electrosoft

Gigabyte is known for slapping on some monster size air coolers on some of their cards. I said it before and I'll say it again. While I do not care for their motherboards, their GPUs are solid. Remove the idiot factor of users not using a sag bracket/GPU standoff when your eyes can clearly see monstrous sag with some of these behemoths, and they are very solid. Agreed. If you have it to spend on LUXURY items (IE, not needed but for personal enjoyment) or can properly budget it without paying any interest, go for it. If you don't, then don't and address your financial priorities/responsibilities. I refuse to pay interest on anything. If I can't afford it, I don't get it. I even buy my cars outright. A house is a different scenario though but even then.... I thought sticking with the KPE 3090 was the smart move if you're not getting a 4090. Outside of some scenarios, patience usually provides the optimal rewards. My dad always said, "the more you feel rushed to buy or especially someone rushes you to buy, the more you wait." and I've always used that approach when purchasing anything and it has only failed me a few times in life (IE, something that is clearly an already killer value and I should have just bought it immediately versus waiting). Funny about the house. We used to own a monster sized two story + basement house w/ a pool and once my daughter grew up and moved, we downsized to a double wide for efficiency and it has provided insane savings across the board versus a house with much less square footage to clean and upkeep and a cozier existence for just the two of us. My wife's parents did the same thing over 20yrs ago. They sold the family home and moved into a very nice double wide. We have discussed maybe meeting in the middle and getting a small rancher but the ease and convenience can't be beat. Be prepared for much higher costs and upkeep across the board.

LOL..... x 1000. 🤣 This is why I like you @tps3443 always easy going and funny with comic relief material for days. 🙂 But in all seriousness, get the 4090. If/When I get a 5090, I will have used this 4090 for over two years and extracted maximum value. If you get a 4090 now with Blackwell looking more and more likely drifting into 2025, you will get well over a year or more from the 4090 with options to spare how you want to address the 5000 series. Looks like sound logic to me! 🤣 Two for the price of one....engage!

I'm shocked....shocked I say! /s It just continues to double down on the "corporations are not your friend" mantra.

Yeah, it seems $1720(MC) and $1800 (NE) is the new "entry level" pricing for 4090s now. Many of those cards were $1600-$1650 on launch. Microcenter and to a degree Best Buy will always show you want the fair MSRP current pricing is in the US. Newegg and Amazon are just garbage with even Newegg getting in on the scalping (aka supply/demand). MSI Suprim Liquid 4090 was $1749.99 at launch and it is now $1939 at MC $2299 at Newegg (shipped by but sold by....odd). Best Buy has many models listed at their original MSRP but they are never in stock. The only ones that come into stock are the pricier models or models that have had their MSRPs increased. Newegg is just scummy with their opportunistic price gouging even shipped and sold from newegg. They continue to grossly inflate their prices even compared to other sellers. I said it before and I'll say it again. Amazon has the worst search engine ever created. They need to overhaul it stat.

Well..... At least you know that plug/unplug rating wasn't a myth...... 😞 But it just continues to show what a trash design the 12VHPWR really is in its current form. Hopefully next gen they make some serious course corrections. AMD was smart to stick with the 2-3x 8-pin connectors. Nothing will truly be in line till we get to consistent stock of $999 cards and $1599 cards. Outside of the FE on the 4090 (which appears from time to time when the dance to the GPU overlords is performed JUST RIGHT), that might be a thing of the past even the lower tier cards as even on Best Buy prices are up on cards that actually come in stock. As for the 4080 Super, I expect the $999 cards to eventually align properly as this initial rush abates.

I'm sure someone out there thought you dropping ~$1300 on a blocked 7900XTX was nutso too thinking a 7800xt should have been enough. 🤣 An unfortunate truth but what remains consistent is choice. You're not forced to buy top tier unless you want to and hopefully you're not pushing yourself into debt over what is a luxury item. We all have our luxury thing(s) we choose to indulge. Some enjoy travel. Some are foodies. Some like fine wines and spirits Some like fancy cars. Some like fancy houses. Some spend crazy money on Golf or sports. Some like fancy clothes and shoes (apparently some spend 10's or evern 100's of thousands on sneakers). And on and on.... ....then there are those of us who like computer hardware. 🤪

I wish....*sigh* I'd even take it with an AMD AM5 socket.

