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Package on the way @1610ftw I may include the cat as an extra. 😂

Looks like I am the lone ranger on 9070 XT 3DMark 11 benching at the moment. The fact that the 9070 XT can handle these ray traced benchmarks without it turning into a slide show is a huge step forward for AMD. These scores are beating 3090 and 6900 XT scores soundly, and those were on chilled water. This is just maxed out fans and with the low-budget B850 mobo. https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark11_-_performance/submissions/5813158 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark_-_sky_diver/submissions/5813198 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark_-_fire_strike/submissions/5813197 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark_-_time_spy/submissions/5813195 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark_-_port_royal/submissions/5813193 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark_-_solar_bay/submissions/5813191 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark_-_steel_nomad_dx12/submissions/5813190 Hmm. I am going to have to re-run some of these on Winduhz 11 because some of the guys beating me are using that crappy OS. @Papusan are you ready to embrace Winduhz OS X for higher benchmark scores now? (I didn't think so. Me neither. Probably some deception and manipulation going on with that as the dangling carrot for the gamer children of the world.)

So I scored a Gigabyte 9070xt from BB that was delivered today. With discounts and rewards = $739 after tax. Not doing back flips over this one, but could be much worse. Can't wait to dig in on this one next week and run some tests with WoW in my known testing spots to see how it fairs against the 5080 and 4090 data. ---- I also snagged an Astral 5090 on BB Total price after rewards and discounts = 3403.46. Seriously on the fence about this one, lol. If the 10850k is your best CPU, that has to be the benching rig CPU with hopefully decent (>=3600) DDR4 sticks. I can't see regressing to a 9700F for a benching rig but that's just me. And it starts..... The march to an EK block..... 🤣

The Astral price is really steep! But these cards have a really good cooler which provides great temps and also really good clocks. I think the bios is pretty good on these Astral cards. Seems like Asus tried to release a solid product this go around that actually matched the extravagant price tag. I remember everyone including @Mr. Fox was complaining how terrible the 4090 Strix OC was and how it was overpriced gamer boy junk.. So at least the 5090 Astral gives you something, good cooling, looks cool, injured wallet, and high core overclocks. But it’s essentially still a 5090 at the end of the day. So I think you gotta determine if it’s worth the price. If I bought a 5090 Astral I’d probably keep it knowing me lol. It’s a very nice GPU. Then again, I really appreciate my 5090FE for $2,100 all in. I think with the VRAM size, and performance uptick in 4K heavy RT, it can straight whoop my 4090 by 50%. And if we use heavy up scaling with 4K, the gap REALLY grows. The 5090 memory bandwidth is strong. It’s nice we have so many options. Truth is, 4090 is so fast already it is more than enough juice. Heck, even my laptop 4090 is fast enough for majority of gamers. This 10900K can do low power 5.3Ghz, it was like 170-180 watts running R15. I want to say it could run 5.0Ghz with like 1.075v. I did very very minimal testing on it. I wish I could have ran it properly with a Z490 Apex on the test bench and chiller. My motherboard was a Z490 Aorus piece of crap to the max (I hated this board, I hate its bios and it was so horribly unstable) I had a 10850K SP84 that was direct die cooling, and on a massive multi-pump custom loop with external rad cooling which used 298 watts at 5.3Ghz, and this 10900K on a 360mm AIO “Not even delidded” would absolutely smash that thing! It was pure impressive how much better this 10900K was. Since I bought a 14900HX/4090 laptop, I didn’t need this 10900K system really. And it was just sitting in my living room. @electrosoft When I first saw the prices on 5090 MSI Laptops, I thought they have gotten super greedy man. And this is pure hilarious to see them now. 😂 I mean, what was MSI even smoking to begin with..Not sure who is paying 5K+ for a MSI Raider. It’s a really great machine. But buying a barely faster than a 4090 laptop rig. For thousands more is nuts.. Also, have you overclocked your 4090 machine yet? I seem to get about +1,000 on memory with mine, but I think that’s it. Also, I noticed if I hold my laptop off the table it drops 9C on GPU temp! No cooling pad or anything fancy. Just sitting my laptop on a cup in the table lifted about 5 inches off the table it drops a straight up 9C in game. 🤯

