Mr. Fox

Thank you. No idea why. I am thinking a driver bug. I remember seeing the same thing years ago with AMD cards in Alienware laptops. You could not go by the name that appeared. You had to go by shader count. Another bug that has surfaced, and I can replicate, is if I submit a Time Spy score from the URL that says "Submit to HWBOT" the data sent by UL identifies the GPU as a 6800 XT, even though the description seen at the URL correctly identifies it as a 6900 XT.

https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/90833339 | https://hwbot.org/submission/5225336_ https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/90834107 | https://hwbot.org/submission/5225340_

I will when I have more time. I just have not had enough time to do everything I need to do lately. https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/90833065 | https://hwbot.org/submission/5225335_

No, I have not. Hopefully, at some point I can figure it out. I can boot into Windows 7 but the GPU will not start. It has code 12.

Yes, same here. But, Brother @Rage Setwas kind enough to let me borrow this GPU and if I end up liking it, he will sell it to me. NVIDIA and Intel are always my first and best choices. But, there is a chance once I figure out how to make this GPU do what I want it to that it will be a keeper. Right now it is very buggy unless I run it stock. I can tell you that in something with ray tracing, the 3060 Ti FTW3 absolutely brutally rapes this 6900 XT. It's not even remotely close to the 3060 Ti in that scenario. So, I ordered some acrylic polish to see if I can get the window on the DG-86 looking good (lots of scratches, which is common with acrylic, unfortunately). I've seen lots of reports of being able to make scratched acrylic look new or almost new.

Yes. I will get some HWBOT points for sure, though. AMD CPU and GPU overclocking is frustrating and stunted. I think on purpose.

So, RBE does not work with 6900 XT. MPT works, but I cannot mod the firmware. I managed to pick up 1,000 TS points but have a lot of experimenting to do before I understand how it works. https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/90821202 | https://hwbot.org/submission/5225175_

They knew it was wrong and doing so was not a smart idea all along. But they had to do it long enough to brainwash everyone into thinking that BGA feces was the solution for a mobile filth. Now that they've sold most people a bill of goods they can make it thicker again. It's like being fed brownies with dog poop in it. If you put it all in at once everyone will hate it and think it's disgusting. If you add it a little bit at a time they'll never notice. Lots of things in life work this way, unfortunately. Including the way governments are run.

That is only because of how compromised and chintzy they are. There is no longer any such thing as an awesome laptop. There is only a scale of crappy, crappier and crappiest.

Overclocking will never be the same without EVGA setting the bar. Those are probably the latest. One of the other nice things about EVGA is they don't waste their time, or ours, on stupid updates that don't really have any value. A great example of that is seen in the IME firmware on my Z690 Dark. They have never updated it and there have been numerous updates to it from Intel. And, they have an option in the BIOS to totally disable it, which is awesome. If it doesn't make it go any faster then I don't give a rats butt about it, and I hope they continue to look at things the same way.

To the best of my knowledge there is not. I believe the LN2 spot on the switch is a placeholder for an XOC firmware.

Almost done. I will have everything finished tomorrow, in time for work Monday.

My excellent MSI RTX 4090 Suprim Liquid X was amazing. It died for no reason I could identify. I was not even using the system when it failed. It was turned on, but only had Outlook open and I was working doing my job on the other computer. The screen went black as if it were in power saving mode. I could not wake it up. After forcing power off and on it was no longer detected and even the BIOS was failing to POST because of no graphics device found. Tested in the other desktop and same. Amazon did not have another for exchange, so they gave me a refund. I ordered a Strix 4090 OC from NewEgg and it was a piece of garbage. The memory overclocking was abysmal. I returned it for exchange. They did not have another, so they gave me a refund (which was my preference, and I was praying they would not have a replacement in stock). 3090 Kingpin is still kicking. It's in my work computer right now while I am playing with the 6800 XT. It's not going anywhere. At this point I am not certain if I will ever buy another 4090. If you get one that doesn't suck at memory overclocking they are impressive, but at the same time not impressive due to overclocking being limited on 40-series. I don't need it for gaming. Overclocking is the only reason I would buy one. To be determined at a later date. I like having my money back more than I liked either 4090 at this point. The cost is beyond the point of diminished returned. Even the cheapest one is $500 too much. At a certain point it becomes not worth it. On the laptop topic, unless they change something (or have already) you could not buy a laptop with the flagship NVIDIA GPU with an AMD CPU. Not sure why. I think I remember grumbling that the 2070 and 3070 were the best you could get paired with AMD. That was super idiotic and hope it has changed. I do not care personally, since I hate laptops, but I hope so for my friends that like them.

