electrosoft

So I returned my Astral 5090 today (tomorrow was the last day), and I have to admit it feels like a monster sized weight has been lifted off my chest. No matter how I tried to spin it, I could not accept paying ~$3600USD for a consumer grade GPU to game and bench no matter how perfect it was. Pros: low to no coil whine, 1.110 ripe for XOC vBIOS, +3000, handled a +375 V/F curve offset no problem, clocked decently, aesthetically gorgeous, ran quiet, zero fans outside of meaningful load at all times. Cons: expensive, heated up my entire office within an hour turning it into a sauna so I had to keep the ceiling fan going and hoping the AC would kick on. I collected a lot of WoW data and swapped between the 9070xt routinely for various scenarios I would run including lots of LFR Raids, 5 mans and Delves along with ORBs and outdoor assaults and the 9070xt along with AMD made insane strides in driver stability and performance after launch on a level that has left me impressed but that's for another post. --- Fun convo with the guy who rang up the return. He immediately said "such a nice card." and once we got to talking, he said he noticed on my account I had picked up a Gigabyte 9070xt OC Gaming. I said I picked up an open box the second time around. He noted he used the same card and picked it up open box too a few weeks back. Yeah, that was the one I returned! It didn't even make it to an open box listing. He scooped it up. He games at 1440p, so you know it is tearing it up. In previous reviews of the 9800X3D vs the 9950X3D, gaming comparisons were basically a wash overall but I did not pay close attention to the 1% lows. I'll have to go back and take a look to test your theory. Before 9950X3D launch, the biggest wish was dual 3D-Vcache but alas..... Intel and AMD are both guilty for abandoning a proper monolithic and/or homogeneous design. At least AMD went back to it for their 9000 series GPUs. Raptor lake was too hot and a mess for more P-Cores (even though rumors of 10 and 12 core P-Core versions had hope springing eternal everywhere), but I thought they could have made an all P-Core variant of Arrowlake. At least 12 P-cores would have been enough for me. For RPL it is a per game hit or miss fest. For Alder, it was almost universal to turn them off. In Intel's defense, the E-cores on arrowlake are much better than RPLs but I still want a proper P-core only CPU. You might be right in the pursuit of Xeons.

If only to counter your "I ♥️ 5090FE" tramp stamp... 🤣 But in all seriousness, I like the 5090FE. It still is in my top three list based on price. size and aesthetics. If one pops on BB or VPA, I'd pick it up and give it the coil whine test. If it had bearable or no coil whine like my 5080FE (showing it is quite possible), I'd keep it. If not, off to eBay it would go. It is an amazing SFF card. I would then seek out a SFF case small as possible that supports either a top horizontal inverted mount so the card would exhaust directly out the top of the case or a classic vertical mount that could invert to exhaust out the side. You gotta dump that heat somewhere if you don't have a big enough case. 5090FE + 9800X3D air cooled tuned SFF build would be the end game for desktop and portable power.

285k vs 9950X3D both tuned (ish) Overall 9950X3D has higher fps, but the 285k has higher 1% lows sometimes substantially. Now THAT coil whine is identical to my 3090 FE. Just throw in a massive amount of variable pitch changes like the Aorus..... But with that being said, outside of the price, this is what the 5090 should have been from launch with just 32GB for the stupid prices being charged for the 5090. I LOVE the look and design of the Pro 6000 more than the 5090 FE plus you get the full fat GB202. Icing on the cake is the 96GB to run larger LLMs (well for me, I don't know about you). For AI work, it makes more sense for me to pick up a M4 macbook than a 5090. It makes more sense to pick up an M3 Ultra than the RTX Pro 6000. "The 5090 is the waste. The garbage from the production of these (6000)" - brutal. His end rant is spot on. You are getting the die rejects for the 5090 and yields for the full fat are much smaller. I'm sure Nvidia is stock piling the dies that can't even make it to mid range 5090 status and we'll get a 5080ti to dump those off. The fact the 6000 Pro can look and run like a 5090 is all you need to know in regards to Nvidia just pushing and upselling everything to absurd levels. Everything about the RTX 6000 Pro is the 5090 FE on steroids from the looks to the internals. 🤑 I still want a 6000 Pro though.....just not at $8k+

Hopefully it is just user error. I do know the dude who basically ghetto rigged his FE with that crazy pseudo water cooling was able to get some decent scores (I linked it here some time ago) but nothing like some of the AIBs are clocking in like @johnksss and his Astral for starters... ------------------ The benefits of not blowing $3k+ on a 5090 is you can buy so many other toys! I have ~2 days to return mine and I'm leaning towards just returning it and using my $656.99 9070xt. I've tried every way to justify blowing $2k+ on a 5090 let alone $3600 (ok, ok $3581) and the math just ain't mathing for me when I want to have room for some other toys to pick up and play with..... I sure have had fun gaming and overclocking it though for the last two months. 🙂

