electrosoft

Agreed, even the 4070 Super is absolutely playable and acceptable within expectations. I know if I pick up a 5090, I can crank everything back up to Ultra 10 RT on and be good to go and even moreso with the 5090 and basically be ~100+ fps MIN everywhere including raids and some PvP but will sit at frame cap 144fps just about everywhere else with the 5090 twiddling its thumbs a lot of times because my 4090 spent a lot of time outdoors frame capped at 144fps yawning. I found the outdoor raids in TWW hit harder than the outdoor raids in 20th anniv content due to location and older assets overall. What settings do you use for D2D gaming in WoW? Can I ask what you found unappealing about the 7800X3D and 7945HX3D specifically in regards to not only games but elsewhere? I always value your insight. 5080 and especially 090 class cards do hold their value during the first 3-6 months inflated, relatively close mid cycle and then back to MSRP value (or slightly higher) end cycle. This is what I have experienced during Ampere and Ada. On your desktop, if you get a 5090, you will experience an uptick in performance just by the nature of the GPU itself and it will definitely be very tangible versus your 4080S considering the gap even between a 4080S and a 4090.

Let's see how this pans out:

Something like the Asrock Aqua 7900xtx but for the 5090 would be sweet to see. Gigabyte made a Waterforce model for the 6900xt and 3090 that was a true CL block. If a blocked card was to make it to market, it never happens at launch usually but down the road. Inno3D will have a pre-blocked 5090: https://www.inno3d.com/product/inno3d-geforce-rtx-5090-ichill-frostbite#product-images Hmmmm, because that 4m30s post time on the x870e Hero was atrocious (but at least they booted) even getting them to run then to turn around with the Crucial Pro ("Pro" giggle) 6400 sticks booted up in less than 20 seconds even at XMP. I just laughed and went "Ok, message received" and switched to the Crucials for now but I plan on yanking the TG 8200 Xtreem sticks I have on the z790i lightning and giving them a whirl in the Hero. In all honesty, using the 4070 Super to tide me over has been an eye opening wake up call even at 4k (albeit settings 7 RT off and raid GPU settings enabled). What I mean by this is in areas where player data is low, the GPU will sit at 100%. Even the 4090 sat at 100% in many of those areas but obviously the 4070 Super sits at 100% much more often, but as soon as you're in town in Dorngal or doing any type of raids and especially PvP, even my 4070 super will drop below 100% and it again becomes a CPU dependent issue. Of course with the 4090 the utilization drop was even more severe but seeing the 4070 Super drop down to 90% or even high 80% utilization lets me know there are areas in the game that the WoW engine just slaughters even a tuned 14900KS at 59/46/50 and those clocks stay locked everywhere. On the other hand, you will achieve an uplift overall just from the GPU power upgrade so let's say those areas where I am running setting 7 no RT at 4k and seeing gpu utilization drop to the low 90s or upper 80s and getting like 83fps? With a 4090 I would still be at 100+fps in those same areas along with even lower GPU utilization. So an upgrade will net you both worse utilization AND higher fps just from the brute power upgrade of the GPU itself. So I suspect slapping a 5090 in there will widen that chasm even more. You'll get better performance because the 5090 is the new monster but it will even moreso leave your CPU in the dust in highly CPU dependent areas. So enter the 9800X3D.... Once I finish somewhat tuning these Crucial sticks at 2133/6400 (the next tier sweet spot) on this 9800X3D, I plan on yanking my 4070 Super and running it comparing GPU utilization in Dorngal, Raids and general usage vs the 14900KS and seeing if I can close the gap on that utilization drop. I also want to check for the dreaded dip which was definitely present on my 7950X3D and 7800X3D on the x670e Carbon from time to time. I'm so used to fairly smooth raids now with the 14900KS it will stick out like a sore thumb. Thanks! This one is infinitely better. It crapped out 40 min into TM5 at 2167 but that is at pure stock settings and running on iGPU. I know with my 7600x on iGPU it topped out at 2133 but once I went dedicated and disabled iGPU it could do up to 2200 with a little vsoc luvin' so we will see but as it stands now, absolutely content with 2133/6400 1:1. 2200/6600 1:1 realistically would require buying a golden binned chip somewhere. I was reading up before hand the last few months on so many 9800X3D owners not being able to break 2100 and/or 6200 1:1 so I was fully ready for that along with some tuning required and failing so 2133/6400 out the box really on iGPU was a very pleasant surprise. Definitely going to need a forklift to keep that Suprim level! And I'm here for it. 🙂

