The graphics card market is an absolute mess at the moment. Stock issues persist despite Nvidia’s early claims that it would solve early issues with the 50-series, and AMD has promised to get its exceedingly popular RX 9000-series GPUs back in stock as soon as possible. That’s meant pricing is even more ridiculous than ever, with top cards going for hundreds or even thousands of dollars more than they should, and last-generation options priced just as crazily.
But there are alternatives. Alongside buying older and second-hand cards, there’s a new brand of GPU available at discounted prices for anyone willing to take a loss on maximum performance: Defective GPUs.
Would you be willing to accept a sub-standard graphics card if it meant buying it at a discount?
How defective are we talking?
Have you been keeping up with Nvidia’s various scandals around its RTX 5000 graphics cards? You’ve be forgiven if you haven’t, because there have been a lot. From melting GPU cables, to stock issues, black-screen driver crashes, and borderline-misinformation in the product launches, Nvidia also had to contend with a not-insignificant number of its new cards shipping out with fewer ROPs than intended. These components in the rendering pipeline handle anti-aliasing and other rasterization processes and can have a significant effect on performance. In some instances, cards with missing ROPs were over 10% slower than their full-ROP-equipped counterparts.
So you really don’t want one of these cards if you’re trying to buy a new RTX 50 GPU. But would you pay less for one?
German retailer Alternate has started offering ROP-compromised RTX 5090s as a standalone product, with less warranty, but at the same price (for now). The Zotac RTX 5090 Solid OC with juts 168 of its intended 174 ROPs enabled, is listed at 2,900 euros. That’s the same price as the full ROP version, which only really makes this an attractive buy in any sense if the stock is non-existent. Which it is, but eesh, a discount of some kind might be nice.
It is rated as having all accessories and will ship in the original packaging with no material damage, only potential cosmetic wear. That and the missing ROPs. It doesn’t have the standard warranty, but there is a return and refund period guaranteed by EU law which gives buyers some protection.
This isn’t as new as it sounds
While it might seem a bit off to be selling what is effectively defective hardware that Nvidia should just replace, it’s telling that this retailer would rather just try to sell it. Perhaps it would take too long to get a replacement sent through.
This particular situation might be caused by Nvidia’s mess up, it’s not that out of character for retailers to do this. The card is currently listed as “B-stock,” but that’s not so distinct from selling open box or other returned items. The only real difference here is it’s not sold at a discount, like it should be. I guess that’s what you get when demand is just this high.
Slightly-cut-down hardware is also sold by major manufacturers all the time. Indeed, that’s often how second-tier graphics cards are made throughout a range. A die comes off the fabrication line with some defective cores, so they’re turned off and the CPU or GPU is sold as a lower-tier version.
AMD even did limited runs of this with the 5600X3D and eventually, the 5700X3D. They were slightly defective 5800X3Ds that ended up being great value buys for those who grabbed them.
How much would you pay for a cut-back card?
There’s no denying that there is demand for graphics cards of all kinds, be they the latest and greatest, good options from last-generation, or just any GPU you can find. Because it really is tough out there at the moment. Good luck finding almost anything under $400 that isn’t half a decade old or so-entry-level it’s not even worth it.
So these ROP-less cards will probably sell. And indeed, if they work well enough but just not as well as they should, then they’re effectively an equivalent to the 5090D that Nvidia sells in China, or some kind of 5080 Super.
The question really becomes what would you be willing to pay for it?
Considering the lost ROPs in a 5090 isn’t as dramatic in say a 5080, or 5070 Ti, where the standard number of ROPs is lower (and therefore the loss is larger, percentage wise), then the price cut shouldn’t be as extreme as we’d suggest for those more affordable cards. But still, close to 3,000 euros for a card that’s not as good as it should be feels like a serious stretch.
These cards are overpriced enough as it is. If they’re defective, the price should at least be below MSRP. Right?