Not an option. They are built the way they are built. Both are made the same. All of my pumps are external. I get the air out by connecting the components, removing them and tilting them around to work the air out, while the pumps are running, then putting them back in. Been doing this for years without issues. The problem is the EKWB Velocity2 direct die block is not made correctly. But, that's all about to change. Exactly. Not an issue. People that can't get the air out of the loop are just not knowing what to do. Spoiler alert. Still lots of tedious work to do before I can use it. But, it's getting closer. After I am done playing around with the 6900XT the 3090 KPE will probably go in. Then it will be almost entirely EVGA. Case, PSU, mobo and GPU. Although it is not necessarily larger than my Level 20 XT, this sucker is gigantic. Much larger than it seems in videos and pictures. Don't know what I am going to do with the Level 20 XT now, LOL. Might make a good miniature greenhouse, LOL.

Nah, it's just disgusting. Being common in another culture doesn't excuse it or lessen the disgust. No other GPU can compare to Kingpin/Classified and Galax HOF. They make everything else seem like a really stupid joke that nobody laughs at.

I agree. It most likely is some Windows 7 driver is messed up. Your Physics and Combined scores are exactly the opposite of everything I have ever seen before. Windows 7 is generally 10-15% higher than W8/10/11.

I ran into EXACTLY the same issue with the Barrow block that I had on the 4090 Suprim X. I ended up using the stock backplate and screws because of it. I could not do that here because the backplate is too large. With the Liquid X it was PCB-length and it fit fine. The stock screws would not work with the Barrow backplate because they had a large shoulder on them that fit into a pocket on the MSI backplate. It worked out fine though. I think the screws that I put in it look better than what would have come with it. Maybe people in China don't install backplates, LOL.

My latest review finally got published. It was finished about 10 days ago and was waiting for final approval. I really like it... way more than I expected to. Check it out... text and video. CORSAIR RM1200x SHIFT Power Supply Review

OK, got the screws and now the backplate is installed. Time to do a bit of quick studying and get cracking with the link Brother @Rage Setgave me for the firmware tweaking. Edit: hotspot reading still shows 92-94°C and at this point I am questioning if the sensor is even accurate.

So, got the block installed. I think it looks awesome @Rage Set. The kit did not have screws for the backplate (had short screws for naked installation). Screws should be here from Amazon in the next hour or so. Will post more photos once the back plate is installed. It requires M2x10-12mm (have both coming) and the kit included M2x6mm. I ordered stainless Allen screws so they will look nice with the black backplate. I am hoping having pads behind the core will help hotspot temps (still quite high, but better). I have not touched the firmware yet. I will dive into MPT later today or tomorrow, once I get the temps as good as I can get them without the chiller. It will get better, as it is hitting the power limit and remaining there throughout all of the graphics tests. Totally maxed out with the stock firmware limits. CPU not being pushed hard due to high temps with the EKWB direct die. The SCDD was supposed to arrive yesterday, so hopefully USPS will bring it today. https://hwbot.org/submission/5222705_ | https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/90656314#

I have never seen an example of that with 3DMark 11 before. Something must be wrong with your Windows 7 installation. That, or since my last benching spree UL have released a software/system info malware update to deliberately mess with Windows 7 so that Windows 10/11 don't get molested severely. Also, check your Windows Update vomit trail. If KB2670838 is installed, remove it. It will ruin 3DMark 11 performance and cause problems with some games and benchmarks. You have to have that update for IE11, but nobody cares about that anymore. If you have the GUI mods, getting the GUI back to stock will also all Windows 7 to shine bright.

