electrosoft

Word on the street is Astral 5090 is going up to $3499.99 B&H already has it raised to its new price Hopefully the LC holds steady, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it climb to $3899.99

5080 FE shipped off today. Some other sales on Fleabay and just like that I'm almost at tax limit cap for reporting in the US for this fiscal year ($2500)...boo..... So as you know, I returned that 9070xt, but then it popped back up open box 10% off. I had some of the rewards left over from the Astral (picked up some USB drives) so I picked it back up because I really want to finish playing and overclocking it......so total cost after everything was $381. True story, as soon as I applied all my sell off items income earlier today in my "tech budget", after paying off the Astral and realized I still had a small buffer left over from this sell off and the holiday sell off even after deducting the cost of the Hero+9800X3D combo, TG memory and Astral, I was kicking myself for not holding onto it because I really didn't want to return it in the first place to continue to test. As luck would have it, I went to go do a refresh and it was still in my saved favorites with "see details" lit up and it literally just popped back up from an earlier refresh an hour ago while I was checking other items in there that forever never seem to come back in stock or go on a proper sale (I'm looking at you 13th/14th gen). ------- Final Boss Form for my system for the next few years. Everything tuned to my liking. Only thing left is to play with a few vBIOS and maybe push for a static 5.6+ OC. I don't know if I'll ever run a closed case again but if I do, it won't be this one but another that supports 140mm fans on the bottom, top, front and rear and I don't think that unicorn exists lol.... With it completely open, it is dead silent during normal use and even gaming I can keep my speakers down low if I want and still minimal noise from the GPU and CPU. Benching is also fairly quiet on auto. I have yet to purposely push the GPU/CPU fans to 100 yet for benching/testing (once just to hear how loud "bad" the Astral could get) but we know that's coming sooner than later.....

Intel is already making inroads down low and the 9070 series is selling so well Nvidia is rumored to be pushing up their time tables for Super variants with more memory. If there was no AMD or Intel, it would be so much worse. What I think is going to happen is they are going to get Intel'd. They are so focused on AI right now they have taken their foot off the brake and have taken on a mantle of arrogant presumption in the gamer GPU market. They obviously do care to a degree because when presented with real market competition, they responded appropriately. For example, they brought all the heat with the 4090 in response to AMD being so close with the 6000 vs 3000 top end series. They enhanced and lowered the price of the 4080 Super over the 4080 to compete with the 7900xtx on price and performance and now we see them upping their time tables on the 5070/5070ti Supers to counter what appears to be the wildly successful 9070/xt. But still, they are coasting in the lower and mid range a bit and I think it will cost them against the 9070. This is how you slowly lose a war. If AMD and Intel make enough inroads along with the AI market cooling off eventually, they may find themselves scrambling all of a sudden. 5090 is an absolute behemoth. No getting around that and it is vastly out performing day 1 reviews depending on game(s) played but the pricing is ridiculous. Even $2k for an FE is ridiculous. In no way, shape or form should we normalize that kind of pricing and think $2k for a consumer level GPU is "good." Instead, it is "less bad." than AIB pricing. But right now Nvidia rules the roost and I think of all the years I picked up Intel chips with Skylake++++ knowing it was a rehash or the same node because I'm an enthusiast and want to play with the newest toys. History continues to repeat itself... Yeah, I really think it will be it all over again with a $2499.99 6090 Founders at this rate and $3k-$4k AIB models to follow. Each cycle I get closer and closer to "launch day" for the new cards for selling my old cards and each time I'm finding out waiting till after for the inevitable shortage might be the right time to sell but I prefer a sure thing and not be overly greedy. I am more than content to break even or if it happens lose a little. If two years from now I can turn around and sell my Astral 5090 for even $3k, I am good to go and very happy. Break even or more? I'm over the moon.

The one saving grace, and a big reason I held onto my 5090, was the fact that cycle after cycle at the end I've been able to sell off my GPUs and make back everything I sunk into them or more since Pascal. Actually if I think about it since even my EVGA 980GTX's I sold off one when I found out WoW didn't scale with SLI and then the other right before I bought a 1080ti and got back the bulk of what I paid. Sure, upfront costs hurt but you know in a few years you're going to get back the bulk of what you paid if not more. Something to chew on....

