electrosoft

So I managed to snag an open box MSI Ventus 5090 3x OC edition for $1932.26 or $2054.30 after tax or in other words $1360.29 when as is said and done (rewards and all that jazz) cheaper than the Astral I returned aka ~40% cheaper which is sick. And yet I'm wondering if I hold out can I get one even cheaper! 🤣 Once you've been to the mountain top at jacked up MSRP and seen what the 5090 can do, all you want to do at this point is try to score one as cheap as possible.

Be safe and soak up plenty of sun @Papusan!

Lest we forget just how bad coil whine can get, there's De8auer's RTX 6000..... just horrific levels of coil whine.... Assassin's Creed at 150fps.....insane

Agreed. Another reason I skipped the PNY. I had BB match it and everything and then said, "no thanks." I mean if it drops to $1999.99 then I will most likely take the trade off but at $2199.99? Pass. Absolutely agree with all those points.....

Whoa! And here I thought my Shadow 5080 for $500+ off MSRP $825 out the door in my hands was the killer deal....sheesh! The real trick seems to be to sell your old card when prices go insane then sit back and ride your backup card for 4-5 months till prices get sane again UNLESS you can snag a card at launch or close to it before prices start to trend up.

And prices keep coming on down, down, down..... $2199.99 brand new PNY ARGB model no less..... https://www.microcenter.com/product/690486/pny-nvidia-geforce-rtx-5090-argb-epic-x-overclocked-triple-fan-32gb-gddr7-pcie-50-graphics-card Apply for a MC credit card and it's $2089.99 at check out...... NOW WE'RE TALKING!! And reports are prices will continue to come down because the 5090 stock piles just simply aren't moving.... To think at one point this card was $3300+ 3 months ago..... FYI Best Buy will price match this online and with 5% rewards, it is the same price ($2089.99) when all is said and done and you don't have to open up a MC CC to get it. I'm mulling this one over, but I might stick it out for another model / price. We'll see. At this rate, some of the original $1999.99 launch models might return to that pricing and via MC or BB, that is $1899.99 new or B&H even more with their tax back CC.

If it is any consolation, I already wiped the stock install and did a optimized clean clean install and with just that Steel Nomad and Timespy at stock went from "good" to "excellent" in both. Dell always has the trash cookie cutter OS installs. Now to start dabbling with the BIOS CPU OC options and OC this 5070ti and see where we can take this finely milled piece of beauty. 🤣 Ugh, I was out of town a few months ago and we stopped at a random mall and they had another full on CROC STORE! I hissed at it and shielded my eyes from the horror! 🤣 Interesting fact, kids at my wife's school are banned from wearing these because they do not promote sure footing and can cause potential accidents or trips/falls. 🙂 This can mean only one thing! @Mr. Fox is keeping his 5090!! Now I feel like the odd man out!! I need to double down looking for a good open box deal or promo! If a good deal on a 5090 comes my way, I'll end up passing the 5080 down to the Mrs. and the 9070xt to my daughter as I have a whole pile of components to build out her new desktop or if she is leaning towards one of my full fledged gaming laptops one of those since I have like 7 of them again.....

Superior cooling and noise levels with the Alienware 16 and 18 2025 models.... I'm telling you, outside of a lack of an open BIOS, hardware wise, these redesigned models are my favorite hands down. I can only lament the lack of a 9955HX3D/5090 model. It would absolutely rip in this chassis and cooling.

Yep, that's one of them. If you shunt it, you may also find like many your voltage max will also go up too in tandem albeit some stay the same. I think @tps3443 voltage didn't go up when he shunted or minimally.