I always have bad luck day one, but I've always been able to get what I want within a few months so I don't lose my mind or fret over it. In tech, as in life, I take a, "It will be what it is meant to be," and that makes life so much less stressful and fun. For Asus, 4090 was 1600 launch and Strix was 2000 so $400 difference....on paper. MSI 4090 Suprim was $1699 launch and liquid was $1729 launch so we will see how much parity stays in place or prices trend upward. Either way, prepare to sacrifice an organ. Can't really go by Newegg because they price gouge on the regular depending on demand. But in their defense they also give the best combo discounts on items when they need to move a glut of other products in tandem with high demand items. Best Buy is the proper gauge of proper MSRP pricing (along with the AIB websites). Launch day, I could always go camp out Microcenter since I have three of them while also keeping BB and NE open on my phone but I'm just not that hardcore... 🤣 Order of attack: ----------------------- FE Suprim air Astral Suprim Liquid ---------------------- If the Suprim PCB is superior swap Astral and Liquid. If Astral is superior, swap Astral and Air.

So far, this 9800X3D from NE looks to be a keeper. Passed 90min TM5 at XMP on these Crucial 6400 sticks at 2133/6400 no problem. So much better than that last 9800X3D which couldn't do anything over 2000 fclk, couldn't post with the A-die at all, and error'd out on TM5 all the way down to 5400 and was only stable at 5200. Of course the stock XMP timings on these crucial sticks are a dumpster fire.... For AIBs, you always have to remember that Nvidia's cost per GPU has a nice markup for profit when selling to AIBs then AIBs want a profit on top of that. Their profit margin per GPU is definitely going to be lower than Nvidia's. They just can't compete realistically in the $2k sphere and make a decent profit unlike Nvidia. I really like the engineering and approach of the 5090 FE. Compact size and you're right. By moving the PCIe connector off the main PCB and making it a daughterboard/external connector, if it cracks/breaks, the fix is much cheaper not only in warranty but out. It is an engineering beauty. What we need to see now is how the thermals are in this compact beauty. This feels like a response to AMD and their reference design that was always so compact and smaller than the rest of the AIBs and was the first choice for SFF builds which are gaining serious traction in the marketplace over the last few years. This also gives you some insight into my headspace. Both the smallest (FE) and one of the largest (Astral) to what might be even larger (Suprim air) are on the table for consideration. 🤣 Or we might be looking back on this time and giggling as I'm rocking a 9070xt or 5070(ti)....heh. Yeah looks like the Strix has been downgraded to 070 and below...the king is dead! Oh with your budget I'm sure you can snag any model to your liking. So Suprim or Astral are your go to models too? The Suprim looks to be an absolute chonker in the videos!

Yep, they release them in waves especially on BB so you might as well settle in for at least 3-5 hrs. I really had no problems with my x670e Carbon except the 60 second post. It did everything I asked of it and supported those A-die 2x32GB better than all three Asus boards I tried. I did have to RMA my original open box though when it completely died on me. Are you going to switch boards to a different make or ride out the Carbon? I just look at the 4090 market with a base price of $1600 and shift everything up by $400. If a card was $2000 (like a Strix), a similar card will be $2400 minimum. Suprim Liquid was $1730, so I'm expecting at least $2130 and wouldn't be surprised to see it at $2199.99. The wild card is the new top dog Astral cards from Asus. I expect them to be $2599.99. Toss in sales tax and that is ~2775.00. Even a $1999.99 card like the FE is going to be ~2132.49 after tax. For these outlandish prices, if I go 5090, I won't settle for a model I do not want and just pick up because that's all that is available. It will be an FE, Suprim or if I'm feeling incredibly stupid an Asus Astral.

Kudos to Asus for moving away from trying to auto install ArmoryCrate and now offering to install Asus DriverHub which is really just a service link to a webpage that makes installing and updating drivers very straight forward and easy without all the added bloat of ArmoryCrate if you go that route. Usually I just manually install the drivers to avoid AC, but I gave this a whirl (since this is just a test/tuning install that will eventually be nuked) and found their new approach actually acceptable. Now all they need to do is allow rudimentary RGB controls in the BIOS.....