I'm looking forward to your results! I always follow the X170 threads (along with NH55 of course) to see what new results pop up. I just know when all was said and done, I tested that 10900k against many off the shelf variants and 4 specifically targeted binned chips including an SP113 I borrowed for a few days and it was still better for laptop use. It was better stock IHS than all the others including the delidded ones. It was just a great chip in the X170SM-G. Last cash grab as the market normalizes to a degree and all the heavy hitters move out. Hmmm, who was it that said everything would settle down a bit by the end of April? 🤣 FOMO makes people do crazy things. Finally the Apex is arriving. I think what we've seen is latching onto a very valid reason (tariffs) and using that as a means to increase prices as much as possible even beyond and trying to at least touch off of scalper prices to maximize profits with the ability to lower costs when needed. I will be curious to see when sales drastically slow and prices have to come back down, how that suddenly "works" with tariffs still in play. I have no problems with AIBs charging as much as they want. It is up to the consumers to say no. I know for many, even $3k-$4k still isn't much to them as they spend much MUCH more elsewhere on their hobbies and leisurely pursuits but still.... As for the FE, it is compact and elegant. The fact you can slap a full tilt 5090 in a SFF 2 slot design is pretty awesome. It is not for those who want to overclock but want full 5090 power out of the box that isn't ginormous. It does run warm but well within spec and doesn't throttle. It is also priced the best easily at $1999.99. I fully get why it exists but also why certain segments have no desire for it. Yup, the early adopters with better spending/worse common sense are drying up along with a steady trickle of inventory coming in. You also have scalpers slowing down as it is past the "easy money" stage of the program. Monitoring a few stock bots, other brands are bringing cards to the market somewhat regularly too but they are usually snapped up pretty fast (or were). The real question will be how the market and companies respond going forward. -------------- Remember the outlandish prices for 5090 laptops announced? Discounts already on MSI and Asus models. Nobody in their right mind is going to pay those prices. On another note, I didn't realize MSI went with the 285HX in their Raider. I thought only the Titan was getting it so that's nice to see. Basically no real difference real world but still.... Unfortunately the 9950X3D variant for MSI is still sitting at $5099.99 atm, but we will see....

So, I think my next project will be to sell the Z790 Apex build before I change my mind and decide against it. I wish I could just sell the entire package preassembled with the MO-RA 360 and chiller. I'd probably keep the 4090 though. I'll probably end up having to sell it in pieces though, because there are no people that I know of locally that can appreciate the sheer wickedness such an insane beast can offer. I wish Brother @Rage Set did not live so far away. This morning I fired it up for the first time in a long time. I think 60 days or so since I turned on the three electrical outlets that power all of it. I ran an AIDA64 memory benchmark and 8600 with tight timings this monster still stomps the life out of everything else I own. I am going to have to turn everything back off before I start questioning why I built two Ryzen machines and have been ignoring this one. If I start using this again I will like the AMD builds less. Just web browsing and launching applications, everything feels so much snappier and lively than I remembered. It makes the Ryzen builds seem laggy and sluggish in comparison. The CPU is running crazy hot, so I am guessing the liquid metal has dried up or run off the die from it sitting idle and turned off for such a long time. (One of the unfortunate down-sides of having the motherboard vertical rather than horizontal is that gravity eventually wins. Horizontal orientation allows the die to perpetually bathe itself in a puddle of liquid metal.) What's funny is it never seemed loud when it was my main rig. Now having 27 fans and 5 D5 pumps purring away seems noisy even though it's not obnoxious and it is running at a very low decibel level. It just seems loud compared to the other more pedestrian Ryzen builds that have fewer moving parts. I also forgot how much cooler the 14900KS runs at an idle. Both of my 9950X CPUs idle about 12°C hotter and run hotter under load even though the 14900KS pulls a whole lot more watts than the 9950X CPUs do. Congrats to your mom on the new laptop. That's quite an upgrade for her. The leap in performance has to be nothing short of astronomical coming from such a tired and relatively slow 10-year old machine. I agree with you on OLED. I'm kind of a weirdo sometimes when it comes to paying high prices for things that don't make a computer run faster, but OLED just doesn't impress me. Too expensive with too little to offer in return, and I'm not into having to pamper a monitor to keep it from getting screen burn. Utter nonsense IMHO. Paying a lot of money for something comparatively fragile and destined to destroy itself is illogical to me. Even if that wasn't an issue, it's not worth the extra cost. Big bucks with little bang seems to be the new world we live in now. Brother @jaybee83 - this one is the one I would recommend. Both of mine are solid AMD kits. https://www.newegg.com/g-skill-32gb-ddr5-8000/p/N82E16820374624?Item=N82E16820374624

my 4090 feels offended by this....but is also quite impressed 😛 dude, i JUST finished my breakfast here! was planning to keep it down, mkay? 😄 oh cmoooon..... cant we just get ONE part theese days without the risk of it crapping out on us inside the first week/month/year? seriously...

Well, that is the driver I have installed already. But, your point is no less valid regardless. I seldom ever use current drivers because most of the time there is an older one that is better. This is how the PC tech landscape looks now. And, we're supposed to somehow be happy about it. They're full of what you see in this photo. It's what they sell and it's what they're doing to us all.