@tps3443 Have you heard the rumor that shunt modding the 5090 FE does nothing? I hope it isn't true. https://www.overclock.net/posts/29472599/

The Super 24GB variant will have 400w as it's official TDP. The 5080 FE is 360w. (or right around there). OC'd a bit more, but nothing like you will get with the vBIOS from Zotac or Asus. It isn't "practically" 400w. This from someone who tested theirs extensively before getting excited about the vBIOS then pissed off. 🙂 With all the extra headroom on the 5080, an AIB model (unless you want to shunt) is the way to go and flash it with Zotac or Astral vBIOS and really let it somewhat cap out nicely. 5080FE OC'd to +400 / +3000 99% utilization in WoW (I'll dig around for my other SS in TS/SN but I never saw anything meaningfully over 360w)

Yeah the 5080FE is a banger especially for $999.99 but it is limited to ~360w which is the official spec. It's still a killer card and third most powerful out there atm. You will need a different vBIOS to open it up to to even 400w or especially 450w on the Astrals/Zotacs of the world. 😞 BB drop, so $999 MSRP still on the FE's.

Well hello sailor! 😍 Why is bitrecover watermarked on every picture?

Unfortunately FE editions (5080 / 5090) can't cross flash vBIOS unlike the AIB variants. That's the #1 reason I sold my 5080 FE a few weeks back. You can shunt mod it, but no thanks. ------ and yeah, Best Buy had a drop of FE cards this afternoon including 5070, 5080 and 5090 models. This is their second drop of FE cards. Nvidia VPA is dropping pretty regularly now too. I've had at least 4 guildies / clan members score one now directly from Nvidia. Prices are definitely trending down on eBay for the 5090 FE now. Tons of other cards coming into stock across all brands too on the regular.

5090 owner told, "You should have gotten a 9070xt bro..." His response.... 🤣

I'd like just the display itself to take along with a laptop or SFF. They can yank all the other stuff out of it.

lol, yeah, I cancelled it after talking to my wife and really thinking if saving some $$$ was worth the downside for the next few years when I am 100% happy with the Astral (besides the price of course 🤣). I actually spent considerable time on BB looking at cards and then MC and NE and seeing the various levels of savings vs worth the potential issues and would I be happy with it weighing the pros and cons and each time was a no and so here we are. I could be equally happy with a Suprim I think, but they're so close in price what's the point and there's a chance it's a dud and/or has coil whine..... My wife knows me better than I know myself and at dinner we talked about it again in detail. And in her final words, "From what I heard tonight, there is like zero chance this 5090 is going to be anywhere near as good or well built or perks filled like your 5090 now and you've said numerous times your 5090 is perfect like your 4090. so I think this is stupid and you are going to regret it over $800 which is really nothing overall over two years. Either keep it or return it and use that rodeo (Radeon lol) thing and pass the rice." ------ True, the Windforce tier is one step below the Gaming OC tier. The Aorus Master level is where Gigabyte really starts to step it up a level. The price:performance level of your 4090 was great. Once costs get down to a certain point, you can start to say, "Well, I'm ok with this and that." I remember you weren't doing backflips over its clocks. FE build quality is lights out, period. It is streamlined and elegant. I have always loved the look and feel of the last three generations of FE cards. the 4090 FE was just a monster slab of beauty and the 5080 / 5090 FE is a compact eye catching engineering beauty too. Even Steve at GN lavished a ton of praise on it. It's gonna be painful watching you tear it apart, but it's worth it for the results. 🤣 Once you start pursuing quiet computing, it is really hard to go back to noisy setups outside of pure benching for a few minutes here and there. My system is absolutely whisper quiet during normal use and gaming I can have the speakers on low and still not hear my system.

All that is guaranteed (assuming compatibility) is what is stamped on the boxes regardless whether it is memory, CPUs or GPUs. For memory, you have to toss in MB compatibility and IMC along with other things on top of it. But yeah, when I grabbed some Patriot 8200 kits before that couldn't even do 7800 TM5 30 minute let alone 90 or Karhu on my SP109 + Asrock Z790i but turned right around ordered TG 8200 that worked no problem up to 8600 and could post 8800. Same problem binning B-die sticks too especially when it gets to voltages and timings. Same kits but others could go well beyond the others. Crazy. But good set of data to chew on! Glad out of all of that a set emerged that could do 8000!

