Mr. Fox

The only thing more surprising, alarming and disappointing is the sad fact that 30% of the idiots on the planet prefer crApple's trash. The Redmond Reprobates are their own worst enemy. Their failures are a direct result of their inability to know, or the desire to care, what most users of their products want.

That is not representative of how they compare overall. In many, if not most things, the 7900 XTX trails the 4090 by more than a small margin and trades blows with the 4070 Ti and 4080. If ray tracing is involved, the gap widens further. AMD resolution scaling is less effective and image quality is comparatively poor overall. Nothing comes close to comparing with the 4090 in terms of performance, or being absurdly overpriced. Everything desirable (high end) that is offered by AMD and NVIDIA is grossly overpriced and, to some degree, similarly overrated. That is why I ordered an Arc A770 to replace the 6900 XT. The superior alternatives are a poor value and too expensive for what you get in return for the money spent.

It is tragic and criminal that so many turdbooks are reliant on feces like Armory Crate, Dragon Center, Clevo Control Center, Alienware Command Center and similar dung to have functionality. Armory Crate is probably the worst example of digital rubbish that I have ever seen. A picture says 1,000 words. Head on a swivel, boys... head on a swivel. Removal means removal... as in gone without a trace. Uninstalling is never enough to perfect the exorcism.

The Encore offers less by all measurements. The only benefit it provides is the superior black aesthetic. Everything else about it and the parts it comes with (or perhaps we should say DOES NOT come with) is a downgrade. You pay the same price to get your posterior orifice molested. I was immediately suspicious and smelling a rat when they released it and availability was good. Another mass production piece of crud from their slop bucket, but this time designed from the bottom up to deceive all who buy it. This is par for the course with Asus though. They're a despicable company and stand out as the evil prince in an industry ruled by thieves and pirates.

Armory Crate a horrible program that sucks the life out of your system, but avoiding it may be nearly impossible on a laptop to have full functionality. I allow it to install itself on my disposable crash dummy cancer OS, but it is banned on the OSes I use for benching and gaming. Armory Crate has pieces of itself baked into the BIOS. It will prompt you to install on a clean OS install with no internet connection and no network adapter drivers installed. If you do not allow it to install itself on a clean operating system install It is more likely to have issues with stability and/or not even functioning at all. The only place to download it that is hypothetically safe is directly from the Driver Suppprt page for your laptop on the Asus website. I say hypothetically because Asus is not a trustworthy company. Anything that comes from China should be viewed as suspicious and potentially dangerous. Caution and skepticism are advised.

I came very close to buying an MSI 4080 today for under $800 brand new. I decided not to, but I think that is a very good deal. NewEgg offers trade-ins now and that was after applying a $400 trade-in value for the 6900 XT. I also came very close to grabbing a Sparkle A770 for under $300, but changed my mind on that, too. I looked for a waterblock for the A770 and could not find one. I'm not interested in operating an air-cooled GPU even if it runs as cool as the Sparkle A770 is reported to (~60°C under full load). I am really interested in seeing how Battlemage fares against the 4080 and 7900 XTX.

They have Windows users (private and business) over a barrel and some literally cannot switch to another platform. And, they use force and manipulation to coerce the adoption of their newer data-harvesting OS and Office "as a service" cancer. They shamelessly exploit the users of their operating system and I hope it eventually bites them in the butt. I would love to see them decimated by legal battles and their finances nuked by enormous legal/defense costs. That's what they deserve. So does crApple. Any degree of misfortune or harm that comes to either of them will have been earned and should be deemed fitting for their abuses, high crimes and misdemeanors.

Yes that is correct. A thermal pad on the underside of a M.2 drive that has no components serves no purpose. Likewise, having it there causes no harm. You only need the thermal pad on the side(s) with memory chips and the controller, between those components and the heat sink. Depending on the latching mechanism design, the M.2 might still be somewhat loose after the retaining screw is tightened. Placing a thermal pad under the M.2 drive may keep it from being loose or sloppy. Sometimes the standoff that the retaining screw threads into does not have a ridge that fits snugly into the notch on the end of the M.2, so it not clamp or pinch the M.2 drive in place securely. This will allow it to have some wiggle room after the screw is tightened.

Yeah, that would be a devastating loss for anyone that works hard for their money like most of us do. That kind of risk-taking is only smart for the wealthy people that have tons of disposable income.