Ah, ok, well then double congrats. 🙂 Before with the 4090 being $1600 and the 4080 being $1200, if you were going to spend $1200, you might as well spend $1600 for the better card at that point with the 4080 being such a bad deal compared to the 3080 and xx80 pricing. Now? With the 4090 basically starting at $1800 and the 4080 Super at $1000, the 4080 Super suddenly makes "sense" (as much as a xx80 class card jumping from $700 to $1200 then back down to $1000 makes sense) and will get you very nice performance at the $1000 price point, is the better buy over the 7900xtx and much cheaper than a 4090. Realistically, calculating inflation and a modest profit bump along with increased costs, the 4080 should have been $899.99 at most along with the 4080 Super. $1200 was ridiculous. $1000 is simply much less ridiculous but still ridiculous.

If someone is looking for a top loaded X170KM-G, brand new Origin models with 11900k and 3080 in qty here: Looks like they have about 19 of them and taking offers.

Congrats! but, er, don't you already have a Suprim X 4090 blocked?

Nice! Glad to see the SP117 finally made it there safe and sound. When you absolutely want the best, price:performance ramifications quickly fades into the distance.

4080 Super Stock in US is definitely near sold out as of 2/5/2924 6:33PM EST: 0 in stock on Newegg. Only PNY 4080 Super in stock at Amazon at MSRP (but with Amazon's wonky search engine a few may not be picked up): Only Gigabyte in stock at Best Buy: In a month this will all be a moot point as everything normalizes as always after that initial buyers rush, but as of now in the US, stock is sparse.

Ditto, the stages and the design for myself (I know you couldn't wait to rip that air cooler off as fast as possible and block it 🙂 ). With the various vBIOS's floating around but overall limitations, the only thing I like about the HOF more are the dual 12vhpwr connectors and that's about it but I wish more cards came with them. Unfortunately having seen many results from the HOF posted over the last year, it seems even those aren't really "binned" and you can still get a dud that won't do 3100+ OC'd or even 2800+ out of box. I started using sag brackets starting with the Aorus Master 3070 as it was the first real "chonker" of a card I encountered. I've used them for most since. I tend to run my GPU power cables from the top of the card vs the bottom as that also gives them a little more support or at worst doesn't add to the pulling down of the card. The fact that entire PCB was twisted in that repair video speaks volumes.

I do/did like having them flashing and testing beefier vBIOS's though that's true. For MBs, even the lower end MSI PRO line can handle a lot of overclocking for 13th and 14th gen and before. I ran their PRO models for 10th and 11th and the chips gave out way before the VRMs. That video does beg the question why he didn't send it in under warranty? And more importantly, why he didn't use an anti-sag bracket of some sort?

Ohhhh, look at all those extra premium stages! MSI over-engineering at its best. 🙂 "As you can imagine PREMIUM and CHEAP get damaged in the same way" -NWR Seriously though, with the way 4090s went, I can see the logic buying a $1600 MSRP model and calling it a day and avoiding over priced HOF, MSI and Asus cards unless you specifically are targeting a particular model for personal reasons.

I agree with this 100%😞 That's one of the reasons I ended my post before with, "I do think for children, some protective measure might need to be put into place more than what are currently active the same as are in place for all the other vices listed above. In regards to children, there is also a large degree of parental accountability too. " But what happens if the parents do not understand the technological jump that comes so intuitively to the current generation of kids?