The 9070 XT beat the 4090 in this benchmark.

RTX5090 - Superposition 1080P - Global 5th🙂 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/unigine_superposition_-_1080p_xtreme/submissions/5812706 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/unigine_superposition_-_8k_optimized/submissions/5812711 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark11_-_performance/submissions/5812723?recalculate=true

ASUS COULDN'T AFFORD SEND WITH A FEW SCREWS FOR THEIR $3000 FLAGSHIP GRAPHICS CARD. But I got a useless badge/button intended for gamer kids with ROG stamped in gold on. Stupids. Yup, I had to use tape. So this won't look pretty. And the 55cm tubes is barely long enough to put the radiator on top of the big black box😎 Barely time for testing. Right now I haven't much time for this. The card have been in the box since I bought it. The tests is done with stock voltage. Not so sure putting the voltage slider to 100% or 1.100V will help much with the power cap from Nvidia. All above me have the XOC vbios and only for the chosen ones. And the worst part... Friends of the fab clockers get their XOC firmware. Yup, only for the chosen ones. Oh'well, the results is still ok with vanilla firmware and tape😎 https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/gpupi_v3.3_-_1b/submissions/5812214?recalculate=true https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/gpupi_v3.3_-_32b/submissions/5812213?recalculate=true

Asus use phase-change GPU thermal pads. Hopefully similar quality as PTM 7950. But as you have seen from my posts... Asus can do cheap choices to cut costs for maximized profits. Only a tecnical inspection from an review by Igorslab can determine the brand/quality. Asus could easily use an copy cat to cut costs. We see now why the 4090 is still so expensive. 5090 will be the next on the list. xx90 series is not meant or made for gamers. This is what gamers should buy.... According to Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Is Now The Best Selling GPU At Newegg; GPU Shortage Shows How An 8GB Card Can Get Popular At $450+ The RTX 4060 is currently one of the handful of budget GPUs one can afford and while AMD and NVIDIA have focused heavily on $500+ GPUs, millions of gamers around the world want something more pocket-friendly. Not surprisingly, only one RTX 4060 edition can be seen in the top 10 list and the second RTX 4060 card is in the 16th position.

I'm so glad a board member picked it up especially @1610ftw. Hopefully he gives it a whirl in his X170SM-G to see how far it can flex especially compared to the SP101 I sold him that was my best sample I had including vs my golden sample like yours but your SP106 was rated higher I think than my LTX sample. --- And yeah, supply is trickling in steadily now but more importantly demand at those higher price points is waning fast. The fact those combo deals which aren't even that bad (Sub $3k w/ a z890 Motherboard) for a gigabyte shows something is going to have to give especially for perceived "B" tier cards. I'm thinking of cancelling my Astral 5090 pickup at the end of the week. I just am having problems stomaching a $3.5k 5090 purchase. I know it's an Astral and all that, but the price just seems crazy high. But on the other hand, Astrals have been binning pretty nicely overall but I know me and I'd be just as content with a $2k FE or a $2.2k PNY and keep it moving. I'll continue to mull it over mentally. 🤣 I could always just play with it and see if that justifies the purchase. I do have a 60 day return window but still that isn't realistic considering I have to pay for it within 30....

4th place Ungine Superposition on Hwbot and Ungine Leaderboard. Right below LN2 and XOC firmware. https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/unigine_superposition_-_1080p_xtreme/rankings?cores=1&hardwareType=gpu https://benchmark.unigine.com/leaderboards/superposition/1.x/1080p-extreme/single-gpu/page-1

btw this comment is now making me consider buying like 5-6 kits and just keeping the best one 😄 RAM is currently quite cheap, actually.

yep thats what im counting on, it being the sticks. altho i was able to stabilize them at 7600 on my 7950X. i guess theres always an interdependency factor with the CPU IMC. in any case, for now im just gonna dial in the best i can with the current sticks and then focus on the 5090 first 🙂once i got some budget back from selling off parts ill reconsider getting new RAM. so much tuning / tinkering to do, so little time! 😄

Very strong possibility the issue is your sticks are crappy rather than the CPU. Out of more than a dozen returned memory kits I usually find one kit worth keeping. Also, be careful with 24GB sticks. The Apex might change things in this respect, but so far none of my Ryzen systems have played nice with 24GB modules and stability for more than RAM benchmark was never achieved. Intel eats the 24GB sticks like candy, but Ryzen chokes on them.

thx bud much appreciated! currently trying to get a stable baseline at 7600, from which i can extend my tuning again.

