Mr. Fox

11 minutes ago, Papusan said:

 

There is no 5070Ti or 9700XT here home. People want those cards due cheaper price.

 

For 5090... +34 cards available from Asus. Astral LC oc cost $3450 and the sales is low. Asus has reached the upper limits and above what people are willing to pay. No in hell I would pay more than the $3000 what I paid. Even that was too much. My best guess.... Asus  need to reduce the prices to get them out from the stores. I see the same pattern with 5080 Astral. All too expensive and they are in stock here. +15 of them. And no cards from other brands. Still the sales is low.

 

If there was cheaper cards from other brands.... I expect the more expensive options from Asus would stay in the store. Aka unsold.

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.

2 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

and LOL at those MSI MSRP prices,  according to those i paid 250€ BELOW MSRP for the Suprim 😄

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.

3 hours ago, Papusan said:

I'm still on the old MC and bios version before the so called fix. No need for new is "always" better... @Mr. Fox

 

TWITTER user Hemu @itsHemu2K ( link ) said he had tested 0X12C, but the results were disappointing.

Hemu:

These new bioses are shit. I'll stick to x123 based BIOS 1002. The performance drop basically reduces the i9 to a different tier. I can't believe that's even a thing

https://unikoshardware.com/2025/03/intel-new-microcode-0x12c.html

Yeah, no thanks. Stupidity has become the new normal. The incessant chasing of firmware and driver updates is a fool's errand. We don't have to worry about degrading chips because we tune our systems to behave properly and do not allow wild swings in voltage or opportunistic core boosting. We do not need security mitigations nearly as much as people need to stop behaving in a stupid and haphazard manner that places them in harm's way. When things operate on the assumption that everyone is stupid it ruins things for those that are not. It is the tail wagging the dog and being ruled based on the defects and incompetencies of society's lowest common denominators.

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.

4 hours ago, Clamibot said:

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.

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. 

12 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

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 Xtreen 8200 48GB kit I would love to be able to use in it.

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

18 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

 

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.

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.

10 hours ago, Papusan said:

I really like the design. I should only wished they made a full cover back plate. I hate the spacing around the chips. Also 4090 Suprim had the cut of around the GPU. Better with fullcover backplate and thermal pad.

 

I agree. I do not like that. There are actually a lot of video cards in 30- and 40-series with that kind of backplate. I do not like it because it is ugly and because there is no reason for that part of the GPU to be exposed. It creates a point of weakness and vulnerability. I do not understand why any were ever designed that way. I am glad that my 9070 XT has a solid backplate. The only part that is not solid is the place for the third fan to blow through.

52 minutes ago, Papusan said:

 

I'm sure the results for 4000 series graphics cards would be better if nvidia bothered spend some time with the drivers for EOL cards. Same also for even older 3000 series.

 

 

Game developers are recommending GeForce RTX 40 Series owners roll back to drivers from 2024

https://www.tweaktown.com/news/104313/game-developers-are-recommending-geforce-rtx-40-series-owners-roll-back-to-drivers-from-2024/index.html

 

 

Yup, the direction for modern tech goes the wrong way... If I remember correct... The mobile 5090 have less cores than 5080 desktop cards. And you get jokebooks with soldered on 5090@95W 

 

GeForce RTX 5090 laptops are a whopping 50 percent slower than the desktop RTX 5090

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.

16 minutes ago, jaybee83 said:

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.

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.

18 minutes ago, Papusan said:

 

20% above MSRP would mean $2400 for the best 5090. Custom flagship cards should never be priced above that from any AIB partners. Yep, could been cheaper for customized cards but that is NVIDIA's faulth. And the cheaper Gpu SKUs as etc 5070 I would say $50 premium for the better custom cards. 10-15% for the flagship cards in between 5070 and 5090. Or ideally 10% markup for all of them. And with Nvidia reducing already high MSRP. But this will never happen with nvidia.

 

If the AI bubble blow of.... Gamers will have to pay even more for Geforce graphics cards. Not less.

We live in troubled times, with the sheeple guided by troubled people that are unfit as guides. I just thought of a brand new smartass comment today. I may start using it when the opportunity arises. "The maggots are hatching." 🤣 (aka - the idiots are coming out of the woodwork, and there are lots of them)

ASUS ROG CROSSHAIR X870E APEX Overclocking & Discussion Thread

25 minutes ago, Papusan said:

 

I often buy used cards. They all have their flaws. And more expensive doesn't justify the massive price increase. As said before... Up to 20% mark up is acceptable if the product stands out in the bunch of trash. Yup I use the phrase trash, because awesome doesn't exist in the real world. Maximize the profits margins will always destroy otherwise great products.

 

Lets take the 4090 Matrix from Asus. Fantastic design, binned chips (yup thats correct)....But failed hard with a pure copper coldplate with liquid metal attached. How stupid... And that card cost $1400 USD above 4090 Strix. Imagine that... The temps would be almost equal if they used nickel plated copper. So this wasn't the reason  for the cheaper choice.

 

If I buy new... I buy what people want in the used market here home. I see what sell out fast when its used. This way I can get back some of the extra money spent. I don't see this Asus card as a collector item. Nothing special  with the Astral cards. Just a new name SKU  to increase the already high ROG price point.

 

Regarding the high prices above MSRP. Asus fail to beat Gigabyte. That's even worse. I wouldnever ever expext that. Then you have ZOTAC. They aren't much cheaper anymore for their flagship cards (+50% above MSRP)..

I think what we are seeing is a normalization of extreme corruption and severe stupidity. That has been the status quo for years with government, but it is becoming normal in the private sector now.