It really depends on LLMs / AI tasks that require one, contiguous block of memory. That is why the M3 Ultra exists. M4 Max is superior in every way except the high core work (where the M4 is so much better it still competes well and excels even more in GPU workloads of many types), but what it can't do is offer that 512GB of unified memory for absolutely monster sized models. They are basically being snapped up for AI work. The same is with the 6000 and that ginormous chunk of 96GB of unified/contiguous memory. 4x 5090's can't compete on that level but in multi gpu supported scenarios, yeah. Of course the beauty of that is you can literally mix and match 5090's. It doesn't have to be one particular card. -------------- We would need to see the extra cores + DR memory in action..... .....assuming it can OC. That is the one big thing I want to see is if it can overclock both memory and core. If not and it's locked down you can literally overclock any garden mill 5090 to get the same performance if not more. We just need to find someone who not only gets one but immediately tries to OC the snot out of it....

Just sell your 5090 to offset the cost! Do it for the team! 🤣 I'm partial to Rolex's because my dad raised us on them, but Breitling's are nice too.

Yeah, I'm hoping someone from the forums splurges and goes to town on one of them. 🤣 I suspect they would make adjustments to the heatsink like they did between the 5080 FE and 5090 FE. Externally they look identical, but the 5090 FE weighs more and has been beefed up a bit internally.

Realistically, capped, any desktop GPU will fit in a laptop but Nvidia regressed when they basically did everything in their power to do away with MXM as a standard. I would love to see Nvidia enforced TDPs go away and let manufacturer's scale up to 300w+ If they did that, a 5090m would actually perform like a real desktop 5080. I've commented numerous times in the past on the bean counters just following marketing/sales data and going where the markets dictate. Big, thick and heavy laptops are going the way of the dodo unfortunately and the vast majority want thin and light laptops with as good of battery life as possible. Performance places a distant second to this criteria and the top selling laptops always bear out this point. 😞 I know right? And you know there are going to be some enthusiasts picking one up for the sheer leisurely love of it for that full fat die loving.... -------------------- Astral 5080 is officially now $1799.99 on MC, Amazon and Newegg shipped and sold by both.... Cheapest AIB 5080 on Newegg is $1389.99 shipped and sold by.... If trends follow, I would not be surprised to see the Astral go to $3599.99 and LC $3899.99.

Yeah I didn't say it was pretty. 🙂 I guess when you really want to know and get things moving and know what you're doing (I'll assume), you improvise. Temps were ~64c avg pulling all that extra juice so it's clearly working to a degree. Just good to see knowing you plan on shunting and blocking your FE. What block(s) are you looking at/ordering? I've always liked the look of EKWB but BP are cheaper are decently functional. Good luck cooling that OR having an old school luggable level laptop. SFF on the other hand? I'm looking forward to continued buildouts with it.... I've been collecting a lot of data on configs, cases, etc... all centered around the 5080/5090 FE design and a 9800X3D. Remember years ago we did have desktop equivalent power in a laptop with the 980 and the P870 laptops. Those were full on Desktop parts in a laptop using MXM. 1080 was also on the same level. Things started to diverge with the 2000 series as the power started to get slap happy and then 3000 series barely moved the needle forward in a laptop vs 2000. 4000 had a lovely switch to TSMC and a node shrink so with the 4080/4090 we got a nice bump in performance. Unfortunately same node as the 5000 series so the needle barely moved akin to 2000 vs 3000. The 5090FE main board itself is most certainly MXM sized but think about the sheer size and compact chunk around it to cool it down. That has to make it's way into a laptop realistically. In the end, you have a 500w+ part and that's just not going to work in any semblance of a modern laptop or even a P870 type where cooling 300w was state of the art and it was a brick house (I loved mine). It would take a homebrew tinkerer to try and really get an FE board and 9800X3D in some sort of all in one ~15-20lb "laptop" to work and I'm 100% here for it. Obviously at least a 780w external adapter. I mean, on paper it is kinda doable but just really ad hoc and specialized. I'm fully expecting a node shrink for the 6090. 5090 is pushing the boundaries as is and has extended the current node as far as it can go realistically.