Doing some testing with the MSI Raider 7945HX3D/4090M vs the Alienware 285HX/5070ti in Fallout 76 first and as expected, the Raider wins decidedly at 1600p. This is with both units on the newest BIOS, complete stock optimized defaults no tuning / re-tuning yet....I expect post tuning for it to get even worse for the Alienware because MSI via their Bios and/or Smokeless has so many more tuning options. In Timespy GPU, the 4090 is ~ 28% faster than the 5070ti, but in actual gameplay it is ~41% faster because of that X3D loving and probably a hair more because when the skies turn dark in FO76 and overcast, it hits a little bit harder. I'll be looking for a proper spot on the MSI to see if I can cap out 99% isolated to then switch back to the Dell to test a proper GPU cap out on both where I expect the chasm to widen even further. I'm in the process of giving the Alienware a proper clean install as there is so much Dunk (Dell Junk) in there it's ridiculous. I had actually listed the MSI for sale and figured the free Alienware was good enough but after these preliminary results I took it down to keep. The temps you see are after about ~5-10 minutes in that spot. Both units have fantastic thermals. I just realize I need to tune the MSI's fan curve to stop that stop/ramp cycle with the CPU. That's its only flaw because temps are not bad at all. Fans maxed on both, the Alienware has better frequency and dB but sitting there for ~10 minutes and they do get audible. 🙂 Alienware: MSI Raider: Yeah, that jump from my KPE 3090ti to my MSI Liquid 4090 was bonkers but the 5090 definitely was no slouch. It was good seeing what Nvidia COULD bring to the table when they felt threatened by AMD. They didn't hold anything back with the 4000 series. So far seems to be an decent sample. Cap out vmax to see what is your pre-shunt voltage max. Also do a quick GPU-Z render test to see where you crash with voltage pushed to max slider in AB. You never know, but as you continue to test you may have scored some good silicon. We'll know soon enough. 🙂

Congrats brother! I took the journey and it was worth it before the return so now it's your turn at a much lower price point making keeping it more compelling. It is definitely poor value and the law of diminishing returns is in full play painfully so. What can't be denied is it is a juggernaut and a substantial upgrade especially in the face of the rest of the 5000 product stack. Not as massive of an upgrade as the 3090->4090 but still a powerhouse in its own right and the most powerful consumer GPU on the market and blows AMD's 9070xt away when properly fed. Since you have both your 4090 and 5090 there along with the 9070xt and 3080, you're really getting a good spread of data to compare and you have to ask yourself is the 5090 that much better? Luckily for you, you are in a position to still sell your 4090 for a nice chunk of change and really offset the cost of the 5090, more so now that it has come down so much in price. I'm going to assume you checked for a nice smattering of blocks available for the Zotac before ordering 🙂

Yeah I've hit a personal wall in GPU pricing. When you're paying 2-3x the amount of all your other components just for the GPU, something has to give. Remember when the golden rule before was to grab the cheapest model and block it for those who run CLs? I'm ok with RGB as long as I can adjust or turn it off. Products coming with default rainbow pretty much forces users to use their data gathering software to control it to turn it off or to something more pleasing. Every RGB enabled item should ship in a default state of OFF. That should be mandatory and let the user choose if they want to turn it on. Yeah, it boggles my mind that some people can not see those with an absolutely clear and selfish, narcissistic, greedy agenda that are in it profit above all else while pushing a, "trust me bro" approach and try to isolate and make themselves the purveyors of truth and default to the "misinformation" label at every opportunity to push their platform. It is PAINFUL to watch. Dufus does it ALL the time.... I'm not a big BF fan so ah well but they use that to identify cheaters and ban their hardware primarily. As for the dual X3D CCD, would have been nice to have a dual binned X3D 9950X3D but it's not the end of the world.... 🤣 -------------------------------------------- In 5090 news: Newegg is now either offering promo codes and/or hardware tossed in to try and move cards ranging from 9700x to 7800X3D CPUs along with now MSI slashing prices on their cards. Clearly no one is buying enough and as reported, stockpiles are growing. Zotac Solid OC 5090 is still down to $2399.99 MSI Ventus is now down to $2499 w/ promo code MSI Vanguard 5090 is down to $2599 with promo code MSI Gaming Trio 5090 is down to $2799.99 and you get a free 7800X3D with it MSI Vanguard Launch Edition (8 months later??) is down to $2799.99 and includes a keyboard(!) Gigabyte Gaming RTX 5090 is down to $2809.99 and includes a free 7800X3D MSI Suprim Liquid finally dropped in price by $250 and is now $2999.99 MSI Suprim Air 5090 dropped in price to $3149.99 and includes a 9700x In addition, the Gigabyte Master (both white and black) and TUF OC are all down $60 (!) to $2939.99 now... those must be official as Best Buy also lowered the price on the Masters cards. Everything in stock.... Only cards that continue to remain out of stock now are the Gigabyte AIO/WB models.... And of course Asus continues to not lower the price of their Astrals holding steady at $3359.99 Microcenter 5090 pricing continues to fall: Zotacs down like Newegg, but also PNY ARGB down to $2499.99 Gigabyte 5090 gaming down to $2599.99 Like Newegg Trio down to $2649.99 Asus TUF OC down to $2799.99 One of the few rare times you can get overall better deals from Newegg than MC on 5090s atm with the promo codes and free hardware tossed in. Microcenter has serious markdowns on 5090 laptops.... That MSI 5090/285hx raider on launch was $4399.99 VERY glad overall (after the rush of early adopters) buyers are just flat out not buying this stuff and prices continue to trend down.