Finally had time today to get the 9800X3D + x870e Crosshair Hero (or as @jaybee83 would call it "The Peasant Edition" 🤣) up and running in the test case. Unlike before, the A-die 2x32GB G.Skill sticks booted no problem even on the 303 BIOS (launch BIOS). Updated to 706 (below in the pic). One problem is it takes four and a half minutes to post and eventually start booting off the SSD. I actually timed it because it takes forever every time even at stock JEDEC. I swapped in a pair of Crucial 6400 sticks and the posted within 30 seconds. I even went in and set them to EXPO II as a quick test and again....30 seconds. Never had these types of issues with the G.skill sticks on my x670e Carbon like I have across now 3 Asus boards (B650, x670e, x870e) with 9800X3D but at least they post but I'm not going to fight with them. I'll just stick with the Crucial 6400 sticks for now while I get everything up and running for testing and tune them first along with the controller and go from there. SP112 but it makes no difference with the 9800X3D really. I have yet to see a 9800X3D that can't hit 5450+. SP113 I returned because of the bad memory controller hit it no problem while limping along at 5200 on the M-die 2x16GB memory for stability an unable to go over 2000 fclk. It comes down to the memory controller. That's all I care about. If it's decent, I'll keep it and cancel my Amazon order which is due in 10 days. If not, I'll roll the dice. As much as I like the Lian Li for testing, the AM4/5 mounting system is atrocious. Instead of a real mounting system like on Intel or even many other vendors that have you remove the AM4/5 stock clamps, they use a terrible side clamping mount for the stock brackets all AM4/5 motherboards ship with and tension screws to lock it into place.

I'm on the fence about this. If we look at it from a traditional raster perspective, then it is all software tomfoolery. But if we look at tensor cores and AI it is another way to generate frames vs the traditional method and they meet somewhere in the middle to give an overall boost to performance. The problem right now is the latency and image quality issues DLSS/FG presents that does admittedly keep improving each generation. *IF* Nvidia (and AMD and Intel) get to a point they can use upscaling and fg integrated with traditional raster and present an image quality and and latency on par with just traditional rendering techniques, that would sufficiently move the industry forward. For someone like you @Mr. Fox and anyone who benchmarks (present company included), that has to translate into standardized benchmarking and universal measurements where the hybrid approach becomes as ubiquitous as raster is today. Unfortunately that day is still far off. 😞 ---- But I do agree Nvidia, AMD and Intel need to present every scenario. I have no problems promoting DLSS and FG, but they also need to be truthful in pure raster performance. I remember the 4090 raster performance being bandied about because it was a significant uplift over the 3090. I guess because whispers keep pointing to a more "modest" uplift this cycle over the 4090 with the 5090 it isn't as front and center. As you trickle down the stack it looks like it is going to be even worse and maybe even a modest 10-15% for let's say the 5070 over the 4070 Super. It also makes sense why pricing stayed the same or even went down especially with the 9070xt reportedly on the heels of a 7900xtx but some pricing says it might come in at $600. That will definitely keep Nvidia honest in the mid market while AMD and Intel keep Nvidia honest in the entry market. Unfortunately they have absolutely no answer for the 5080 and especially the 5090 which even with a ~30% uplift just extends the Nvidia's lead even moreso.

I'll end up with one eventually for my MSI 1300AI_SuperDuper_Terminator_Matrix edition (we all know the naming is headed that way), but I'll run the tentacles for a bit at first.

I like that it looks much thicker than most of the other bigger laptops too so hopefully better cooling along with a 400w PSU! Asus gives you a *little* control over the UV in the BIOS on their gaming laptops. Nobody has approached MSI's level yet though outside of custom BIOSes. Hopefully Gigabyte or another steps up and even on a laptop chipset implements near desktop chipset controls like MSI.

I've lost count how many times my Wingoneer has saved my hide from laptops to GPUs and more....usually when I get, um "adventuresome"

Yep, I keep going back and forth with the 9070xt/5070 "smart play" mindset and the YOLO!!! 5090 approach. I already signed up for BB notification for the FE 5090..... 🤣 First come first serve, though. If a Suprim pops up first, I would just grab that. Or maybe common sense will kick in and I'll go GPU less for a few weeks and just use my laptop and make a sane, sound, rationale decision steeped on common sense and wisdom..... .....yeah, I laughed too! 😁🤣

Looks like while MSI regressed with memory slots, Acer overhauled their 18" beast and went with 4 memory slots and 3x storage slots and redesigned it from the ground up in many areas:

From your lips @Mr. Fox to God's ears.....let's hope so! Maybe @johnksss knows something we don't know... 😉 I always love the dichotomy of gaming requirements depending on what you want out of your gaming experience. You can literally play many modern games on a $150 or less GPU if you dial it down and temper your expectations OR if you want the absolute best 120fps+ experience at 4k, even a 5090 can be humiliated in some games....crazy.

