- NVIDIA has clarified that the GPUs of the laptop Blackwell are not affected by the hardware level failure in the representation of the pipes
- Nvidia was very clear that this is the case when pressed on the matter
- The fault is only applicable to desktop GPUs (not including RTX 5070)
Nvidia has made it clear that its Blackwell GPU for laptops are not affected by the same hardware level failure that was discovered in its desktop models (except for the most recent RTX 5070 that is also free of this failure).
The alarming reports emerged yesterday, from two German technological sites, Hardwarelxx and Heise Online, stating that Nvidia was asking the portable manufacturers to check their laptops with RTX 5000 GPU, and part of that was to see if the aforementioned fault, where a hardware specification known as Rops (I will return to what is exactly deficient) is present.
The Verge spoke with Ben Berraondo, director of Global Public Relations at Nvidia, who informed the site that there is no problem with these laptops: “All partners continue to execute the controls as part of our standard test procedure.”
The edge was pressed and asked specifically if we finished “from ‘No other GPU is affected’ to ‘some gpu of laptops’ are also affected” and Berraondo said no, that was not the case.
Then, the technology site asked that “verify triple” if this means that no GPU of the laptop Blackwell has the failure with Rops, and the public relations director said: “correct, no more problems.”
So, that is a molten iron statement that the NVIDIA RTX 5000 GPUs on laptops will not be affected.
ANALYSIS: A necessary clarification
While reports such as those that arose yesterday should always be treated with caution, you can easily understand why there may be any questions here. If you remember, Nvidia initially said that only RTX 5090 and 5070 TI desktop cards were beaten by this Falla in the GPU, and then admitted that RTX 5080 was also a potential victim.
To clarify the nature of the fault, and how common, or more frequent, it is, to put it, in a nutshell, the ROP are representing pipes for 3D graphics, and 8 of them (a block) are missing in the defective GPUs. That means that some slightly slower PC games will execute (the effect is quite variable, since some games use these representation pipes rather than others; some titles will not slow down significantly).
Even so, this is clearly an important problem in the moments when games (other tasks are not affected) for those with a Blackwell GPU that suffers a lack of Rops. According to NVIDIA, only 0.5% of the desktop graphics cards that had produced in the desktop models mentioned (all except the RTX 5070) are affected by this problem (a statement partially backed by Corsair’s experience with its pre -built PC).
In any case, it is quite clear that no one who buys a laptop of games with a graphics card NVIDIA RTX 5000 will suffer this unpleasant at the hardware level. Either because the problem does not apply to any mobile hardware at all, or because the (“standard”) verifies instead with notebook manufacturers will definitely catch any defective chips before those laptops are sent.
It is also rumored that there will probably be a delay with these Blackwell-Enting notebooks, which were made at the end of February, and they were expected to begin sending in March. Now it seems that we could be waiting until April, or they can even, according to Hardwareluxx.
If it’s another vine talk, Nvidia really wanted to get these laptops in January 2025 originally. Between that and the disastrously thin levels of the Blackwell desktop GPU, the RTX 5000 series has had a very unstable start in terms of sliding deadlines and availability.