The A$uS tax is alive and well and even growing..... Top gear MSRP from Asus.... $450+ for an AIO.... $1k+ for a MB.... $700+ for a PSU $3359 for the Astral fits right into that pricing.... MSI is trying hard to be like Asus lately too with their pricing..... Damn right it is..... Still holding onto that SP109 14900KS because I know it can do 59/45/50 all day everyday for gaming on an AIO..... it has my 9070xt capped out in WoW at 1440p quite nicely on the wife's system. I'll probably never let it go and have it drive the wifey's system for quite some time. I might pick up an EVGA Dark Z690 or Z790 to fully complete her "Ode to EVGA" system when they are dirt cheap because I will say having run that 14900KS tuned on a Z790i lightning with TG 8400 DDR5 for quite some time tuned that DDR4 with the same 9070xt is now noticeably inferior even tuned 4000 CL15 or 4200 CL16 tight. --------------------------------------------- Dude is always hustling to sell his bundles or "PC Optimization classes" Monthly fees to join his discord.... Plenty of other tiers: $10/$20/$40/$75 per month $750/yr tier also gets you access to his PC Optimization class.... Or the class on its own for ~$400..... FC 48GB or 32GB DDR5 kits for $500..... $100 "another chance" to get unbanned from the community if you were banned.... MAX fps build lists with affiliated links.... $500 consults on your hardware..... Sheesh, dude is probably making a killing. Expect merch sooner than later on top of it. Still watch his videos though.... 🤣

Which config did you go with? That thing looks like the Alienware 18 on steroids! I didn't know about the G4 BS for 2DPC Ultra laptops....yuck. Yeah, not doing backflips over the gpu score. Problem is Acer (yet again) went with a lower power variant. Temps are.....ok on the GPU but the performance is not great overall. It is going to chug at native resolution though 1600p is going to bury it. It is meant for 1080p with modern games. There is a lot of bloatware installed so I'll be giving it a clean install to wipe all that away. To make your image post, use the "Direct Link" option to copy and paste.... Here is a "cold" run first on boot with the Acer. Unlike your system with a wide variance, ALL my cores are within 10c of each other (88c-98c) with most of them pegged at 98c both E and P cores. So for your system it looks like a heatsink/thermal application issue definitely. First run ~33k still around 145w cap: by the third run, score is down to 26k and falling....

@1610ftw had a chance to run this 16" Predator Helios through some quick paces and you'll feel better (or not) to know it is a monster throttling hotbox too with the 275HX testing with CB23 thermal throttling and only scoring 31752 pulling ~145w hitting 101c..... Mobile 5060 scores lower than my old mobile 3070ti in the NH55. The Acer users the 85w 5060 variant. Not sure how I can reconcile the OLED 2560x1600 resolution with a 5060 in there.....

I like how Daniel readily admits the 5090 is the worst of the worst value wise (it is by far), but I also see the argument when you're in the 5080/5070ti segment of the market. Using MSRP, the difference is 33% not 56% vs ~15% performance difference. Basically, if you can't afford or won't pay the outlandish price of a $2k+ 5090, you either get a 9070xt/5070ti or if you want the absolute best not called a 5090 or overpriced 4090, you suck up the law of diminishing returns and get a 5080. It's funny how everyone screamed bloody murder when the 4080 was $1199.99 MSRP, but some how this time around AIB prices inflated upward and it was ok for months on end due to demand. Prices will continue to seesaw up and down (more up when able) until consumers simply stop buying on a lot of these cards. I'm perfectly content with a 5080FE/5080 priced at $999 along with a 5070ti at $749 and 5070 at $549. I went over this before. Same or lower pricing and better performance than last gen with more features. I'm not happy with the price bump of the X090 FE series from $1599 to $1999. That's sleight of hand robbery and the AIBs are flat out robbing you with a gun to your face. Still boggles my mind people are paying $1750 for Astral 5080s.....