Or leave free will and choice in place as there are plenty who can just choose not to use P2W, purchase cosmetics or walk away when they want / limit gaming time which is exactly what I do. I talk a lot about WoW and Fallout 76, but I only play 2-3 hours and not everyday. I routinely skip multiple days or in some cases weeks. You don't ban or enact even more laws to fix the "problem" of humans selecting bad vices that are detrimental to their well being. If that was the case, we'd also ban chewing tobacco, caffeine, alcohol, cigarettes, sugar, gambling and more.... I see absolutely nothing wrong with cosmetic items. *I* think they're stupid and a waste of money, but who am I to tell someone else how they want their onscreen avatars to look? Then again, I think blowing wads of cash on fancy cars, overkill sized houses, jewelry, designer shoes, sneakers and clothes is a colossal waste of money but yet again....personal preference. I'm a hardware junkie but that's my personal preference and I've had friends or family (same ones spending gobsmackingly large amounts of money on virtual items and wasteful designer items) wonder why I do. I do draw the line at P2W, but it is what it and has been around in some way, shape or form in gaming since the 90's (Diablo II, EQ, etc...). I even remember people spending real money to get items from other players in AOL's Neverwinter Nights multiplayer in the early 90's. I do think for children, some protective measure might need to be put into place more than what are currently active the same as are in place for all the other vices listed above. In regards to children, there is also a large degree of parental accountability too. That is a good question what metrics were used to derive +23%. 50+ to 70+ is a little vague I'll admit (50+ could be anything greater than 50, same as 70+) maybe with a *touch* of excitement of a new card but I don't think you can fairly classify a 3090 as a 3090ti with an OC. I also think TPUs numbers are a little suspect vs their relative performance chart with the 3090 vs the 3090ti. Hub has the performance of the 3090 vs the 3090ti at ~3% at 1080p up to a max of ~10% at 4k. When I compared my KPE 3090 vs my KPE 3090ti stock for stock, it was about 8% on average across games and synthetics (one of the reasons I sold it in the face of 4090 early testing which just decimated it). Back to @tps3443 and his MSI 4080 Super.... He overclocked his 4080 Super just like he overclocked his 3090. I'm sure he got more out of his 3090 though being a KPE and on chilled water and Ampere being a bit more overclockable than ADA along with his MSI not having a great cooler (one of the lesser ones actually overall). This is also a case of never compare OC A vs non-OC A or especially OC A vs non-OC B and declare them the same (I've had this same argument with @tps3443 before). Use stock and go from there of what the card actually is which is a 3090. The 3090ti also has ~2.4% (!) more shaders, higher base/boost clock (irrelevant to a degree with boosting technologies) and slightly higher clocked memory. In the same vein, while looking at TPU charts for stock to stock comparisons, the 4080 Super has a healthy uplift over the 3090. Quite honestly, more than I expected before clicking. I'm pleasantly surprised. On average (across all their games tested as YMMV based on individual games tested): 4080 Super vs 3090 --------------------- 1080p ~+28% 1440p ~+31% 4k ~+29.4% --------------------- 4080 Super vs 3090ti --------------------- 1080p ~+18.5% 1440p ~+18.9% 4k ~+15% Then you have this from their 3090ti architecture page: ---------------------------- One last note, looking at their results vs the myriad of 4k results on the OCN forums, here and personal testing, I can almost guarantee their hardware hasn't been dialed in and that 4090 is CPU bound in a lot of those results especially at 4k which routinely happens to 4090 owners (present company included) even with dialed in and tuned hardware. Last January, watching my 3080 and 7900xtx peg to 100% in WoW (did you know I play WoW? I don't know if I mentioned it before....) at 4k then watching the 4090 sit at well below 100% utilization on average even at 4k ultra (while still trouncing both) along with Fallout 76 sitting even lower on the 4090 at 4k ultra let me know it was time to upgrade my CPU stat. 🙂 As I mentioned in my other WoW benchmark post, the X3D and 13900KS helped to feed the 4090 even more with boosted results that separated it from the 3080 and 7900XTX even more, but I was still seeing more GPU under utilization more often than not overall at 4k. Probably a few years from now with CPU and memory advances, we'll revisit this topic and you will see the 4090's lead over the 4080 Super and 7900XTX will continue to grow at 4k as it will finally be properly GPU bound in the majority of tests close to across the board just as the X3D and 13900KS/14900K started to make a more sustained dent in the 4090's utilization at 4k. If I was a 1440p gamer, I wouldn't even consider the 4090. I'd pick up a 4080 Super or a 7900XTX when the prices adjust. It usually takes 4k to really separate the 4090 from the pack where it is still sometimes CPU bound.

For those of us a bit more seasoned, Carl Weathers was a childhood and teenage icon from Rocky to Action Jackson and Predator and more. Seeing him in The Mandalorian was just the icing on the cake.

The board I sold to you. I had a 980 Pro 1TB in there I was using and after I broke everything down for selling to the three buyers, I took the spare drive and upgraded my daughter's system from a 500GB no name M.2 to the 1tb 980 Pro since she only had ~20GB left of space from her Steam games and WoW. @tps3443 was asking for my settings when I tuned 8000 awhile ago and after looking through some of my USB drives, I realized I left them on the desktop of the drive which is now formatted with a cloned copy of my daughter's original 500GB nestled snug in her desktop. 🙂

The X170SM was the last one to truly get everything right especially with Prema having put in a lot of work on the BIOS and it is built like a tank. If they could add 11th gen support, that would be something fun to play around with it too. I had both and outside of the dual PSU and very hefty size, I loved them both. I'll be curious to see your progression with it in the X170SM-G thread!

