Talon

Picked up an MSRP Zotac 4090 for my brother last week from Microcenter. Managed to reserve one online when a single one popped around 1030pm. Picked it up the next morning. His shitty MSRP Zotac boosts higher out of box than both my Strix OC and FE card at 2775Mhz stock. Had him do the desktop VRAM test today on the desktop and he was able to easily max out the +2000Mhz VRAM slider in MSI Afterburner with no issues. We got him the 2 year warranty and the card has a dual BIOS so will be flashing that crappy 450w limited vBIOS soon. The VRM while shit should not have any issue pushing 500-600w. Kinda crazy how the cheapest of cheap-o cards gets the silicon gold VRAM. This should not be the case!

4090 is 37% faster than AMD's best. Not good for us wanting a 4090 Ti sooner rather than later. Looks like AMD isn't competing at the high end this gen. Nvidia 4080 is more power efficient than the AMD GPU. In certain situations it pulls insane 100w at idle desktop. AMD drivers at their best. The performance is neck and neck in normal rasterization. Then the 4080 smashes the AMD GPU in Ray Tracing and that didn't even include DLSS 3.0 and Frame Gen which AMD has no answer to yet. Yes I know they "announced" FSR 3, but a stated release date of 2023 is vague, and no idea the kind of support it will see by that point. Considering the $200 price difference MSRP vs MSRP, The AMD card just ain't worth it IMO. That coil whine lol.

RIP The Hype.

Yes it's true. This has been widely reported over at OC.net. Plenty of users found out these new 2gb ram modules like to be warmer to an extent vs cold. They can't clock as high once they get too cold.

Shame to hear about your memory OC. My Strix OC card does +1800 or +1900 before it crashes/freezes the desktop. Can't remember right now. My FE MSRP card does +2200 before it freezes at desktop. Golden memory does +2000 or higher with average seemingly around +1400-1700 from what I've seen on OC.net.

Also for yall maybe looking for an MSRP card this might be a chance to get a card near or at MSRP. https://us-store.msi.com/Graphics-Cards/NVIDIA-GPU/GeForce-RTX-40-Series/GeForce-RTX-4090-SUPRIM-24G https://us-store.msi.com/LuckyTicketGPU

Yes comparing a not yet released product vs scalper 3rd party resellers is a BIG difference. Don't you worry though, the AMD product is going to be in short supply and will be scalped as well. Low supply has already been basically leaked/confirmed and I'm willing to bet we see plenty of $1500+ XTX models very soon. Those that get it day one at MSRP are going to be lottery winners though.

They won't be selling many more of those at that price, and supply is likely nearly gone. I haven't seen any in stock lately. If you click on that BUY IT NOW button, it links to an out of stock BB sale which hasn't been there for at least a month.

A refresh could definitely be more than just clocks. Could definitely see core increases, additional clocks and more cache would all be welcomed. Either way another gen isn't bad for LGA 1700 customers and is a good will from Intel and gives LGA 1700 3 gens and might establish new Intel norm moving forward.

Gratz on the 4090! Should run nice and cool with that AIO.

Intel WILL improve their GPU performance more and faster over time versus the established big players. Not because they are better, but because they have so much untapped potential to still squeeze versus the others that are milking all they can out of the old cow. I really want an A770 just to tinker. I've always liked Tom, such a force behind many of Nvidia's achievements. I'm glad he's helping drive the ship over at Intel.

Apparently migrating the servers, supposed to be done in the next couple of days.

I tested 3. I got SP99, SP101 and SP106. I gave my brother my SP99. Kept the SP101 and SP106. I'm not bothering with further binning and doubt I'll go KS. I am very happy with any 13900K and memory OC is the META now. Core clocks bring minimal gains for my use case and default is just fine. Memory OC brings much bigger gains. I grabbed a Z790 Apex and 8000 CL36 is now easy. Hoping EVGA gets their shit together and gets a decent BIOS out soon, looking like 2.04 is trash. If they do fix it, I'll rebuild the second rig with the Dark board Right now I'm sitting on some hardware, but I'm finally selling stuff off again. Thinking about dumping my laptop too since it's not been used in months at this point.

What happened to your recent golden chip you just got from BB? Did you sell that one too?

YEP I've brought this error up with EVGA and Asus, I've had it happen on both brands. It's an A-Die bug or something. You push too hard and then it just won't post anymore. Then nothing works to fix it. The only thing that has worked for me is to clear CMOS and then put in M-Die sticks. Absolutely insane that it could lead to a soft brick. Had I not had the other sticks I would have been dead in the water or possibly switched BIOS. But most casual users would have been lost. I saw someone else post with this exact bug/issue.