Jufus is guesstimating about 20-25% but we will see. Unfortunately DLSS is the future in regards to calculating performance and Jensen continues to blur the lines between raster/hardware fps and tensor/AI fps like they're one and the same and they most certainly are not. But if we get so a point (which I think is his goal) that DLSS can render just as well as traditional hardware rendering with no penalties, then who cares? If the 5090 is at least 30% faster than the 5090, that's good enough for me as bad of a buy as it is for several reasons: #1. I don't have a 4090 anymore. I am going to literally apply everything I sold my 4090 for and get a 5090. #2. Price scaling is in line with performance scaling if it meets at least a 25% bump. Still sucks though. #3. If you want the best, you gotta pay to play. Pony up or sit on the sidelines and bitch. 🙂 ---- I fully expect the 9070xt to land closer to the 7900xtx than the 7900xt for raster but with much better RT than the 7900xtx and obviously less VRAM. The pricing is going to decide its fate. If it can come in at $699.99 or below, it will keep Nvidia honest which I already believe it has with Nvidia's pricing. I also think the 5000 series isn't going to be that much better than the 4000 series (sans 5090) so you achieve a better price per frame with a mild performance increase and price cuts versus last gen. If the 5080->5060 were going to be massive upgrades you know darn well Jensen would extract his own of flesh for them price wise.

The more I go over all the models, I am pretty sure I am going to target an FE 5090 this time around if possible followed by the K|NGP|N, MSI 4090 Suprim Air model, MSI Liquid or Asus Astral in that order with a shout out to the HOF. The FE 5090 is just so flexible with its form factor not only for case size but testing between various systems along with SFF builds. It would be a perfect jack of all trades for what I do. Now that the K|NGP|N is back in my mindspace, it becomes the obvious second or even first choice but it won't be released anytime soon. MSI 4090 Suprim Air because as much as I loved the liquid, with all things being equal, the Air will be a hair cheaper and easier to move between systems. I'll just need a construction crane to keep it level in the system. MSI Liquid because I really did love the 4090 variant but it depends on cost versus the Asus Astral. I really like the look of the card, but I know as soon as I see a $2500 MSRP on it I will check out almost immediately..... HOF as always are just way too expensive to import and might have warranty issues if you need work.

This is the way.... They are squeezing in more SKUs, but as always Suprim is their top end card so they can squeeze in all the cards they want for the gamerz. 🤣 Welcome to Halo GPU Addicts Anonymous.....we meet every Thursday whenever we can spare time from fawning over, discussing, buying, gaming, benchmarking or crapping all over Nvidia....

I put "Official Thread" in quotes as I am sure all of about 3 people will buy this thing, but you never know. 🤣 This thing is gluttonously insane with all the extra visual bling and will come packing a 5090, 64GB of 6400 memory and a top end Intel 285 CPU. MSI release: https://www.msi.com/news/detail/MSI-Unveils-New-Laptop-Lineup-Featuring-NVIDIA-GeForce-RTX-50-Series-at-CES-2025-145200 Tom's: https://www.tomshardware.com/laptops/gaming-laptops/msis-new-gaming-laptops-include-a-norse-themed-titan-dragon-edition-translucent-cyborg Actual look, hands on and inside the hardware looksy.... I'm sure this is going to cost a few organ donations to purchase, but it is the type of glorious overkill I always like to see in some hardware from time to time.

I absolutely forgot about the potential K|ngP|n model. Add that to my short list....

Are you targeting specific models @johnksss or whatever is available? Two slot FE 5090 in action.....so slim!