FG aside (yuck), 5090 has some impressive gains in my testing over the 4090 and 5080. Pricing is absolutely terrible, but the performance is there. Down the rest of the stack, you either pay the same or even less for modest gains across the board. It isn't exciting, but it is still net positive across the board. It isn't like Nvidia provided zero up uplift and charged more. We need AMD to do what they're doing to the mid range with the 9070xt to the halo tier. Nvidia literally has zero competition. They didn't have it last time either with the 4090 but the 9070xt lowers the price (when MSRP), ups the RT but is basically performing raster wise overall like a 7900xtx. Demand has many 9070xt's priced like 5070ti's and as much as I like the 9070xt, if pricing is equal, I'm taking the 5070ti. ----- @tps3443 This is some serious levels of dedication to shunting and ad hoc cooling the 5090 FE!! https://www.overclock.net/posts/29462990/

I won't lie. I'm still on the fence with this one, but if other things move first🤣, I'm going to keep it.

5080FE and Z790i Lightning (and a few smaller things) sold on fleabay already..... NH55 listed here and on fleabay.... Have some more items to list up over the next week or so including several other laptops locally and a potential 14700k desktop buildout... The great sell off has commenced... 🤣

Price: $975 + S&H Condition: Good Warranty: None Reason for sale: Upgraded, too many laptops (again) Payment: PayPal, Venmo, Zelle Item location: NJ Shipping: Buyer's choice (Usually FedEx Ground is the cheapest) International shipping: Yes but only to those I know and Zelle, Venmo F&F only Handling time: 3 Days Feedback: https://www.ebay.com/fdbk/feedback_profile/electrosoft Specification: I picked this up a few years ago from @win32asmguy and it has been super fun to play around with and tinker/optimize to get it to run full tilt with a golden 12900k and other best in class components. CPU and GPU both have Kingpin KPx since I was able to get the CPU pairing optimized with retention frame removal and slight modifications to the heatsink. Using Throttlestop to apply a -0.065 cache UV allows it to really stretch its wings and hit a full CB23 run with zero throttling. GPU runs crisp and cool too. Check out the NH55 thread here Specs: Intel i9-12900k desktop Socket 1700 CPU Kingston HyperX 2x16GB DDR4 3200 CL20 Samsung 980 Pro 1TB Nvidia RTX 3070ti Intel AX210 WiFi Windows 11 Pro 230w PSU included System will ship in its original box with original pack ins and all that good stuff. Proof of ownership: Time Stamped pictures

Supply is really catching up with demand. St David's eventually sold out of their 10qty allotment too but took a bit. @jaybee83 : " I'm gonna install and find the magic vBIOS to break through my silicon wall..." Your Suprim: 🤣

Then you're good to go for testing. Might need something like a dirt cheap Arctic Cooling 280mm ($86) or 360mm ($101) to really keep it in check for testing vs the air cooler at 5.5 all core but let 'er rip. I know the 14900KS in the wife's system at 59/45/45 is still a monster on tuned DDR4 4000 CL15. Just hit those test spots and see if you get 99% cap on your 5090 with your current setup at least with much lower CPU overhead/usage first: 5090 @ 99% utill stock 4k Ultra RT high/max: 5090 @ 99% util +300/+3000 OC 4k Ultra RT high/max: If you cap out on those spots, then you know it is your CPU severely dragging you down even moreso in CPU intensive areas. If you can't even hit 99% utilization in those spots at 4k, then you really know it is your CPU holding you back as that Oribos spot is as CPU light as it gets. Yeah, we had 10 in stock this afternoon at ours and now all gone, but they're getting easier to grab especially since the trucks are showing up during the early morning/afternoon. Not much AMD can do. They are charging more now to AIBs, sure, but then the AIBs are just AIB'ing like on Nvidia and pricing up. You also have a lot of tariff (pre, during, post) adjustments in play. With the way the US market is projected to unfurl over the next 3-4 months in reaction to the tariffs, I expect prices to go up. As I said before, you will have AIBs in an odd spot as even if they price back down, tariffs will only allow those prices to go so low as they will not suffer losses. Instead, they will redirect to other markets to sell and the US will either have no stock or small quantities of stock priced accordingly in reaction to the tariff costs. "There are several factors attributed to the constant price increase with AMD's RDNA 4 GPUs, with a significant part being played by the US tariffs, along with the high demand, even after months of launch." This will impact both Nvidia and AMD.... You will know a true wall has been hit when Nvidia prices their Founder Edition cards upwards in response to market conditions. One thing they never did during the 3000/4000 series was ever change their MSRP pricing. If they do with the 5000 series, that will let you know costs and tariffs have finally dug deep enough into their profit margins to cause a price adjustment.