Here you go, brother. Hope this is helpful. Ooops, @jaybee83 and @electrosoft I forgot this one. I hope the firmware clown posse at A$$zeus puts this where it belongs in the primary memory timings section and not leave it buried in the AMD overclocking for idiots menus. You have to convert to hex for that menu. For now, this is the only way to set tRCDWR.

well technically that would qualify as a new tier between 5090 and 5080, say a 5080 Ti SuperDuper ROPless edition?! 😂 if its pricing is settled somewhere between 999 and 1999 then sure why not. in the end its all about pricing. so finally getting around to some tuning time with my 9950X3D. able to boot FCLK 2200, thats a good sign. havent checked for full stability yet, want to get a feel of the landscape firsr. at first i could only get 2133 to boot but was able to massage 2200 into booting via upping PLL and VDDG voltages. actually first time that upping VDDG did anything for me 😄 now doing quick n dirty boot tests for max DDR5 frequencies. see if im rather limited by the board, the sticks or the CPU IMC. lets see if i can finally get 8000 stable or maybe even 8200 to boot...fingers crossed boiz! oh and a quick update on my suprim 5090 order: shop got back to me and confirmed that next shipment from MSI should arrive at their shop beginning of april 🙂 that i can live with if its just +/- a week or so. just wanted to make sure its not several months or anything crazy like that.... edit: cool, just booted DDR5-8100 🙂 looks like they now have finer grained frequency steps starting with 8000. 8200 still no go, unfortunately. now lets see how far i can push FCLK 😄 edit 2: nope, topping out at 2200. now lets test for stability....

The board I have only does x8/x4 for CFX/SLI which is why I am not considering it for gpu benchmarking.

Must MUST protect precious cargo on the way home!!!!! 🤣 In case anyone else wanted a GPU from my BB, here is there massive selection: **SCORE**

I thought so too. Only thing I could see maybe doing is some thermal putty on the backplate for extra cooling but the overall look and everything is top notch. I initially thought the rubber gasket came with the astral but realized it did not. I wonder if it comes with the WB, but either way it is nice. One reason I was hesitant before pulling the trigger was the LM possibility. I'm sure Asus only hires the best bean counters 🤣 Not yet......but close. 🤑 What's the ETA on your Suprim?

That is an awesome-looking waterblock. I'd like to know where to buy those rubber gaskets for the liquid metal.

Spot on with that link to Reagan speaking about the pitfalls of tariffs and how to properly use them. Look, the US has been here before. When we went to economical war with Japan in the late 80s/early 90s we were successful because of not only us but other countries bringing balance to global trade and leveling out participation in the economy. Focusing on China only and making sure we have allies in the fight world wide is the right approach if that's the goal to thwart another country from achieving economical dominance like the US has enjoyed for decades. But this Liberation Day nonsense in tandem? No. I will reiterate, I hope it succeeds, but all the signs are it is going to cause catastrophic damage and the vast majority will be a tax on citizens in the US and other countries if they retaliate which I expect can and will happen. I'm just not seeing the end game here dropping an economical nuke on the world and not expecting retaliation. I'm sure @Reciever is going to want to steer the convo back to tech (rightfully so), so this is all I'll speak on about the tariffs and how our hobby is going to get much more expensive sooner than later. ------ If more and more businesses, both small and large, start to use 5090 for AI server needs that will compound pricing on top of everything. It would also harken back to mining farms and lots of GPUs being sold en masse. For 5090 flag ship cards, it's a potential problem, but for all the cards underneath I expect supply to continue to flow in both AMD and Nvidia. If you're content with 5080 on down, you should be good to go soon. Yeah, that 10900k was one of those CPUs on the desktop the SP113 when pushed to 300w the SP113 was clearly the winner hitting 5.5+ pretty easily, but in the X170SM-G? I just kept comparing R23 runs going, "this can't be right" because it was running so much better than all the previous ones I tested and all the ones after I tested. Yeah, you and @tps3443 run 14900hx chips while mine runs a 7950x3d. He has an Acer while you and I have MSI variants. I did swap out the stock drive for a heatsink equipped 990 Pro 2TB. I'll have to check the memory temps. I've been using this since 2016 and if I'm away for awhile, I will pack it in my laptop bag. It works fantastic.