I did not notice that info about no warranty. In that case I would not purchase it unless the price was about half what he wants for it. With no warranty, might as well buy a new cheap 4090 and do the Elmor voltage mods. The attraction to the Galax HOF is you don't need to do those warranty-voiding mods. You get to have the cake and eat it, too. Absent that attraction there is no incentive to purchase it.

$2800 for the GPU and PSU is a fair deal and it is clearly a good sample. I don't think paying a lot more for a good sample is intelligent or wise, but it does avoid the tragedy of getting screwed with trash silicon quality. I wouldn't want to pay much more than new retail price for a used part even if it is an excellent silicon sample. It's a used part and that makes it worth substantially less. At $2800 it is like getting the PSU for free if you are measuring based on new retail prices rather than used part prices. I would be interested in buy it from him if I can come up with the cash before it is gone, but I would also first want to check the Galax warranty policy. If it only extends to the original purchaser then I would likely pass and buy a new GPU direct from Galax instead. If memory serves me correctly, Galax is one of the dirty rotten stinkers when it comes to warranty support.

Mr. Potty Mouth is ripping the mobo OEMs a new one.

Great GPU but not $3800 worth of good. How 'bout no. Let someone more foolish than I (which is very foolish, LOL) blow an extra grand on it. I might have been born at night, but it wasn't last night. I won't pay a 1/3 to 1/2 premium for a golden CPU and I won't for a GPU either. Just not worth if for something that will be replaced by something stronger and faster in a short period of time. I might if I could enjoy playing king of the hill for 2 or 3 years.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III Campaign (Early Access). Absolutely awesome. Thanks @ryan

I tested stock driver and same driver with NVCleanStall removing all the filth on Windows 10 22H2 Pro and then repeated with the same stock and NVCleanStall mod on Windows 11 22H2. So, both drivers and both OSes. Unrelated topic... but, also relating to black screen issues. If you or anyone you encounter is having random black screen issues with a 4090, don't automatically blame the GPU. I had this annoying issue with the Strix and MSI Suprim on the Dark mobo and the problem followed it to the Apex mobo. It might be fine for days and then suddenly everything stays black and I had to reboot, sometimes more than once, to get the screen to light up. This was with my 165 Hz 1440p screen and my 144Hz 4K. I was using an expensive DP 1.4 cable that I had been using for a few years. Out of curiosity and frustration I started playing around with cheap HDMI cables and the screen would never go black using HDMI. Everything worked fine. But, I could only run the displays at 60 Hz with the cheap HDMI cable. So, I bought a more expensive DP 2.0 cable. Same issue. Didn't help. Cheap HDMI was fine, but expensive DP cable had random black screen issues. The DP 2.0 cable I purchased had an issue with the housing at the end falling apart where it plugs into the monitor. I could not press the button to release the hooks because the housing was getting loose. So much for the idea of getting what you paid for. But, lucky for me it was junk because that helped me identify the issue was, in fact, the cable being used and not the GPU. So, I purchased an even more expensive DP 2.1 cable rated for 8K @ 120Hz and 80 Gbps bandwidth. Problem solved. No more random black screens. Works flawelessly now. I installed this cable on October 5 and haven't had a single black screen issue even once.

OK, here is Windows 11 Ghost. Again, no meaningful change using cancer versus NVCleanStall modding. Windows 11 0.1% lows are lower than Windows 10, but not enough to really matter. Still over 100 FPS. NVIDIA CLeanStall Modded 546.01 01-11-2023, 22:48:26 q2rtx.exe benchmark completed, 75010 frames rendered in 316.078 s Average framerate : 237.3 FPS Minimum framerate : 139.4 FPS Maximum framerate : 246.6 FPS 1% low framerate : 214.6 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 112.4 FPS NVIDIA Unmodded *All Cancer* 546.01 02-11-2023, 00:20:03 q2rtx.exe benchmark completed, 51628 frames rendered in 215.281 s Average framerate : 239.8 FPS Minimum framerate : 157.9 FPS Maximum framerate : 246.3 FPS 1% low framerate : 214.9 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 102.9 FPS

I know I have already mentioned this before, but this has been a real game-changer, especially on the upload side of things. I had decent-enough internet before, but this is so much better... and, cheaper. Plus, no data limits my old ISP used as a lame excuse to milk more money from customers.

