX 5090 / 5090D, RTX 5080, and 5070 Ti GPUs which have one fewer ROP than specified. The average graphical performance impact is 4%, with no impact on AI and Compute workloads. Affected consumers can contact the board manufacturer for a replacement. The production anomaly has been corrected."

The issue was first discovered by a Reddit user who reported performance discrepancies in their RTX 5080 unit. That user has since reached an agreement to provide the affected card to GamersNexus for further analysis. While Nvidia has reassured users that only a small number of GPUs were impacted, given the limited availability of RTX 50-series cards so far, this flaw has added to growing frustrations over the launch of Nvidia’s latest graphics lineup.

Despite the relatively minor performance impact, this incident raises concerns over Nvidia’s quality control in its latest GPU generation. With high expectations for the RTX 50-series, enthusiasts will be closely watching how Nvidia handles potential manufacturing challenges in the future.

Source: The Verge