Very nice, looking forward to play with the 10900K 🙂 I also got a decent 10850K by the way but it is just too much for a laptop as it consumes about 15 to 20% more than the chip I got from @electrosoft. Mobile 50x prices are highway robbery right now with MSI, Asus, Razer and others and the Raider with the 4090 will be much better value for money, so I would keep it for a while. As I have rocked the Raider 18HX as my main driver for the last ca. 7 months I can comment on a couple of things even though I have it worse than you guys as mine uses the 14900HX and 192GB memory: I can confirm that it gets VERY hot when not elevated so elevation it a must but then this is true for just about everything out there. Also even with elevation the SSDs, Intel chipset and memory get very hot, especially with the fans turned down which is not a problem for CPU and GPU temps most of the time. This is because until recently all laptops had little to no active airflow over these areas and this is only slowly changing now with first Razer and then Asus adding a center front fan and now Gigabyte one on each side blowing over the other components. Up to more than 100C on the memory and permanently around 60C on SSDs was not what I wanted so I just got a second bottom cover so that I do not care if a few of the plastic noses break off and when not typing on the Raider and with it sitting aside I take it off, takes all of 5 seconds. I do this with most of my laptops that I use for multiple tasks as they all get hot and drop a lot of temps in the SSDs and memory when I do that, also very important for the X170. The difference in memory is as much as 40C and with SSDs I easily see 20C less. Oh and I took off the shield over the memory - no idea how it would be supposed to survive if I retained that shield. Here is what I currently use: Ringke folding stand, it has two height tiers and folds flat when on the road, very convenient: https://www.amazon.com/Ringke-Portable-Lightweight-Anti-Slide-Invisible/dp/B083VT6P7W/ Two Noctua 90mm fans that I had sitting around, just used to move air under the laptop and they can be positioned just about anywhere depending if you type on the laptop or not or if the cover is off or not. Slim 120 x 15mm fans may be even better but I was too lazy to change things. In any case these should just fit under the laptop and in a pinch they can probably be driven directly from the USB-A connector with this: https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B0DDT78NTK/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&th=1 I would still prefer some external power and would definitely do that if these fans run permanently and at home. Fans could for example be two or three of these, they can be attached in a row, no added cabling needed: https://www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-P12-Slim-PWM-Pressure-optimised/dp/B08QDKGCCW/?th=1 and some rubber feet: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07X24NTM3?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title Fans also work quite well for cooling things down a bit when the bottom cover is closed but of course better when it is not attached or when ventilation openings are increased. So if one never wants to take off the bottom cover I would suggest to get a second one and cut some ventilation openings if needed. TLDR: Use elevation and choose one that you can take with you add some airflow that goes over the bottom, maybe cut out some areas with a spare cover check temps for memory, SSDs and chipset - you may be surprised

easy: numbers. they want the maximum amount of addditional prime subscriptions, and the number of buyers for the 70 class far outweighs the 80 and 90 class!

I wonder if other brands not having anything for sale is because they knew the cost was more than most are willing to pay? If they were smart, that could explain it. There would be little point from a business perspective in producing a grossly overpriced product that would move slowly and have lower demand because of unacceptable pricing.

It looks as though my X870E Apex pre-order with NewEgg is moving. The release date was changed from 4/4/2025 to 3/28/2025 and it now shows as an order with an invoice (no longer a pre-order). Tracking number not issued yet. And, now the Apex is no longer available for pre-order. I take that to mean that it is no longer a pending release but an officially released product now. That really needs to happen, although I would like to see prices implode even further than that. I think NVIDIA and all of the AIB partners need to suffer catastrophic financial losses for their predatory and nefarious behaviors. What we have seen is very carefully executed extortion and probably some serious anti-trust law violations and other crimes would be discovered if anyone decided to start digging deeper. I wonder how many people took the route that I did, said effyew stupid morons and now NVIDIA is experiencing consumer backlash? When I saw 5090 prices I was like "oh hell no... not now, not ever" and decided I would reward AMD for being less blantantly predatory, even though I had every reason to believe I wouldn't like the 9070 XT. The only way the price gouging is ever going to get fixed is by people telling them to stuff it up their tailpipe and leave them holding the bag with product that nobody buys until it gets sold at a price equal to or less than what they need to break even. What is the sudden preoccupation with FE cards? I've always hated FE cards and have never had any desire whatsoever to buy one, at least since the Kepler or Maxwell era. The design of the 3090/Ti 4090 FE cards sucked and the 5090 takes the cake for being a morphodite engineering abortion. It's made like a stinking turdbook with the stupid cards and cables, and a very anti-enthusiast design concept. I hope none of the AIB partners ever do something equally tragic with board design.

What's in the box? (In my Brad Pitt from SE7EN voice) --- 5090 sales are definitely slowing down and everything else Nvidia is seriously slowing down..... Gigabyte, Zotac and MSI combo deals on Newegg have been up all day with some even sub $3k for the Gigabyte combos still available for the $2639 Windforce and Z890 MB combo for $2939. That includes a free Star Wars Outlaws Gold Edition key (~$109 value). Like I said, Pre-builts are available everywhere now for order. Upper end 5070, 5070ti and 5080 (aka the stupidly overpriced versions) cards are in stock. (shipped and sold from NE only) and some on BB too. The real question is with tariffs in play, will the prices remain the same (IE, MSI just raised their prices again), continue to go up or fall? What is the actual breaking point? 9070xt's are all out of stock atm on NE (shipped and sold from NE only) and BB.