Yeah, going for best bang:buck, but my wife legitimately had me cracking up over our morning coffee/tea. "I ordered a different cheaper 5090" "The GPU thingy?" "Yeah" "Why?" "Because it will net me the bulk of the 5090 at almost $800 cheaper" "So less than the cost of us going to Disney for one day in February?" (I can sense where this is going) "I guess so..." "And what if this card isn't 'perfect' like the one you have now as you've said a few dozen times" "I'll return it..." "and keep the the current one?" "Prolly or try another and I'll have to return it by then so it will be gone" <Audible Sigh on her part> "What?" "Can't you just enjoy it? You're like the most financially responsible person I've ever met even to your own demise" "Huh?" "Because if you end up having to return it during your 'Let's make a Deal!' swap fest, what if you never get another as good as this one? Am I gonna have to hear it on the regular?" "Prolly" "Just keep the damn card. Please. You even said in a few years you'll be able to sell it and get back everything most likely" "It's called an Astral by the way..." (in my snootiest voice possible) <Slow Eye Roll> "Why the eye roll" (We're both starting to crack up at this point) "Because you lucked out, first time, on this GPU thingy" "An Astral" "An 'Astral' (with finger quotes) that as you put it is 'firing on all cylinders' (more finger quotes) with zero problems and you're going to jump through hoops over $800 to chance receiving a not so good card over and over again if ever again?" "Yeah, but $800....." <Slow sip with eye roll and sigh> <Laughter for the next few minutes> She is right though. I'm going to try ONE Windforce since it is the cheapest one on the market outside of the FE but a traditional AIB model and I will have time to try and return it before I'd have to return the Astral. I have zero complaints about this Astral except the price and I do get her reasoning. 🤣 Clocks high High voltage max (1.110) Does +3000 Build quality is lights out love the aesthetics (understatement) runs quiet low to no coil whine (have to have the room dead silent to find it even the gpu fans) real time per pin monitoring High voltage waiting for an XOC leak Chonker heatsink shown to be able to handle the XOC bios quite nicely for some use Just hate the price. Yeah, the pricing is still high here but cards are coming into stock much faster across the board and staying in stock for many models (I'm looking at you PNY).

I just pulled the trigger on a Gigabyte Windforce 5090 for $2639.99. If it turns out to be a decent card (IE no or low coil whine which is all I care about really), I'll return the Astral and pocket the ~$800 difference as for what I do it will get me what I want and slap that $800 back in my pocket. It's priced closer to an FE than an Astral. Astral is a monster, don't get me wrong with a top Voltage range of 1.110 and satisfies every thing I could want in a 5090 except the price. If everything works out as planned, if one of you (this thread only) wants it for exactly what I paid ($3582.59) + S&H, let me know else back it goes by next Sunday no harm; no foul. I won't sell it on OC. I'll just return it and avoid the headaches from over there. I'm also going to be testing a few sub $200 budget x870 boards and maybe selling off the Crosshair too while I finish setting up these two other systems to sell off a bunch of my other parts laying around. Time to reel this ship back in a bit. 🙂 --------------------- Yeah, I double checked and it is 100% compatible so most likely identical PCBs but better cooling on the elite. It doesn't list the normal 9070xt gaming though which is odd unless there's a difference between them. I do have the OC though. One down, a few more to go. They will sell. It is just AMD is "hot" right now and moves much quicker, but outside of a few grossly overpriced samples, the 13th and 14th stuff does move and your chips are priced nicely.

Playing some WoW switching between the Gigabyte Gaming OC 9070xt and Astral 5090 still seeing if I could get by with the 9070xt to tide me over as my primary GPU and wait on a cheaper 5090 and return the Astral (I have till the 3rd) and some of the newer areas the performance difference is just savage. In many of the areas out questing and doing dailies, I'm getting 70fps with the 9070xt capped at 99% even on a 12700kf and in the same exact area on the Astral 5090 with a 9800X3D tuned up I'm getting 186fps and 93% utilization. Just brutal stuff like this happens all the time in open areas playing and questing. I routinely look up at the OSD and the 9070xt is huffing and puffing at 99% with sub 90fps and the 5090 is wanting for more sitting at 50-60% utilization at 120-130fps+ looking at the 9800X3D going, "common bro...." Whew, that moved quick! Quick sale on AMD stuff these days but Intel stuff, even the 14th/13th gen goodies, lag. Who wudda thunk it? I think it is AMD being overall the better choice to many, degrading fears and many do not want delidded CPUs for their use (maybe warranty fears). At a certain price point, many buyers are just going to pick up a 9800X3D/9950X3D or go buy a boxed CPU unless the SP is really good. As always, eventually buyers will mosey on by..... Will it fit the Gaming OC line too? I agree on the temps. 9070xt is a hot and heavy beast including Gigabyte's cards. Memory and hot spot temps are crazy hot. Both I've had and have ran/run pretty toasty.