Looks like 5090 pricing really is starting to find that supply/demand price point as 5090s are staying in stock everywhere now much longer including Amazon with the $3400 shipped and sold from Amazon Epic-X ARGB. My local MC has 9 Gigabyte 5090 OC's in stock for $2919. They would have been gone by 10am before. Newegg has a slew of Gigabyte and MSI "minimal" combos in stock (IE, w/ a PSU OR MB only). Pre-builts everywhere. Pricing is basically back to MSRP now which is pretty high. Now comes phase 2, the slow trickle of 5090s because they can't get any cheaper in the US and might get even pricier with the full effects of the tariffs not even being felt yet. AIBs will ship 5090s to other countries where it is cost effective and makes better sense to sell there than here. 5080's on down are priced low enough (relatively speaking even with AIB pricing), that they will continue to flow in along with 9070xt's and that is where we will see the real pricing war if applicable. Yeah, I haven't bid on items in quite some time just outright purchased them so it was new to me. As a seller who just turned their store back on last night to unload some more hardware, it was a pleasant surprise. Nothing worse than leaving things up for bidding then have a winner take forever to pay or request a cancellation or accepting an offer and the buyer then goes awol. I was tempted to keep both, but I have to be realistic with my tech budget constraints. As I slowly start to list stuff on my eBay store, I'll probably put it up for $1500-$1600. I'll also list my NH55 here and eBay and other small stuff. I am going to start monitoring drops again. VPA has picked back up and BB has had two drops now of 5090 FEs. If a 5090 FE drops on BB or VPA, I'll probably pick it up for comparison. I did the same with watching the 4090 FE and snagged one when it dropped many moons later with my 4090 Liquid for comparison. Liquid ran roughshod over it badly, so I returned the 4090 FE but with such a large pricing gap, I can settle for not so great silicon/cooling/D2D OC as long as it doesn't have coil whine. Pricing differentials are in play, so if I snag a 5090FE that has no coil whine for that price, I would sell the Astral or if it happens before early June, just return it. What z690 board and memory is it? I would suspect a decently tuned 12900ks system (5.5 all core, turn off e-cores if needed to achieve) and some halfway tuned DDR4 or DDR5 will outperform your HEDT. Even pure stock it might too. As a baseline, do the Oribos and Hallowfall tests I posted at stock 5090 settings to see where they go with GPU utilization. Oribos might cap out even on HEDT at 4k Ultra max settings across the board RT high. Hallowfall will not but let's see how high it goes. I know with my 9800X3D rig, flying around even had my 9070xt and 5080fe capping out routinely at 99% over Dornogal too. Oribos caps out at 99% ~186fps stock, ~210fps OC'd. Hallowfall would sit at ~92% stock, ~76% OC'd on the 5090 (capped out on everything else including 4090 OC'd). All roads lead to Rome with the PNY doing it while giving you the best overall clocks. In a game of inches it seems, it wins. One inch more is one inch more (insert joke here). Nice work and write up! Did you try for an overall higher OC as you were testing the vBIOS's or did it come down to your card's silicon wall so trying to find the best vBIOS that ran within it to produce the best results?

I returned the 9070xt to BB today. Not gonna lie and say it didn't hurt to let it go, but I can't keep them all. And then there were two.... (5080 FE, Astral 5090) ------------------------------ I like the buyer changes eBay has implemented to avoid non paying bidders. I went to go bid on some motherboards and now you: A> Have to have an attached, verified form of payment (also helps cut down on fraud) B> Authorize eBay to charge that form of payment if you are the winning bidder ------------------------------ Ahhh, ok I saw it. WoW...... I mean it makes sense considering the breadth of the hack on EVGA's forums and how people tier their passwords based on priority. A lot of people get lax with their own personal security when it is just forums and such and share the same Q&D login credentials versus let's say banking and credit card to store front sites.