Aside from there being some weird "universal tdp" limit (example: RTX 3000 is 80w TDP. The card is only using 55w TDP while M3000M in primary is using 20-25w TDP.) This means there's some driver issue where both cards TDP is being calculated together. If I can fix that issue, the card can run at full power. Same issue affects M18xR1 with M2000M + RTX 5000. One way to get past this (just a theory for now) on Pascal would be to increase TDP by 25-30w on the card. I may test this with P4000. Anyways the secret is simple, SLI laptops have 2 MXM slots. Primary is used for any GPU that can run in M17xR2. (NO AMD cards, this causes no boot). Then secondary card is any card we can fit. In My case Adlink RTX 3000. Here's some preliminary results: M3000M seems to cause inverted colors issue same as 980M. I thought @Komputers-Best mentioned M4000M worked fine but my M3000M causes messed up colors with HP and Dell vBIOS. Going to try a M2000M next.

Absolutely awful deal no doubt about it. If I don't like it, it will be going right back. I have a 60 day return window. I wonder if you could have even picked up the LC on their site at the old price..... Astral $1649.99 vs $999.99 = ~65% markup over MSRP Astral $3359 vs $1999.99 = ~68% markup over MSRP Ugh.... I agree. While I do like my 32" Alienware OLED, I find I still prefer the picture quality of my benQ 10-bit 32" IPS display overall in every aspect but it is capped at 60hz. Everytime I'm working/tuning/building a system with it and launch some games for testing, it just re-affirms my love of its display. I might try one of BenQ's 10-bit 32" 144hz displays. I have a few Asus Vivobooks here with Ultra 7 and Ultra 9 CPUs with 15.6" 1080p OLED displays and they're nice, but I always preferred the displays on my X170KM and SM along with even the P870TM I had. I thought those 144hz displays were great. It is starting to show its age though. I moved my SP109 14900KS into the wife's system and I suspect that is where it will stay for the next 2-3 years or beyond. It's running great, boosting to 6.2 in WoW, temps under 70c and pulls under 1.4v within the Intel recommended limits coupled with a dialed in LLC and UV. Still a banger of a platform though. --- Like above, OLED is nice, but I find myself really preferring the picture quality and colors (after both were calibrated) of my BenQ 32" 10-bit IPS display. ---- 5090 demand is definitely leveling out at least in regards to overpaying past MSRP and scalping. Pre-builts are in stock everywhere now and combo deals are lasting a lot longer on da egg even simple combos like Gigabyte 5090+MB only. But MSRP keeps creeping up...... MSI also looks to have raised prices across the board with the Liquid and Suprim now costing $3k+ in the US and even the damn Ventus clocking in at $2949.99.

