Mr. Fox

Exactly right. That was like the threshold for my 5950X. Going any higher than 1900 FCLK just made a mess of things, and latency spirals out of control (along with WHEA errors) if you try to push the memory and/or FCLK too hard. It just doesn't cooperate.

I am not sure you can say that the 7900 XTX matches 4090 by any measurement other than results, and based on results it isn't a match for it. Maybe 4080. Mr. Azor tried that, lied to everyone about it in public, and we all saw that it just didn't work for Frankie-boy. The only way to compare them is results, not specs. It doesn't matter if the specs are the same or theoretically better if the results don't show it. Effort is good if one is satisfied receiving only an honorable mention, but reward follows results. I certainly don't like supporting NVIDIA, but I also don't want to settle for (or support) AMD. That's why I am open to Battlemage. Otherwise, I would be gritting my teeth and sticking with the Green god of Greed's grossly overpriced silicon. But, my next GPU would most likely be a secondhand 3090 if not Battlemage. If I had to choose between 4080 and 7900 XTX, I would take the 4080. NVIDIA sells a better product and I am not interested is showing charity to the underdog.

Maybe, but I always select the oldest micro-code in the BIOS for both of my motherboards (along with disabling security mitigations in Windows and Linux). I consider that an overclocker best practice. Maybe just the mere presence of the newest cancer screwed it up, even though it wasn't selected. The clogged cold plate and dried up liquid metal wouldn't change your SP rating, and since I had the same problem without the issues you corrected I think it has to be something they have buggered up in the current firmware. I really find it annoying that the new Cinebench refuses to remember my settings. If I don't deliberately set the duration to "off" manually every time I launch Cinebench it defauts to the looped version.

EXACTLY the same thing happened to me, just out of the blue, and it was the BIOS. I tried reflashing and clearing CMOS and nothing worked, I went back to the older BIOS (v0904) and everything was back to normal. Not sure why it suddenly changed. Kind of messed up, but it's ASUS so I don't have a surprised look on my face. I don't hate it, but in hindsight I would have been better off just buying another Z690 Dark instead of the Apex.

Maybe if I use sub-zero cooling it will make accumulated negative numbers. Tin foil hat causes me to wonder if maybe ASUS is collecting data for nefarious purposes like excuses to deny warranty. The Armory Crate and MyASUS malware applications collect data.

Yup, that fixed it. Regular consumer AMD drivers won't work. You need that one linked above @Raiderman(Radeon Pro with HIPS SDK). That is just crazy, bro. Maybe have them watch some of the YouTube videos (like those on GN) that point out how horribly bad judgement it is to buy overpriced proprietary trash from outfits like HP and Dell. Yeah, HWiNFO64 has some newer features that suck. The "accumulated" readings are kind of idiotic, but ASUS has the same nonsense in the BIOS, so I digress. It's just regurgitating what the sensors tell it. I also hate the extra prompt on the vCore latch nonsense when you reset the HWiNFO64 sensors. It's annoying to have to find the pop-up prompting you to confirm you want to reset it and click a second time. I told Martin it was annoying and asked for an option to disable it, but I guess he either can't or doesn't care if it is annoying for ASUS mobo owners. I don't have to put up with it on the EVGA mobo, thank goodness. If you disable the sensors in HWiNFO64, the idiotic prompt to confirm you want to reset the latch sensors STILL bugs you. Even if the sensors are disabled in HWiNFO64 the prompt still appears. LOL... totally pointless "accumulated" readings. I really don't understand what value it is supposed to add. Same goes for the other irrelevant "accumulated" power and voltage readings. The new way to spell stupid is A-S-U-S.

OK, I guess you have to download and install special AMD drivers that have a module to integrate CUDA for it to work. Trying it now to find out. https://www.amd.com/en/developer/rocm-hub/hip-sdk.html @Raidermanyou may need this for it to work with your GPU.

You should sell that to me before you do something about it. 😂 Z690 Dark (6900 XT not compatible -?!-) CPU: 2510 / GPU: NA - Windows 10 Z790 Apex and 4090 - CPU: 2497 / GPU: 28630 (stock) - WIndows 11 🤢 Z790 Apex and 4090 - CPU: 2569 / GPU: 32553 (OC) - Windows 10 😉

Yes he does. Also the product review program. Someday people will learn. ...ok, let's be honest... NO THEY WON'T. Stupid is totally normal. They will never learn because they choose to believe lies. Those of us that don't drink the "newer is always better" Kool-Aid don't have nearly as many issues. Most of the time all of the drama about bugs with Windows, drivers, firmware, updates, security patches, etc. I am totally oblivious and immune to. I am sure the same can be said for you, bro.

You two have some things in common, not the least of which is owning a PC technology-focused forum.

Brothers @jaybee83and @Raidermanmaybe when you have a few minutes to spare you could help out my friend here. I am sure he would appreciate it. So far nobody has responded. https://extremehw.net/topic/3009-am5-overclocking-help/

The year's worth of monthly premium is more than I would typically spend in 5+ years on games.

Could be. I sure hope not. If they do things will not recover. It will turn out like the thin and light turdbook filth if they do. Console will become the only medium for gaming. The only effective thing would be to boycott digital gaming of any kind and turn both PC and console inside-out. More affordable is not superior, it's just cheaper. If console gaming doesn't have to compete with PC gaming it will not stay cheaper. It will become more manipulated and far more expensive, and everyone that enjoys gaming will suffer because of it. NVIDIA doesn't care and AMD would love that. It would make life so much easier for AMD, and things would never be right again.

Cool video for their new release. Another new release... Not a new release...