Context helps..... 🤣

What bios are you running now?

B&H sent me an update on a launch day PNY 5090 I had queued up for $2199.99. Still unavailable, but the price is now $3399.99. This is the official MSRP now on this card as of last week. Sheesh. ----- Yeah, for this run I'm not using CO just a +200 boost and tuned SOC. I haven't gone back in to recheck my offsets since testing out 1203 which is proving to be worse than 1104 (I think I mention it in the video). I did see 1303 just dropped and in the notes it says, "improves system performance," which is sometimes Asus speak for, "our last version regressed." ----- Everyone is hooked on the Gigabyte vroom vroom right now over on the OC forums, but it will be nice to see testing them all on your Suprim what emerges as top dog.

Are you sitting at 100% utilization during the run? Stock, my Gigabut 9070xt Gaming OC is hitting a bit higher...might be the 9800X3D flexing a bit... I know I uploaded that video of it running through the benchmark: Those memory temps are about right out of the box. My memory was hitting 90 peak under load too. Hotspot around 85 again out of the box stock: Yeah, just like the 4090 I'm not going to fret over it. I plug it in, do some OC'ing, benchmarking, play my games and if she blows she blows. GPU Tweak III lets me know as I've switched to its OSD. We both know the odds of it blowing are slim to none. (Tonight on the 5090 in Fallout 76): https://imgur.com/gzuWJmTo show how poor the 9070xt fairs in this game (but still plays nicely), this same encounter area it was clocking in at 62fps..... But when you find those games and titles that let it stretch its legs, it's got some chops. https://imgur.com/gzuWJmT Seriously, MSRP vs MSRP, 9070xt is an absolute stud. There's a reason AMD can't keep them in stock while AIBs pump them out like crazy while you see 5070s and soon enough 5060ti's start to lag in sales. That's also why you suddenly see Nvidia talking about a 16GB 5070..... And yeah, I did like having those 3x 8-pin cables running.... 😞

I just run GPU Tweak III w/ its default OC +300/+3000 no voltage adjustments and that's about it w/ the ugly tentacles and pin monitoring. low fan noise, no coil whine just purring away. It just runs perfectly for me, but as we've seen with MSI, how the hell do you cut corners with the most dangerous part? Like I remind everyone, including myself, "it works perfect!!!" till it doesn't.....

Hey! I didn't make the video! I'm just linking it for educational purposes! 🤣 At least some good news after the dead CPU. Makes me wonder how it would do on a 1DPC board though but everything else looks good! Congrats on the happy buyer too in Italy!

