A few people who managed the minor miracle of tracking down a new Nvidia RTX 50-series graphics card were shocked and appalled to find that these GPUs were underperforming thanks to missing Render Output Units (ROPs). But as it turns out, buyers are so desperate for these new cards that at least one European vendor is trying to sell said underperforming defects as “B-stock.”
German online store Alternate.de has a listing up for the Zotac RTX 5090 Solid OC, with its “missing” ROPs spelled out right on the page. (The defective card only has 168 ROPs when it should have 176.) Those missing ROPs can result in up to 10 percent less performance.
The price for this rough diamond? €2,899, or about $3,140 USD. For a card that Nvidia claims has a $2,000 MSRP without defective hardware.
Alternate.de
It’s hard to tell what the current street price is for any of the recently launched Nvidia and AMD cards, but one Newegg listing shows the same Zotac card as $2,370. Out of stock, of course. And VideoCardz.com notes that no, you can’t just use the warranty on the card and get Zotac to replace it with a 5090 that does have all its ROPs intact. The best you can hope for would be a return and refund from the retailer.
It’s pretty depressing that someone is selling a known defective card at well above the price of an unsullied GPU. It’s even more depressing that, in the current marketplace, someone’s probably going to buy it—if not an actual PC gamer willing to pay more for less, then a reseller hoping to make a quick buck, with or without disclosing that this particular 5090 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
Author: Michael Crider, Staff Writer, PCWorld
Michael is a 10-year veteran of technology journalism, covering everything from Apple to ZTE. On PCWorld he's the resident keyboard nut, always using a new one for a review and building a new mechanical board or expanding his desktop "battlestation" in his off hours. Michael's previous bylines include Android Police, Digital Trends, Wired, Lifehacker, and How-To Geek, and he's covered events like CES and Mobile World Congress live. Michael lives in Pennsylvania where he's always looking forward to his next kayaking trip.