My impression is that it is caused by the amount of default voltage AMD has to dump on the chip to clock it high enough to deliver competitive performance. While it is a very nice GPU that delivers respectable performance, (ray tracing excluded,) we see a scenario that generally applies to AMD CPUs and GPUs. They have to be pushed harder to compete with Intel and NVIDIA, and it should come as no surprise that managing the thermals in that scenario is going to present a challenge. It is too bad they did not use GDDR6X on the Radeon 69XX and 79XX series. They would not have needed to push the core clock as hard and the performance would have been greatly enhanced with the faster memory and increased bandwidth without a lot of effort on AMD's part.

Yes, it is crazy nice. Looks and build quality are superior.I am eager to see how it behaves on a block. I believe this one has higher clocks and voltage than most, which is also going to affect the temps negatively on air cooling.

My 80°F office is definitely not good for air cooling. Even testing with Crysis 3 Remastered, hotspot is 90°C with an undervolt, and TimeSpy hotspot over 100°C, so I am going to stop doing things until I get the block installed as I do not think it is good for silicon to run this hot. A couple of guys on ExtremeHW tell me it is normal for their 6900 XT to have hotspots in the 100°C range and "not to worry about it, been running it that way a couple of years now" but, I still don't think it is a good thing. It can't be helpful, LOL. I attribute at least 10°C to my abnormally high ambient temperatures and lack of humidity. (My 3060 Ti temperatures were also much higher than desirable before I put a block on it.) Compute performance is really good and impressive on this GPU, but ray tracing not so much. Look at the FPS with ray tracing enabled. It stress the GPU severely. I ran Bright Memory Infinite benchmark and only sitting on the benchmark menu and not running the benchmark the hotspot rose to 90°. Without ray tracing the temps are definitely lower and the frames much higher.

Updates: So, the AMD driver tweak tool doesn't seem to remove any garbage. It merely provides an alternative way of installing the driver with a couple of tweaks. All of the worthless trash is still there. So, I have to figure out a way of killing the processes and services so they stay dead unless I manually trigger them intentionally, instead of immediately restarting. I wish AMD had a Control Panel that was not DCH/UWP trash for W10/11. Seems like they do not. I will try the oldest available driver for 6900 XT and see if it has been that way since day 1. It sucks that all of the hardware OEM muppets are kissing Micro$lop's butt like this. On a much sadder note, it appears the firmware on this 6900 XT is incompatible with Windows 7. I have spent hours trying to make it work. (Literally stayed up all night trying to get it to work, took a shower and started work.) I tried a half dozen Windows 7 Macrium Reflect images, manually changed to a few different bootx64.efi files (including a custom one that allows pure UEFI mode for Windows 7) and even tried a clean install. 100% failure on all attempts. Windows 7 setup refuses to run with the 6900 XT installed. Tried USB and DVD... both the same. It hangs before it reaches the first screen of the setup GUI. If I put the NVIDIA GPU back in it boots right up like normal. So, it has to be the AMD firmware. The GPU is not bootable in CSM mode (Windows 7 freezes at boot CSM with enabled, which is the exact opposite of the expected behavior) and in UEFI mode (CSM disabled) Windows boots fine and the driver installs but the GPU has code 12 (no available resources/resource conflicts). Coincidentally, this is the same issue I had with 4090... exactly. I was able to mod a driver, but same code 12 and same freezing behavior. So, that really sucks. Maybe I can find an older 6900 XT vBIOS that has CSM support. I hope so. Being able to use Windows 7 was one of the things that I was looking forward to. Benching is a lot less fun if you are stuck being forced to the newer cancer OSes that ruin CPU performance.