What is a ROP on a GPU?

ROPs, or Render Output Units / Raster Operation Pipelines, are physical components found in GPUs. They are one of the final stages of the GPU pipeline that data runs through before being sent through the output to the monitor. Put crudely: the more ROPs a GPU has, the faster it will be.

There are of course other factors at play that contribute to the performance of a GPU. ROPs are just one of them, but a significant one nonetheless. Additionally, they are vital when it comes to hardware-based antialiasing, which is a feature particularly important to PC gaming.

Now, you probably weren’t googling ROPs as part of your regularly scheduled errant internet roaming. You’ve found yourself here because there’s been reports of some RTX 50 Series GPUs having fewer ROPs than advertised. Let’s talk about why that could have an impact on performance.

In a statement made to The Verge, NVIDIA said the following:

“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.”

Of course, average performance impacts are a little bit hard to understand because of how many variables there are. However, we can make some inferences from what ROPs do, and the reduction in number from the intended amount per card. For example, the 5090 missing 8 ROPs means that means that it has 4.5% less than it should, but a 5070 Ti missing 8 means that it has 8.3% less than it should, so the relative potential performance hit is larger.

• RTX 5090: 176
• RTX 5080: 112
• RTX 5070 Ti: 96

According to NVIDIA, these are the number of ROPs each card should have. However, as noted in the official statement above, about 1 in 200 cards is reporting that they’re missing a whole ROP unit, essentially 8 ROPs.

If you’ve got a 50 Series GPU, and are concerned that some of yours have wandered off, here’s how to check how many ROPs you’ve got.

• Make sure your GPU drivers are fully up to date.
• Download and Install GPU-Z from the TechPowerUp website.
• Run GPU-Z
• When it opens, take a look at the number of ROPs/TMUs. Check it against the stated ROPs previously listed in this article. (Pay no attention to the number after the “/”. This is not relevant.)