Ditto with my main rig card, but you water cool the CPU or AIO? You know what, just slap up a refresher pic of your rig.... 🤣 w00t! on the 8000! on a 2DPC x670e board, that is a massive win!

Very nice! Top three on air....boom! I'm pretty sure @jaybee83 doesn't watercool his cards. I think I asked him before and the answer was no.

As a checksum, I would pick up a 1dpc board from Asrock (or similar, rated at 8200+) for testing everything memory wise unless you've come to the conclusion your MB is limited to ~7600/~7800 and or CPU? https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16813162201?Item=N82E16813162201 This is what I did with my Carbon x670e to figure out what was truly giving up the ghost and to know where my topped out vs CPUs and kits of memory.

Watching the XOC bios pulling 950w+ on an Astral cooled by De8auer's block.... No real need for CAMM memory outside of potentially more exposed area to cool better.... Crazy builds....

Holy $&%^&!! Yeah, that's bad. That's 3090 FE level right there just missing a slightly higher pitch.... I can run my Astral full OC, no door, 238fps capped for my display and barely a whisper out of it. That Aorus would be returned so fast... So in the end, how did the boards rank for both CPU and memory OC's? Apex vs Gene vs Master vs Taichi vs MSI vs Elite? This happened to me during the 600 series cycle. Those two Asrock B650 boards OC'd much better than the MSI Carbon and Hero I tried testing my original 2x16GB 8000 G.skill sticks. They clearly made improvements on the 800 series as this Hero had no problems hitting 8000+ with these TG 2x24GB sticks. I think I topped out at 7600 on the x670e Carbon and 7400 on the Hero while both those Asrock 1DPC B650 boards both hit 8000. CENS wins the OC competition at Computex.....

In my defense, I DID pace myself over several months.... ....but.... .....yeah.... 🤣 I'm probably going to order a few more since I've sold off all my weaker sets and my last set of 6400 sticks is going into a system of other parts to sell off (12700kf, 3080, 32gb 6400 ddr5, etc...). Right now, I'm fighting the urge to pick up a 9950X3D to properly take advantage of 8000+ with the dual CCD..... True, I've sometimes picked up multiples of whatever I'm testing/upgrading in the moment....

Whoa! Go big or go home! 🤣 I've tried about 6 kits now and while XMP only kits worked a lot easier on my MSI and Asrock boards than Asus, I did find EXPO/XMP cert kits were less problematic on the Hero overall. True, I think all of us in here manually tune our memory and CPUs. Double check Asus NA warranty and make sure a product in Canada can use Asus warranty in the States. He hasn't opened it yet, so you have no idea what bin is in there. Astrals can be duds too topping out at sub 1075 or the rare chance of not hitting +3000. As we've seen some can not even idle check at >3300. I, personally, would have him open and test/verify the card with results before doing anything. @tps3443 has a decent sample on top of that IMHO that has a healthy 1075 top, idle checks to 3400+ and can hit +3000. Nevermind the potential coil whine (not sure @tps3443 cares about that). And in NO way am I biased and want to see an FE properly blocked, chilled and shunted....nope not at all! 🤣 No siree!! 🤣 Only unknown on @tps3443's sample is the coil whine, but just about everyone I've crossed paths with sings like a canary >150fps+ but we all know I'm extra OCD about coil whine....

I know with my bud's setting fans at various speeds without it being under load only resulted in just the sound of the fans. I confirmed it with my 5080 FE in testing. But when under load especially >=150fps, his card went wild with the coil whine and that weird sound while my 5080 FE was quiet except for the fans. Not that this negates his particular 6000 sample from potentially having defective fans, but the noises you can hear weren't present on either of our cards with fans at 50->100 manually. Anecdotally, I actually like the fan noise of the FE series. Only problem is because of the smaller heatsink overall, the fans can and will spin up from heat soak so there is no real, true 0RPM mode like on the AIB chonkers out there.

Coil whine and that weird electrical noise. This is like my bud's 5090 FE exactly except frame / load changes would seesaw and scale up and down. Still not as bad as my 3090 FE. You could give me a 5090 FE or one of these 6000 cards, and if it sounded anything like this, it would be insta sold and marked as pure trash in my book.