I was looking through my files to post them up for you when I realized I left these on my desktop drive (980 Pro 1TB) I had in the MSI in notepad.....which I then installed in my daughter's system to replace her 500GB which only had 20GB free so they're gone..... I did laugh when he overslept by ~15min and missed the window. I remember back during EVGA drops I set my alarm to be up and ready to get in the queue ASAP! The extra $150 still boggles the mind but I did drop an extra $120 on my Suprim Liquid X 4090 over retail ($1720 vs $1600) but I wanted this model specifically. I would have just ponied up the extra coin for a 4090 if I couldn't get the $1k model seeing as $1150 is nipping at the original MSRP of the 4080 normal. On the other hand, I do like the look of that MSI 4090 he picked up.

Yup, upgrade in every aspect except that VRAM. Now imagine if you had caved and picked up a 4070ti Super..... The aluminum foil crack pipe....lol..... 🤣❤️

As long as cosmetic upgrades do not give any gaming advantage, I'm fine with them charging all they want for them. I have never nor will never buy anything cosmetic in a game ever. Blame Fortnite for this new trend where people will drop insane amounts of real world money on skins and other external cosmetic items. Fallout 76 makes the bulk of its money off of cosmetic items and even WoW is overrun with cosmetic items that can be purchased for real money or in game for gold (which you can conveniently buy from Blizzard now laundered through players selling their extra gold to blizzard for blizzard tokens which can be redeemed for either a month of game time ($15) or a $15 credit in the Blizzshop). While I have never spent real money on cosmetic crap, my daughter, wife, nieces and nephews all have in the various games they play along with numerous friends so it is definitely a thing especially in mobile gaming. I don't get it and I remember looking at my daughter incredulously that she spent $25 REAL dollars on a flying horse mount in WoW like she had grown a foot out of her forehead. My wife wanting to spend $50 on a clothing and pet cosmetic set on WoW just had me staring at her like she had sprouted wings.... When I tell you cosmetics, pets, camp/housing items, special decorative abilities and more are huge sellers it is an understatement. Don't get me started on the sheer number of people that P2W in games like Candy Crush and similar to get bonus turns, items and more to have chances of advancing farther in the game. It's insane.... With that being said ... One crucial thing here in his video is he has fallen victim to , "correlation is not causation" Correlating the continued rise of cosmetic purchases with the causation and decline of quality DLC content (and neither has been properly quantified or qualified) is tenuously subjective at best. His core argument is, "Companies no longer care about quality games/DLC but instead would prefer the easier revenue stream of cosmetic items." He effectively has set up his own straw man to knock down. But again, personally, the idea of spending real world money on cosmetic items seems insane to me but to each their own. Knowing one person in particular who spent well over $1000 buying bonuses and power upgrades in Candy Crush, I will only pay for the games and valid Xpac/DLC gaming content. No more; no less.

True, the 7800X3D definitely smacked down the 12900k which also topped out around ~6800 stable / 7200 benching and actually performed better on tuned B-die 4133 DDR4 (but still lost to the 7800X3D), but the 13900ks did 8000 no problem and once tuned was easily on par with both my 7800X3D and 7950X3D. WoW loves tuned memory especially with Intel where we are talking a 10-15% difference in performance from highs to lows and even more if you pick up junk 5600-6000 memory and just leave it at XMP settings. The biggest difference is in the lows. Anybody who picks up a 13th or 14th gen system and doesn't tune their memory is leaving so much performance on the table. With an architectural overall from Intel and a rumored IPC bump of at least 10% for AMD 9000, I think we're in for a nice round of exciting CPUs this year. (fingers crossed).

Speaking of which (just for you @Etern4l 🤣), I reran my WoW 4k RT on/off benchmark for Dragonflight which flies point to point over the entire Dragonflight continent there and back with the 7950X3D + 4090. This is with the 7950X3D untuned but memory tuned the same as with the 7800X3D: 7950X3D (memory tuned. CPU untuned) 7800X3D (memory and cpu tuned): 13900KS (memory 8000 tuned, CPU stock): I still need to tune the 7950X3D along with isolate CCD for X3D only for comparison (I'll probably isolate the other CCD just for comparison sake too). 13900KS and X3D chips were finally able to have the 4090 bouncing off of 100% gpu utilization in some spots but still left the 4090 waiting in others. As soon as you introduce player data and the CPU has to work extra hard, GPU utilization drops into the 80's or lower. Hopefully next gen 9000 or 15th gen will tap out the GPU entirely but much more GPU utilization than the 12900k from both camps.