- Corsair has said that only one of its pre-built PCs has been affected by Nvidia’s Hardware Level Error
- It seems to take backup of Nvidia’s claim that the problem that slows down PC game performance is actually ‘rare’
- Corsair also stressed that it checks graphics card thoroughly to make sure they meet the official hardware -spec forward
Corsair has shed some additional light on the RTX 5000 GPUs, which used in its pre-built PCs, and how widespread the reported problems are with NVIDIA’s new graphics card that lacks their official hardware specs.
In the event that you missed it, there have recently been some controversy about a ‘rare’ chip-level error in some Blackwell graphics cards, thereby missing some rendering pipelines for 3D graphics, which slows the performance in some PC games.
While this is a serious problem – and certainly something that should not have happened – Corsair has assured us that the problem is as rare as Nvidia indicated (maybe even less often).
If you remember, Nvidia said this problem could hit up to 0.5% of potentially affected GPUs (RTX 5090 and 5080 boards, and Team Green later admitted that this error can also be found with RTX 5070 TI models but not Vanilla 5070 cards). However, according to Corsair, only one customer has come into trouble with a Blackwell GPU that is short on its rendering pipeline (ROP) counting.
Corsair informs us: “Originally, our test procedures did not mark this specific ROP refinement during our production process. After learning this question, however, we immediately implemented a thorough review of the detailed production reports for each system sent to date. Matching the expected width of this problem has only identified one customer with an affected GPU and actively working with them to provide a replacement. “
Corsair also adds that it has now implemented proactive measures regarding this potential problem with NVIDIA’s graphics card, and the company now has a “multi-stage test protocol during system production to specifically validate the correct ROP number on all RTX 50 series GPUs.”
Corsair also says it will test all GPUs in the future to make sure they meet their official specifications, observing that: “Each graphics card, including those in the RTX 50 series, reviews strict tests to confirm that it meets the manufacturer’s specifications, including the correct ROP number.”
Analysis: Rarity and Guard Game
Based on that, what Corsair says here – that there is only one case that the company has encountered – that the problem does not affect many Blackwell GPUs at all. Of course, this is a very limited test and we must be careful about reading too much in the finding.
Or it may be that Corsair did not get as many RTX 5000 GPUs through from Nvidia – theoretically, a supply of a few hundred would see a defective table. But as I said, there is not much to try to make too much of this, with the exception of it, it seems to back up what Nvidia has claimed: That this is a ‘rare’ problem.
To tackle another point that has come up here, on some online forums, I have seen something of a fuss about PC barley men who do not test these NVIDIA GPUs and pick up on the ROP count that is defective, but I don’t think it’s quite fair. By which I think it is reasonable to assume that a video card provided by NVIDIA, or actually AMD or Intel, lives up to hardware specs. Should you really need to verify that all the cores or rendering of pipelines or other hardware are present? I would not claim, but at the same time, given this incident, it may now be cautious to do it – exactly as Corsair has.
However, a GPU or CPU or any PC component should not send from the production lines with some hardware-level errors that damage the end-user experience (albeit not in some cases, but still-chance Blackwell GPUs all cost a lot of money).
This is a problem that the chipp producer – Nvidia – should have picked up during QA tests, or actually the board manufacturer (Nvidia’s partners taking the said chips and making their graphics card with them). A GPU with an error like this should not reach a PC barley lord (or consumers directly) in the first place.
In any case, if you have purchased a PC from Corsair, the company notes that it offers “Lifetime Tech Support” and you are obviously free to check any NVIDIA Blackwell graphics card to see if it has missing rops.
You can do that with the CPU-Z-Validator now-as we explained in a recent article, it will actively warn you in its latest version, which is useful or like Corsair suggests you can use GPU-Z. The latter process is simple: just download and install GPU-Z, drive the app and go to the ‘Graphics Card’ tab where you can see the rop count (it’s the seventh line down on the left). If it has 8 fewer rops than the official spec, the GPU in question has this hardware error, unfortunately.
Completely why the Nvidia app doesn’t warn you in the same proactive way CPU-Z does, I’m not sure as this looks like an obvious feature of Team Green to have done now (considering that this problem has been known for the best part of two weeks at this time).
Via Toms Hardware