Yeah, this is all the day before D day (1st) which was always my set return day since the bill is due a few days after that. 🤣 I played WoW for 3hrs last night on the 5090 and noticing all the areas even when flying around that cap out on the 5080 FE and 9070xt vs the 5090 always ready for more or running a few tier 11 solo delves and sitting at frame cap (238fps) most of the time and just ultra silky smooth. Ran some raids in my fixed D2D OC profile with GPU Tweak III and just smooth.....even when fps dipped into the 70s still smooth.....The problem with the WoW engine will always be when all that player data hits in certain moments, your 5090 will perform like a 4070 Super or 9070xt. Same with the 5080FE. There's just nothing you can do about it. The engine CPU physics need to be overhauled badly. Tonight is 3hrs of Fallout76 where the 9070xt is just not good just like the 7900xtx was poor too versus Nvidia. Nothing worse than outdoor bosses and the frames just chunking into the 50s and 40s on AMD vs always 100+ on Nvidia. This will be my first serious session with the 5090 tonight versus running around and benchmarking..... Did I mention how absolutely gorgeous and smooth Deus Ex MD looks on the 5090? Final Analysis: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 9070xt is going back either way as it has strengths in other games but WoW and especially Fallout 76 is not it. Decent 1440p and to an extent 4k WoW card but I can't trust it with AMD/Blizzard history of breaking drivers plus the fact it still crashes on the regular in Classic WoW. Final nail in the coffin is the poor FO76 performance overall versus even a 4070 Super let alone the 5080 FE or 5090. I'm still impressed overall with the price:performance at MSRP. For $600 it is an absolute banger albeit I paid $$771 after tax so back it goes. So then it now comes down to the 5080FE vs the 5090. I know I can sell the 5080FE and make $400 on it so mentally it becomes a $1500 card for resale. I can use that to put an almost 50% dent into the 5090. I know for a fact I can ride the 5090 for a few years and then sell it off and make back the bulk of what I paid and maybe a touch more depending on how this market goes. Therein lies the blessing and the curse with Nvidia cards, especially their halo cards the last few cycles and even AMD and their 5700xt and my 1080ti. I sold ALL of them after a year or two at worse for a tiny profit and some with a hefty one. So either I'm walking into BB tomorrow with ONE card to return or BOTH and I would just continue to rock the 5080FE. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I know, I know, first world problems to have all three laying around and having to decide which one(s) to keep.... 🤣 Nvidia is purposely holding back raw performance in the lower tiers and trying to push AI solutions as an overall "performance package" and that is BS. When Jensen said a 5070 had the performance of a 4090, that was all you needed to hear how they plan to shape the future of gaming advancements as a major piece of their strategy. The fact they and AIBs are trying to "encourage" reviewers to discuss talking points involving upscaling and frame generation. Even trying to discourage some reviewers from discussing comparing the 5000 series mid and lower tier cards vs the 4000 variants but instead focus on 2-3 generation older cards. In the end, Nvidia needs AMD or Intel to drastically step up their game or like @jaybee83 said, we're going to eventually be stuck with marginal cycle upgrades because there's no competition like we had with Skylake++++ until AMD started to wreck them and forced their hand to move quicker which they couldn't and here we are. We need another 6000 AMD series surprise where Nvidia was legitimately caught off guard with the performance of the 6900xtx and it was basically matching the 3090 up to 1440p and only at 4k did the 3090 manage to gain a very small amount of breathing room. Nvidia's only saving grace was their RT performance. I will say as time and drivers move on, the 5090 is widening its lead over the 5080 and 4090 and in some titles it is pretty substantial. I know I didn't expect the 5090 to be that much faster than the 4090 in WoW. ------------------------- Remember early reports were AIBs weren't making much of a profit because of Nvidia charging so much. You also have to calculate in tariffs as these cards are being made real time versus other companies selling pre-existing stock so the tariffs haven't really "hit" yet but will as levels are depleted and either stock dries up or prices go up (or both). I do know there are now plenty of sane priced combos on Newegg that are languishing since yesterday including some flat out solo cards from Gigabyte and MSI now ready for purchase. What continues to sell out though are Astrals including those $6k combos again.....insane. Speaking of Astrals, nice no holds bar build out with an Astral air and LC unit and comparing performance and temps. Air model performs just as well and better on memory temps overall. To get the same temps (+/- 1c), Rad had to be mounted on the front and used as intake which makes sense. Speaks volumes for the chonker heatsink on this thing.

Most approach computers as a tool to be used like a dishwasher and treat it as such. Fine for a dell office computer. Not so much for a 5-6k rig running top of the line hardware including a 5090. I swapped my Astral 5090 back in with a clean install to compare against the 9070xt for D2D gaming at 4k. The 9070xt lulled me into a false sense of "this is good!" 5090 is obviously superior in every way, but is it $729 vs $3359 superior? Is it $999 5080FE vs $3359 superior? Or is it having the absolute best gaming/benching experience price be damned good? This is my philosophy exactly. I only buy used and I drive it till it falls apart. I am driving a 2016 basic Nissan Rogue that I will drive easily for the next 5-6 years or until something catastrophic happens or not worth fixing. I have no qualms with my friends and family that upgrade their cars every three years though. That is their choice. I'm currently running 576.26 when I gave my system a clean install to put back the Astral 5090 for more testing compared to a clean install Gigabyte 9070xt for realistic D2D use and further cost analysis. I'm leaning towards returning the 5090. Superior in every way and a good bin but the cost whew..... but we'll see tomorrow which card goes back. What's the newest version?