Depends on if ECC is enabled or disabled. Scores are higher with that disabled, but HWBOT requires it be enabled for 3DMark. The chance of getting a higher than normal or inflated benchmark score due to bugs and glitches is more likely with ECC disabled and very unlikely with it enabled. ECC Enabled: 28654 https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/94304340 | https://hwbot.org/submission/5276039_mr._fox_3dmark___port_royal_geforce_rtx_4090_28654_marks The score goes up about 1,000 points with ECC disabled. That guy you mentioned on Facebook ran his samples with ECC disabled, so can't really compare. He must not be into competitive benching or else it would have been disabled or run both ways. You can tell looking in the benchmark details on 3DMark or by looking at the available VRAM value in GPU-Z. ECC enabled reduces the available VRAM to 23552MB. I am seriously thinking about moving my 4090 back to the case with the Dark and making the Apex my "work computer" motherboard. I spent some time with the Z690 Dark today. I put the 13900KS that used to be in the Apex before I purchased the one with higher E-core SP ratings and I am seeing what I thought I remembered seeing before. The inferior 13900KS installed in the Z690 Dark overclocks better, with less voltage, runs about 8°C cooler, has better Cinebench scores and better memory latency scores in AIDA64 than the Apex. I am going to do more testing to confirm this is accurate and if it is true I will swap places on the desk with the entire case and swap the GPUs then put the better 13900KS in the Dark mobo. That will be easier than moving the motherboards and redoing all of the cooling lines, etc.

OK I did this test using the latest driver 546.01 and found no meaningful difference in performance with my desktop 4090. If you are experiencing the same issue with 546.01 then maybe there is something different in the laptop drivers or something specific to the INF parameters the OEM specified for your specific laptop. I know Dell/Alienware used to make certain specifications for their laptops. Below are the results with MSI Afterburner Benchmark Utility for Quake II RTX. This was tested using W10 22H2 with Atlas OS mods. NVIDIA Unmodded *All Cancer* 546.01 01-11-2023, 18:28:39 q2rtx.exe benchmark completed, 25829 frames rendered in 111.750 s Average framerate : 231.1 FPS Minimum framerate : 220.4 FPS Maximum framerate : 239.3 FPS 1% low framerate : 215.6 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 209.6 FPS NVIDIA CLeanStall Modded 546.01 01-11-2023, 18:07:56 q2rtx.exe benchmark completed, 31472 frames rendered in 135.359 s Average framerate : 232.5 FPS Minimum framerate : 221.5 FPS Maximum framerate : 240.2 FPS 1% low framerate : 218.4 FPS 0.1% low framerate : 160.9 FPS

If all goes as planned I am going to look into this today. On which version and release of Windows are you having this occur?

Yeah, but if I recall correctly it was broken/non-functional and the guy would not communicate. I think that he ended up getting a refund and still has the broken chiller.

I bought it from Performance-PCs. They have 3 in stock. I know @Rage Sethas been wanting to snag one. Good price as well. https://www.performance-pcs.com/water-cooling/water-chillers/hailea-ultra-titan-hc-500a-110v-1-2hp-790watt-cooling-capacity-waterchiller.html This is the exact one I have, but it is a newer version that has a titanium water tank instead of the crappy plastic tank that cracked on me and had to be repaired. If I had $600 to blow, I would grab one of the three so I could have two.

I really like using the LMG as my primary weapon. I wish I had one in my home arsenal.

I really like the GPU anti-sag bracket Lian Li provided with the O11D XL EVO. It's designed perfectly and much better than the way most add-on supports are designed. @Rage Setand @Raidermanand @cylixdo you guys use it with your Lian Li cases? (I am assuming it is not a new product or unique to the accessories included with this case.) I almost did not install it, but I changed my mind and figured I could get rid of it if I didn't like it. It doesn't get in the way of anything and I am so glad I went ahead and tried it out. Same here. Need to be able to move things around also for cleaning. In the Arizona blast furnace, the dirt devils and dust bunnies infest every nook and cranny. No need to disconnect lines if you have plenty of slack. I do not run my chiller all of the time. When I do, I like to pull it out from under the desk (I have it on a wheeled dolly), point the exhaust toward my office door and set a box fan behind it to push the hot air outside of my office. The stupid PVC tubing that I use for the extra long run is from Home Depot. It is for construction/industrial use and it is not as flexible and soft as the stuff we normally use for PC cooling. It tries to coil up and never straightens out, so when I wheel it back under the desk it coils up by itself. Under any other circumstances that would be very undesirable, but it works well in that scenario. That tubing is also relatively hard and the compression fittings are difficult to install (or remove) because the tubing is so hard. It doesn't easily compress like the soft tubing designed for PC cooling. It also doesn't kink in a tight bend. That's very cool.