I know intel is struggling, but their GPU department and in certain markets the Ultra CPUs are also bringing the heat. Just that quick, Intel caught up to AMD in the handheld market with the Ultra 7 258V trading blows with the Z2 Extreme and overall matching it.... I still stand by my assessment if you remove gaming from the mix (and even then it is a decent gaming chip), the Ultra series are damn good. Tuned up, and they game really decently too.

Long time no see! How ya doing bro! Agreed, 5080 is absolutely not an upgrade in any way, shape or form over the 4090. Only path forward is a 5090. I just need it closer to $2k to make my common sense switch move to the "off" position. It flicked back on with the Astral just in time.... Yeah, those temps are crazy high for only pulling 142w unless you got the worse silicon sample known to mankind.... Refresher, here is my Alienware 18 pulling 170w and topping out at 68c: I do have an Acer Predator 16s Helios 275hx + 5060 for eval that arrived a few last Friday I just cracked open for comparison but that core differential is not normal unless like I said you ended up with a dud CPU sample. I know @win32asmguy was pulling over 200w in his unit. @Talon what is a sample spread on your desktop 285k? While voluntary, one thing I do like about Steam Survey is it just asks permission to scan your hardware to participate. It isn't self reporting which would greatly skew the data. AMD has stated several times they can't keep up with demand with the 9070xt so while Steam is one very large valid metric due to established users, we must entertain other reasons why AMD isn't showing up while also accepting Nvidia owns 93% of the overall PC gaming market as a harsh reality. Hopefully AMD keeps plugging away and chipping away at Nvidia like they did Intel and now look at Intel? In the tech sector, not innovating and resting on your laurels will leave you with the fishes. When Apple abandoned them back in 2020 I knew they were in trouble after refreshing skylake to death but behind the scenes I guess we didn't realize how bad things were slowly going. Alderlake was a breath of fresh air, but then it was back to super hot and heavy CPUs with no real innovation and just adding e-cores for another 2+ years while AMD continues to innovate and then we got Arrowlake which while it may not be a gamers delight is NOT a bad chip design and still games well enough. Novalake HAS to deliver......Intel has one last gasp to be relevant.... I would never have guessed Intel would be in this position 10 years ago wow..... For social media steam stuff, I don't really participate in any of that and kept myself hidden at all times.

There is no meaningful benefit but there are personal benefits mainly overclocking and playing with new hardware which I have no problems embracing along with games. I have three categories of hardware: #1 Personal enjoyment (Play hard, eventually sell trying not to bleed too much) #2 Work/Money makers (Work, write offs, covered ) #3 Both (Best of both words if possible) Think about how much you will save simply by having waited this long. It is mind boggling to think this card was up to MSRP $3200 at one point and people bought it. They have to be kicking themselves just a bit having overpaid $800+tax. If I had held onto that Astral, I would be eating myself up inside at this point. 🤣 I'm holding strong after the Astral debacle because I know a 5090 is a pure play toy for me. If it drops to $2200 or below especially with a good priced open box around $2k, I might jump back in. At $2400 + S&H, that's $2572.84 after tax which is closer to 3k than 2k and still 33% more than I paid for my 4090 Liquid. This 5080 for $825 makes it hard to stomach paying 3x more for ~50-60% more performance but...BUT as that price inches closer to $2k, it becomes basically a straight swap for my 4090 Liquid sale price and I'm probably going to dive back in.....🙃 Since it is $2399.99, I expect some open boxes to adjust down to $2159.99 (10% off) or lower.... If this is the bottom of the barrel for pricing, I'm more than content to carry on with my 5080. Wife is absolutely blown away with the 9070xt as she's reached that silky smooth level of performance and display capped more often than not even fully opened up to 4k max RT max at 1440p.

I think the 9070xt is an absolute banger of a card for MSRP. I really expected more market penetration to be honest. Hopefully that changes but the sheer domination of Nvidia in gaming which has just grown since the 3000 series is downright scary. I opted to keep the 9070xt to keep it in the family and return the 5070 I like it that much. Still my recommended card for WoW up to a 5070ti and depending on system and cost even vs a 5080 for WoW. Unfortunately it just doesn't bring the heat in Fallout76 compared to Nvidia. X3D+Nvidia rules the roost for Fallout76. I would have stuck the 9070xt if I hadn't had the chance to pick up an MSI Shadow OC 5080 for $825 shipped to my door. Having a blast with the Astral vbios for benching. ------- Speaking of falling prices, Zotac 5090 Solid OC $2399.99 new out the door on Newegg: Considering launch MSRP was $2261.99 and this card at one point was $3200 MSRP we're heading in the right direction. It's only ~6% over launch MSRP.....