2 hours ago, Papusan said:

I expect much more from Asus flagship costing +70% above MSRP. As with the failed 4th fan for the Astral aircooled card, the LC version have it's own flaws. Asus went for design over functionality.

 

See the huge gap between the ROG fan and the radiator. It leaks air flow between fan and rad  as hell. This isn't nice or clever design by any engineer. This is just dumb. They made the fan so fancy with pattern and uneven height. Maybe the engineer that created this fan design or approved it to be used should find a new job ? @Mr. Fox

 

What Galax offer with  their HOF series cards is miles in front of what Asus is able to deliver.

 

This Is just embarrassing.... This follow same pattern with no screws to mount the rad in you pc box.

 

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?

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.

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.)

21 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

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)

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. 

3 hours ago, electrosoft said:

$999? Heck $1499.99 I would snatch up a 5090 with missing ROPS ASAP.

 

Anything above that? Nope.

 

$3150 is hilariously funny.

3 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

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.

To me it is not about price as much as the philosophical intelligence (or rather the lack thereof) in allowing the Green Goblin to reward themselves by selling these defective samples instead of taking a financial blood bath on it. I'd rather see them lose their a$$ financially and draw back an infected bloody stump. Even if they sold them for $1200-$1500 I think they would still profit rather than suffer financial losses. They just wouldn't sell for 200~300% of their actual value. The one that stands to profit most should also incur the greatest losses when their failures fly in the face of the hype and chaos their aberrant behavior has both caused and promoted. I'd love to see every company involved in AI development start incurring gigantic and staggeringly severe financial losses that will cause them tremendous pain and suffering.

2 hours ago, Papusan said:

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.

Um. No. Not even if it were below MSRP.

1 hour ago, Reciever said:

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

Sadly, I think most motherboards are made that way now. Too many PCIe lanes are being robbed for silly things that don't matter to most PC enthusiasts and gamers, such as Gen5 NVMe and USB4. The motherboard manufacturers have lost touch with what actually matters to most of us. (They probably also do not care.) Not only do they fail to understand the difference between overclockers and gamers, they fail to identify the difference between a turdbook owner that wants to attempt to mitigate their disaster with the help of an e-GPU (a legit use for USB4/Thunderbolt) versus a person that builds a desktop with all of the right stuff and values having more control over what their money buys (or doesn't buy).

So much for a simple request. Apparently they only make changes to BIOS options when enough people complain that the missing option is a problem. So stupid that the BIOS has no option to disable the onboard WiFi/BT module. I guess that I will just have to disassemble it and remove it since I have no use for either one. It makes matters worse that it is WiFi 7 since there is not W10 driver support for WiFi 7... W11 poop OS is required to use it, which is unacceptable.

6 hours ago, jaybee83 said:

 

good topic to mention, as opposed to the 4090 im definitely planing to pimp up the cooling on the 5090, seeing as our best chance to do overclocking is keeping the card as cool as possible (or shunt modding, which is not an option for me).

in this context i was thinking of going putty all around and also covering the complete backside of the gpu to make use of the metal backplate.

 

in this context i need some input from you bros  @Mr. Fox  @Papusan or anyone else with regards to the gpu core: would u recommend going liquid metal, PTM7950 / graphene pad or a highend paste like Duronaut (just got in a batch of that for testing).

trying to balance cooling performance and the need for maintenance on this one. liquid metal should give the best results, although on the much larger GPU silicon the temp drops shouldnt be as significant as on a CPU i imagine. but with LM ill run the risk of having to repaste after a few months due to dry out. id like to avoid that after having plastered putty all over the PCB 😛 so best to do a one and done kinda deal 😄 

any input appreciated 🙂 

I agree with @Papusan and do not think using liquid metal will be very beneficial on the GPU overclocking. This made more sense on laptops that had much weaker cooling systems and run much hotter under the most ideal conditions due to their physical limitations affected by form factor, thermal dissipation capacity, sloppy parts fitment and engineering defects. I think the benefit of liquid metal on a desktop GPU would be negligible in terms of increasing overclocking potential.

I am planning to use PTM7950 when I take apart the 9070 XT. That is your best solution to have a one-and-done durable TIM. That may come at a cost of 3-5°C higher temperature with the PTM7950, which is not going to get you very far.

I played a bit of BF 2042 last night and the 9070 XT is boosting to like 3375, most of the time running 3100-3200 MHz. This is with a -0.060 undervolt and +10% power limit. Leaving it on stock defaults it is like 1.100V and rarely boosting to 3000. Definitely need to crack this thing open and see what I can do with the temps. Especially the memory. They've got the wrong pads or something. I haven't seen video memory temps this high since cryptomining with the 3090 KPE.

9070 XT handle BF2042 at 4K with maxed out settings without issue. FPS range from about 70 to 120 with an average of around 90 FPS.

1 hour ago, Papusan said:

 

The prices is awful. For every damn card. From low end to high end. And I can't grasp that almost all Radeon 9700 are equal or cost more than the 5070's here home. And there are more than enough cards for sale from both. So there is no shortage of therse cards here. But the prices is still high. And I'm sure there will be enough xx60 series for everyone that want it when they come in the shop. 

Real-world GPU prices cost up to twice the MSRP — a look at current FPS per dollar values

Maybe they are counting on people settling for undesirable models because the ones they really want are not available and they think people will become too impatient and overpay for something they never wanted. It would make me happy to see all of the inexpensive models have dismal sales numbers and the AIB partners just start dumping them for whatever they can get for them and then stop wasting time, money and resources making and selling the garbage models that only the peasant kiddos want. AMD should stop offering 9070 and only sell 9070 XT and NVIDIA should only sell 5090 and 5080.