I'm sure you're on the latest BIOS, but still EVGA has yet to tune the BIOS for proper A-Die support IMO. I think they're either saving that for Z790 release or using it as a way to get people to buy the Z790 Dark and that annoys me. Asus is releasing BIOS updates almost daily at this point, constantly tuning for A-Die, to the point that I have 7200 CL34 A-Die stable on my Z690 Hero 4 dimm board plug/play XMP. That is just sad that such a high end 2 dimm board is struggling so badly. Try 1.26 VDDQ IVR TX/CPU VDD/ CPU VDDQ TX. I can't remember what it's called in the EVGA BIOS right now. After I did this I was able to boot well into 8000+ but never stable above 7800 CL36.

They work great for quick CPU test, for example just making sure the system is up and running, checking an SP score, etc. No mess, not wasting tons of cash on expensive paste. You could easily use them 24/7 if not running high clocks/voltage and benching. Like if you were just to build a gaming system, you 100% use the thermal pad and not have overheating issues. But for best temps and highest perf, of course good paste is the way to go.

100% agree. After using this cable on a couple 40 series cards, I've had zero issues with the cable other than being semi difficult to plug in and unplug. I mentioned that a couple weeks ago when I got my cablemod cable I noticed how difficult it could be to just seat the cable fully. And look and what came out, it actually is people failing to ensure a properly seated cable. In my opinion, people building computers and no less responsibility to ensure it's done properly than say someone installing a new lighting fixture. If you manage to do that incorrectly you could just as easily burn down your home. Should those people be allowed to turn around and sue the company that sold the lighting fixture? But Nvidia and the cable spec should have made this easier IMO.

Tried and tried to get my Z690 Dark to get stable with A-Die at really high clocks. Even though they released a BIOS that finally got it booting high memory frequency, above 7800 CL36 I could not stabilize. Maybe they'll drop a BIOS that fixes that, maybe they won't and will "encourage" customers to buy the 790 to get stable high A-Die clocks. The Apex stabilized at 8000 CL36 at stock 1.4v for DRAM and autos on everything else with XMP Tweaked Preset. Played an hour on Warzone II and 2042 and no issues after testing ram. I've thrown a bit more voltage at the 8200 CL36 I'm testing now, no idea since I just got it all setup this evening.

Still a banger CPU. Especially with 4000 Gear 1. Not sure if you picked up a CPU yet, but I think 13900KF at Amazon was pretty cheap the other day. https://www.amazon.com/Intel-i9-13900KF-Desktop-Processor-P-cores/dp/B0BCFM3CJ4/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3UZALL1N1YHSU&keywords=13900kf&qid=1668630132&sprefix=13900kf%2Caps%2C116&sr=8-1&ufe=app_do%3Aamzn1.fos.4dd97f68-284f-40f5-a6f1-1e5b3de13370

I love the beginning of the video where the cable is basically hanging out in order to get it to burn up. Failure Rate of 0.05 to 0.1%. And then of that small percentage, what percentage is because some people drew the short stick in the thought department.

Absolutely, good stuff for non RTX owners. I tested both yesterday when it came out and the DLSS image quality is better and more stable. The FSR 2.1 flickers more often and it's especially bad when driving at times, heavy ghosting/trailing when the camera jerks or has a chase camera angle. This is especially noticeable you see in person vs YouTube heavy compression. Still if I had an older GPU, with no RTX, I would choose FSR 2.1 over native.

Damn do most cards stop at +1000? My Strix runs out of room at +1900 with +1850 being the limit. But honestly the chip and memory chips are all a lottery, no brand is better than the other this gen. Card to card variance is real and you're paying for looks, cooling, and warranty reliability.

@tps3443 This is what you were supposed to ask for in those Freebies lol. 😁

Yikes. I am so far so good, and I always shut down my rig when not in use. I still believe these people are not plugging the cable in all the way, it is very easy to do. When I plugged in my CableMod cable I realized/saw just how easy it is to think you have fully seated the cable when in fact the cable is not seated at all and easily pulls right out. This has been shown by trusted tech outlets are a possible and likely cause. It shoudln't be this easy to mistake and should be addressed in some way or public statement. Really happy I have the Microcenter replacement warranty right now. No need to wait for RMA or anything like that. Walk in with issue, walk out with new card or $$$$. Maybe mine will fail when the 4090 Ti drops for similar price haha.