So interesting development today. I bought my mom a new laptop over the weekend since her old one was dying (had a good run though as it's 10 years old), and decided to do some tuning and benchmarking with it while setting it up for her. The Ryzen 9 HX 370 inside it is a powerhouse of a CPU when you max out the power limits. It benches higher than my 14900K, both in single core and multicore (specifically in Cinebench R15, which is the only version of that program I use for benching)! I also got rid of the windows 11 installation on it in favor of my trusty windowsxlite edition of windows 10 I really like for absolute maximum performance. In short, after doing some tuning to maximize performance, the system is extremely snappy, and my mom is loving it. She snaps her fingers, the laptop is done doing what she wanted it to. I also tuned the speakers to give a sound quality boost. All in all, the Asus Vivobook S 16 is actually a pretty good laptop for general users (but bleh BGA🤣). The integrated graphics in this thing are pretty powerful too, I mean you can actually game on this thing! Even though the laptop isn't for me, since I bought it, I might as well have some benching and overclocking adventures while I'm setting the thing up. 🤣 However, this isn't even the most interesting part. This laptop has a really nice, glossy OLED screen, so I decided to do a side by side comparison to the screen installed in my Clevo X170SM-G. The verdict? Holy crap, my X170's screen is almost just as good as an OLED. I did not realize just how close to OLED level quality it was, which I was not expecting. So basically, rip off the stupid matte antiglare layer, increase color saturation a bit (from 50% to 70%), and now your IPS display looks like an OLED screen (yes, I modded my X170's screen by removing the matte anti glare layer, so it's a glossy IPS screen now). The OLED screen on the Vivobook was kind of underwhelming when I tested it out some more. I mean, it's a super sharp 3.2K screen, but it suffers from black smearing? What? I thought OLEDs were supposed to have near instantaneous response times! It doesn't look like that's the case though as this OLED display gave me PTSD of me using my Dell S3422DWG VA panel, which has very heavy black smearing that I absolutely hate. The black smearing on the Vivobook's display isn't as bad, but it's still there, and my X170's IPS display has no black smearing whatsoever. If anything, my X170's IPS display feels much more responsive than the OLED display in the Vivobook. Granted, my X170's display is a 300 Hz display vs the 120 Hz display in the Vivobook, but OLED is supposed to have sub millisecond response times. It doesn't look that way to me at all, as sub millisecond response times should mean no black smearing. So I guess OLEDs aren't the juggernaut the hype is making them out to be. Couple that with the expiration date on OLEDs, and I no longer want one. I'll just go with glossy IPS thank you very much. IPS seems superior in every metric except image quality, which it can almost match OLEDs if the IPS display is also glossy and you tune your color saturation, so good enough for me. Just goes to say, don't fall for the hype on any technology. Always do your own comparisons and testing, because sometimes the reviewers are just flat out wrong, just like how people keep saying there is no performance difference between windows 11 and windows 10. Uhh... yeah there is. I did my own benchmarking and get 20% higher framerates on windows 10, so I call BS. I'm now calling BS on the hype on OLEDs too. I'm glad I did not buy one, and now I no longer plan to buy an OLED display for my desktop. I'll just have to find an IPS display that has the matte anti glare layer glued on top of the polarizer layer instead of infused into the polarizer so I don't destroy the screen when removing the matte layer. Either that, or I'll have to find another way to glossify my Asus XG309CM monitor.

I'm sure it will be fine🙂 But I expect you also will see this is an awful deal for +$3000. The value you get for your money is damn bad. Checked Asus US Store. Asus have finally increased the prices for the Astral LC from 3409 to $3719,99 or $350 USD🙄 Yep, the old price was too cheap. Consumers mostly avoid scalpers on market places. Now you can't avoid it anymore if you want Asus cards. 186% above MSRP😲 https://www.asus.com/us/motherboards-components/graphics-cards/all-series/filter?Category=NVIDIA&Spec=354488 The ROG Astral 5080 starts to look damn cheap with the awful $1,649.99 price tag.

Binning is Winning especially when you're trying to push beyond factory specs (which is really all you're guaranteed).

Thursday!

It seems like most all AM5 owners (including me) that have them are having the best success with G.Skill Trident Z5 Neo EXPO F5-8000J3848H16G kits. The G.Skill Trident 8000 and TeamGroup Extreme 8200 48GB XMP kits that I have are super stable on Intel but they are not totally stable on the Gene or the AORUS boards. The 16GB G.Skill 8000 Neo kits are very stable in comparison. So far I haven't seen anyone on AM5 that is getting great results with the 24GB sticks. I am hoping the Apex changes that because I have a TeamGroup Xtreem 8200 48GB kit I would love to be able to use in it.

Yes, everyone talks nice about their baby. That's normal🙂 Astral OC 5090 - 4th fan sounds almost like a saw I haven't had much time with the card. But I'll probably keep it. Still sad seeing Asus isn't close to Galax regarding offer the premium experience for their flagship. Galax (KFA2 for Europe market) prioritizes Asia and only offers 5090D cards. I will still prefer 5090 above the China models. So yup, I will most likely keep the card. But it will never be a collector item (should not be this way when you know this is the best they can offer). The US ban destroyed Galax/KFA2 flagship as option for everyone outside China. It's what it is. A broken tech industri. New batch of 5090's were put up for sale today. They all sold out in no time.

After der8uer's video, I actually spent time hunting down YT videos of the card in action and even before the vBIOS update, it wasn't bad at all. Nobody complains in the forums about it either. I actually put headphones on to really listen and the overall sound profile of the Astral is better than half the cards I've owned in the past easily. ---- But having owned your LC for a bit now, are you overall happy with it or are you going to return it?