I would be all over a 9950X3D on steriods with dual X3D..... Are you really comparing a single german retailer which moved ~2k GPUs total in that list versus the Steam established user database of 132 million monthly active users and ~69 million daily users? Really? 🙂 Even accepting not everyone participates in the survey, still.... common man! 🤣

Looking at the Steam July survey data, Windows 11 absolutely dominates Windows 10 ~60% to ~35% 16GB wins with ~42% but 32GB is gaining speed with ~35% 6 and 8 core CPUs dominate the chart with ~29% and ~25% respectively As for GPUs.... The only other desktop GPU that comes close to the 4.44% of the 3060 (which went UP +0.02%) is the 4060 with 4.20%. 9070 and 9070xt have yet to gain enough traction to not be classified as "other" Highest rated discrete AMD GPU? 6600 with 0.88%...... 🫢 Intel ARC finally getting its own listing at a whopping 0.25% but zero discrete variants.... Meanwhile 5070 (1.28%), 5080 (0.62%), 5070ti (0.60%), 5060 (0.57%), 5060ti (0.56%) and 5090 (0.21%), have all made enough penetration on Steam to have their own percentage listings with the 5070 dominating every other GPU in the 5000 class. ------------------------------- I spent the last several days running tests between the 5080 and 9070xt and with the newest drivers on both, I'm switching back to Nvidia. The newest Nvidia drivers are much smoother, getting better fps and fixed the sporadic RT issues. A lot of that lower threshold chunk is gone so I'm sticking with the 5080 for now. $825 was a KILLER price with a bang for buck that crushes everything in sight including 5080/5090FE pricing and being able to run the Astral 450w vBIOS makes up for the 5080FE Fail not being able to cross flash vBIOSes on the FE cards. The transition in motion. MSI 5080 to my system and now my 9070xt to my wife's to replace her 5070FE and the 5070FE goes back to BB tomorrow. She also gets a clean install and recert on her components. With the 9070xt, her display will spend its time locked at its max 165hz 1440p in WoW. I'll turn RT off to basically leave her running silky smooth everywhere capped out. I was going to upgrade her PSU, but I forgot I had put a Seasonic 1000w in there a few years ago.... 9070xt will be running on the wife's tuned SP109 14900KS @ 59/45/50 on air as always. Chip is a beast and running just as well as it did when I picked it up over a year ago tuned properly for AIO duty.

Was fortunate enough to pick up a used MSI Shadow 3x OC 5080 for $825 shipped. Currently running the Asus 5080 Astral vBIOS. Zero coil whine again. I'm seriously starting to think it is the triplite + 1600w EVGA I installed at the same time in August 2022 that is helping out more than I realize. The odds of scoring ~12 GPUs in a row both AMD and Nvidia tested with various MBs and CPUs in the mix all producing low to no coil whine can't be a massive streak of luck. 🤔 It's pulling more and scoring more in WoW and fps have gone up by ~17% in my testing spot (that's good for anything not a 5090) vs 5080FE at launch: 5080 FE at 99% 4k Ultra max scoring ~122fps stock launch drivers: MSI 5080 Shadow 3x OC running Astral 450w vBIOS stock 577 drivers scoring 143fps: Driver refinements also adding in too. I could always install launch drivers and see how they compare to really differentiate the two.

3090 vs 4090 vs 5090.... that 3090->4090 uplift was crazy but 5090 is still good too.... @Talon Jarrod really loves the Acer Predator Helios 16S 275hx + 5070ti ...... 🤣 5070ti is capped to 115w as is the CPU to ~95w and a 230w PSU tops comes with it. It scores lower across the board vs similar, bigger, stronger versions of that same combo. Curious to see what the 5060 version has in it and what it is capped to on the GPU when it finally arrives.

Happy anniversary @Papusan! You are right, time does fly by. 35 years is a wonderful milestone! Slow down and smell the roses and enjoy every day with your loved ones.