I had a very length reply at the ready, but the TL;DR is I concur. lol, that works too! At least during the Pandemic/Cryptoboom, plenty of bots were monitoring sites and camaraderie of fellow GPU seekers sitting in chat and shooting the breeze while waiting for drops using suspect math to calculate drop times was good times! I'd like to say I'm going to pass on the 5090, but the FE (SFF), MSI Suprims (My current fave company) and (looks sheepishly down at the ground in shame 🤪) the Asus Astral 5090 has me intrigued. I'm trying to stay "go with the flow," and seriously considering a 9070XT or 5070 but testing a 5090 with the 9800X3D and 14900KS has me jonsin' for a 4k shootout with WoW and FO76. 🤣 The idea of a mega powerful SFF desktop that I can take with me for travel and has the ultimate power just has me fired up. Part of me wants to go AIO 5090 again, but swapping between platforms for testing was such a PITA with the 4090 MSI Liquid vs when I was swapping the various 7900XTX's I had during the last few years. And yup, like I said earlier, I'm glad (as glad as one could be to pony up $2k for a gpu for play) Nvidia stuck to a $2k price point and even moreso the rest of the stack either stayed the same (5070) or even got cheaper (5080, 5070ti). ------ Launch is on the 30th and that gives me over three weeks to sort and and tune the hardware that just arrived today aka "Weapons Primed" Agreed. Some things stand out from the article: 5070: "This would place the RTX 5070 slightly ahead of the RTX 4070 Super for about $50 less, or alternatively, 20 – 30% faster than the RTX 4070 for the same price. Depending on how it performs relative to the RTX 4070 Super, this could offer reasonable, though slightly underwhelming, value. A 10% performance improvement over the 4070 Super and a 9% price cut would result in roughly a 20% improvement in cost per frame." If you already have a 4070 or 4070 Super, unclutch your pearls and enjoy your card. On the other hand, if you're within a return window, return it and get a 5070 regardless of either model. Great thing is you are getting a 20-30% uplift for the same price. 5070ti: See above + great thing is you are getting a 20-30% uplift at $50USD cheaper 5080: Same uplift, but reflects the cheaper 4080 Super pricing and not the "we hit a wall" with the $1199 4080 cash grab. 5090: Pushing more towards (fingers crossed) a ~40% uplift in raw performance over the 4090 but the increased cost cancels out a large chunk (if not all) of the gained value generation over generation depending on the final uplift (25% increased cost). Overall, it seems Nvidia realizes outside of their halo 5090, they seem to have hit a wall in pricing vs competition and what will sell and move to meet their volume expectations. Even with the 5080 most likely being much better than the 7900xtx and even moreso the 9070xt, it comes down to pricing and what consumers will pay for an 080 class card. Pricing it at half the cost of a 5090 removes a lot of the "well it is already so close to the 090, might as well get the 090" club and increases its viability and desirability. As for the 5090? All bets are off in this AI madness driven market along with the fact the 5090 will be so far ahead performance wise of ANYTHING on the market that you WILL pay if you want to play. The gap is going to be pretty brutal especially compared to AMD. It just reinforces my own personal "go big or go home" approach and it will be either a 9070xt/5070 or a 5090 for me this generation (4070 Super obviously going back to Best Buy at the end of January).

I'd like to say I used a sniper bot or some other hot tech, but honestly it was pure luck. I happen to refresh and BOOM there it was on BB so I snagged it. This was for both a 3090 and a 4090.

Definitely Nvidia speak for DLSS4. The best, telling sign on their charts is the RT only Far Cry 6 result. Everything else is DLSS fluff. I thought the same thing about the Founder's Edition. I would love a nice, compact SFF buildout with a 9800X3D which can do air cooling no problem and a 2-slot 5090. That thing would be a portable Juggernaut. I love the idea of a dystopian world with sentient AI roaming and knocking us down a peg.....of course I'm a nihilist at heart so...yeah.

Agreed, but when someone needs the raw ram capacity over everything else, they hit a wall. Personally, as always, I want frequency and timings to take priority and that usually comes in 2-dimm format. Maybe I'm jaded coming from the X170SM where with Prema pushing 2dpc was nowhere near as good as 1dpc. 🙂 Hard pass on Acer unless something has changed. I absolutely LOVE their thin and light stuff, but the last few gaming laptops I've tested from them have been garbage not only for thermals but noise and BIOS being locked down on Dell's level if not more. They would have to do a complete about face on the upper end for me to consider them seriously. Clevo has steadily regressed over the last 5 years IMHO and is one step away from entering the ranks of Dell and Acer just without the consistency of driver and BIOS updates. They drop support pretty quick when models are EOL'd especially with BIOS support. Each year they move farther down my list of alternatives especially since abandoning the true DTR market. I would love to see a good Lenovo 18" as their 16" models repeatedly impress me. I tested the Strix Scar 18" with the 4080 (twice actually!) and outside of cost, it wasn't "that bad" except for Armory Crate. It had the best sound profiles and gamed really well. I know they updated their 18" panels between the 13th and 14th releases which was good because 13th gen panel was a bleeding nightmare on both models I tested. I'd gladly give Asus another whirl if I manage to get one sent for eval.