It really starts hurting performance when CPU and memory resources are consumed. But, less is generally better. It is hard to go wrong by eliminating anything that isn't doing something you care about, and there is a crap ton of garbage that shouldn't be cared about in Windows 10 and even more in Windows 11. Even if a process is using little in the way of resources, it is something extra the CPU has to manage. To put it in oversimplified terms, if you are playing babysitter to a well-behaved group of kids that don't involve themselves in mischief, it doesn't take a lot of effort. That being said, you can't leave and go to something else because they warrant your attention. It's your responsibility to look after them. Now, if you are babysitting one kid that is a brat and have to burn a lot of calories to keep him from wreaking havoc or tearing the place apart, you cannot allow yourself to get distracted. That one brat is harder to manage than a half-dozen good kids. If you could, you'd force that brat into submission or even get rid of him, (never agree to watch him again,) but you can't at the moment. He is sucking the life out of you. Some services and processes are like the group of good kids and others are like the brat you would like to strangle. You can manage a dozen of the good kids and just one or two of the brats makes you want to break out the belt and show them what forced compliance is all about.

It seems like a long time ago (don't remember for sure when the last one was) that there was a game release that I was actually super-excited about. Sadly, those that interest me the most now are nothing but remasters of old games from back in the day when games were still great. Almost every time I open one of my game clients and browse their stores I end up disappointed that they have absolutely nothing that looks good to me. Once in a great while there will be something I think might be good that I add to my wish list and wait for the price to fall to $20~ or wait until I can find it that cheap on a cd-key seller site. My kids used to give me Steam gift cards for birthday or Christmas presents, but the last time they did it was more than 6 months until I found something good enough to buy. The money just sat in my Steam wallet for what seemed like forever.

Dad gummit, that's insane. That would make me feel sick, too. I probably haven't paid $150 in the aggregate for all the games I have purchased in the past 5 years, LOL.

Very true. I don't like that either. Very irritating. If I cared about the story I would wait for the movie, and then wait for it to come out on Netflix for free, or watch in with commercials for free on Vudu, LOL. No reason to pay $70, or even $20.

There's no way in hell that I would pay $70 for it. Maybe I will see if I can find something to like about it when the price drops to $15-$25. I think I can count on one hand how many games of the hundreds that I own that I think are worth what they sold for at the time of launch. That approach generally works out really good for me. If it turns out that I think it sucks I didn't waste a lot of money on it. If it turns out to be something I like, then I paid what it was actually worth; not what suckers paid for it when it was a new release. A lot of the games I own that I paid $20 or less for aren't even worth what I paid for them and I regret wasting any money on them. (And most are very popular titles.) A good number of them were purchased only for the in-game benchmark and I knew I had no interest in the game before I bought it for the benchmark.

To be fair, I haven't used a "stock" NVIDIA driver in years. Before NVCleanStall I manually did my own mods, or used j95 mods, because I didn't want the garbage "features" mucking up my system, like Ansel, ShadowPlay, GeFarts Experience, automatic driver updates and what not. Part of what I loathe about the Adrenaline GUI is it has a similar payload of filth and I don't know how to eradicate it. With the GeFarts software it is not all combined into a single interface, so eliminating the trash might be easier.

I don't really have any complaints about the 6900 XT at a hardware level. It is a lot more powerful than the 3060 Ti it replaced (which I was very content with) and does an excellent job at some things. Software and drivers issues are, indeed, fixable. But, they sometimes never get fixed. Firmware, drivers and software made me hate my X570 setup. Driver bugs aside, in terms of software I felt Ryzen Master was a trashy and bloated-feeling GUI and I don't care for Adrenaline's GUI for the same reasons. Layout is chaotic, somewhat illogical and overall unintuitive and it feels bloated.

I haven't had my 4K monitor long enough to get used to it, and I haven't started liking it on the desktop. I hate using more than 100% scaling and text is smaller than I would like it to be on even a 27-inch screen. I think with more time the smaller text won't annoy me as much. But, yeah... gaming is like... wow... major improvement. Way better and more noticeable than I expected it would be. (If I am honest, my expectations were very low and that might be jading my impressions.) It is like the video rendered on my display has a more chromatic and less cartoonish quality than before. It was kind of trippy at first, but it didn't take long for me to get used to how much better games look.

You're forgetting I rarely game and maybe didn't notice what I said about the 6900 XT (and have previously posted about it). Their drivers suck. They way they work (or don't work) sucks and the GUI to manage them sucks. Blurry text, disappearing text while typing and DWM desktop rendering graphical glitches just trying to do my job. Nice, huh? Maybe if they burned as many calories on a $900 GPU as they do on a $500 console their PC drivers wouldn't suck. We might be giving them too much credit though. We don't know that they actually produce the drivers for consoles. It might be something Micro$lop and Sony have taken ownership of to make sure it gets done right. I have not ever seen an example of good AMD drivers or software before.

To be clear, AMD is their own worst enemy. A lot, maybe all, of their shortcomings are self-inflicted damage. AMD continually hurts itself with lousy drivers. They have never been good at it... for decades now. Crappy drivers keep me from enjoying the 6900 XT to the extent I would be able to with good drivers. Just simply using it for work, where performance really doesn't matter, it delivers an inferior experience due to driver crap. Deja vu for me. Their drivers sucked when I gave them their last chance (2012) and they still do. They need to get a clue. Had they been smart, they would have used GDDR6X. Opting for the slower/cheaper GDDR6 hurt them in the GPU war. Whether it was a mistake that reflects poor judgment or they actually wanted to help keep the price down by using cheaper memory matters not. They slit their own throat opting for cheaper.

They don't know any better and because they do not they simply believe what they are told. Or, they haven't paid close enough attention to notice any difference. When people use something until it gets too old and slow, they get excited that their new system seems better. It might not be as good with a simple part upgrade or two and a fresh OS install. But, they don't measure the difference. They rely on what they were told and how it feels compared to the old system.