Asus did address the harmonics issues with the fourth fan with a vBIOS update but I get your point. For a company that charges such an asus tax, you would expect HOF levels of perfection and we're just not getting it. It's frustrating. What I find frustrating from Asus is they hit it out of the park with their GPU Tweak software and pin monitoring and to a level their build quality, but then fail cutting costs everywhere and charging so much more overall vs MSRP. I would think it would be the ram, but it is TG which is usually pretty solid and it is rated at 8200 but still it *could* the ram. It could also be your board as alluded to before being a 2DPC board that is stalling it with issues >=7600. I know the stupid $80 1DPC Asrock board bested my 2DPC Carbon pretty easily for 8000+. Physics can not be defeated. Reason 4090 was so much better than the 3080ti mobile was the node shrink. Keeping the same node means there's only so much you can do with a 175w envelope and there was no way you were going to see a major performance bump. Then laptop makers decide to insanely bump prices prices into the stratosphere for the 5000 series......

shoot, unfortunately nothing new that i hadnt considered before setting-wise. couldnt stabilize 7600 for the life of me, so i abandoned that route for now and focussing on 1:1 settings. able to boot 6600 but not stable, so currently getting a 6400 baseline. if this works out, itll give me more of a perf. boost than going 2:1 at sub-7600. im also considering getting a new RAM kit to check my options there. either a regular G.Skill 8400 kit or G.Skill CKD 9600 (although the latter aint supported in CKD mode on AM5 and its double the price of the former 😄), maybe that could give me more of an edge with this CPU/board combo. you and me both @Suprim loving 😄 ill be starting back at work after my parental leave this tuesday and both my lady and lil princess are planning a trip to the grandparents for two weeks at the end of april / beg of may. means ill be home alone for TWO FULL WEEKS. as long as the Suprim reaches me in time before that, its gonna be gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood 😎 unhindered tuning / tinkering time for daddy 😄 as for the X870E Extreme....soooo Wifi7 and a new colorful display? welp im planning to upgrade my wifi module soon anyways, so COLOR me unimpressed (pun intended 😛) still gonna check out the reviews and detailed spec list once available. in any case, STILL gonna call you Hero folks PEASANTS mwahaha 😄

It is harder that ever to expect good things from A$$zeus or their competitors. What makes the A$$zeus clown posse particularly corrupt is how they charge significantly more (often 50 to 75% more) for their uniquely-stupid broken trash. That makes it harder than ever to have any respect for them. I'm happy that you got what you wanted, albeit at an astronomical price. I'm sad that the quality and performance are not aligned with the 70% penalty assessed for being a loyal A$$zeus customer. Have you identified any legitimate reason or benefit for paying the loyalty tariff?

Astral flexing some seriously nice clocks there @Papusan! I haven't seen a bum Astral (air or LC) yet really. I don't think I can resist the allure of my BB order. 🤣 @tps3443 what kind of clocks/scores are you getting with the 5090 FE in comparison? @jaybee83 can't wait to see some Suprim loving up in here! All roads lead to Rome. Our 2nd / terts are very similar, but my primary are based around 2200/6400 vs G2(4), nice! ---- @jaybee83 x870e crosshair Extreme if you want to upgrade and continue to address us peasants with Hero only 🤣 https://videocardz.com/pixel/asus-rog-crosshair-x870e-extreme-motherboard-has-been-pictured

Gigabutt released a new BIOS and fixed the contextual help/hint text being the wrong language. It seems to run exactly the same. They didn't provide a menu option for disabling the WiFi7/BT module like I asked them to. So stupid that there is no way to disable the module.

https://hwbot.org/benchmarks/3dmark_-_time_spy_extreme/submissions/5813293 https://www.3dmark.com/hall-of-fame-2/timespy+graphics+score+extreme+preset/version+1.0

humtz no luck getting 7800/8000/8100 stable, at least not with voltages im comfortable with. bro @Mr. Fox what kinda voltages are u running? heres my list of max values, which i wouldnt like exceeding for 24/7: SOC 1.30V (bios limit) VDDIO 1.58 Misc 1.575 VDDP 1.199 RAM VDD/VDDQ 1.69 VDDG IOD/CCD both at 1.10 (FCLK stabilization, unrelated to RAM)

bro papu is getting familiar with his new toy 😁

yes ofc even with the right price itll leave a very bad aftertaste in your mouth..... urgh on a brighter note, can confirm that FCLK 2200 is stable on my sample 🙂

Hmmm. Can this be this weekends biggest Joke? $3150 with less rops but with higher price than 5090 MSRP ? Will people buy this type cards?--- See edit. And could this be a great buy if the prices was 5080 MSRP ? Aka $999 Nvidia RTX 5090 cards with missing ROPs are being sold as 'B-stock' And Intel. Don't want spend silicon wafers for gamer cards. Do people really buy Intel products nowadays? No Arc B770, Intel reportedly cancels Battlemage's top-of-the-line line Edit. Close to 60% would buy it. What with you @Mr. Fox🧐 ? Defective cards priced above MSRP. B-stock doesn't always mean you get it cheap. And on top same/similar problems as with the desktop cards... Nvidia put all their resources on data center chips. Nvidia's 50-series laptop launch looks bumpy: slipping ship dates, game crashes, and delayed review units