*Official Benchmark Thread* - Post it here or it didn't happen :D

[Mr. Fox]

On 1/29/2026 at 1:52 PM, Mr. Fox said:

Brother @Papusan it looks like there is a solution to use the Matrix BIOS on your Astral. I am using it on my Solid OC and it is the best one.

 

https://www.overclock.net/posts/29553948/

Brother @johnksss I think this is it (above). turbogear figured it out

 

But, also have a look at my post here (below) when I asked for clarification on the Astral mod...

 

https://www.overclock.net/posts/29558012/

 

 

Quote

 

So, if I am interpreting the photos correctly, you merely move the resistor from the pad marked #2 (where the resistor is present on the Black Astral) to the pad marked #5? (where the resistor is present on the white Astral) Is that correct?

 

You move one resistor over to another spot.

 

Quote

 

Yes that is correct. You only need to move one resistor to position 5.

If you lose it after removing 😄 then you need new 0402 size 100k Ohm resistor.

 

 

[electrosoft]

30 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

 

I am using the Matrix vBIOS. I think there is an issue using any other vBIOS on the black Astral unless you move resistors on the PCB to match the white Astral due to a different fan controller arrangement. If you flash something else on the black Astral is causes the GPU to report problems in Device Manager even though it is only a fan issue. There is a post on OC.net showing how to move the resistors so you can use any 5090 vBIOS you want to use on the black Astral.

 

I think I posted a link to it in this thread and tagged Brother @Papusan about the Astral fan resistor mod.

 

---

 

Found it...

  

Brother @johnksss I think this is it.

 

 

There is an issue. For some reason, I figured @johnksss opted for a white one when he went to Microcenter knowing of the issue.....don't ask me why. 🤣

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

1 minute ago, electrosoft said:

 

There is an issue. For some reason, I figured @johnksss opted for a white one when he went to Microcenter knowing of the issue.....don't ask me why. 🤣

 

 

I am not sure whether he got a white one or black one. If he got the white one then yeah, just flash the Matrix vBIOS and good to go.

[johnksss]

49 minutes ago, electrosoft said:

 

What was the top frequency your card was able to sustain with a +460 offset in GPU-Z render? 3400+ is good. 3500+ is god mode. Better bins fall somewhere between 3450-3500.

 

 

Some are untamed (Asus 2000w XOC), while others are actually good. Right now, the Matrix 800w vBIOS is the sweet spot overall for D2D unless you're going to shunt and/or slap on the 1500w+ variants floating around.

 

I know the Asus XOC gives you 1.15v and you will need to adjust down.

 

@Papusan was running the big boy Asus XOC before so he might be able to give you more insight.

 

I know @Mr. Fox is shunted with an EVC2, but not sure what vBIOS he is cooking with atm.

 

 

 

 

 

I would say it is hitting 3412 at 40C right now.

I was shunted with evc2 on my first card, but it didn't seem to be a very good overclocker.

18K

https://www.3dmark.com/sn/6448799

 

43 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

 

I am using the Matrix vBIOS. I think there is an issue using any other vBIOS on the black Astral unless you move resistors on the PCB to match the white Astral due to a different fan controller arrangement. If you flash something else on the black Astral is causes the GPU to report problems in Device Manager even though it is only a fan issue. There is a post on OC.net showing how to move the resistors so you can use any 5090 vBIOS you want to use on the black Astral.

 

I think I posted a link to it in this thread and tagged Brother @Papusan about the Astral fan resistor mod.

 

---

 

Yep. Found it...

  

Brother @johnksss I think this is it.

 

I was using the gig vbios on my last Astral.

Hummm, now that does sound interesting. Any vbios. I'll read up on it.

 

12 minutes ago, electrosoft said:

 

There is an issue. For some reason, I figured @johnksss opted for a white one when he went to Microcenter knowing of the issue.....don't ask me why. 🤣

 

 

A few reasons why. A white card would have cost me roughly another $1200.

 

They did not have a white one instock.

 

My direct replacement was using my MC warranty claim instead of having Asus attempt to fix whatever the issue was. When I bought my card it was $3399.99 at the time. It is currently $3899.99. And that took me a few months to catch MC with an Astral instock. When they had like 25+ my card was still sort of working.

11 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

I am not sure whether he got a white one or black one. If he got the white one then yeah, just flash the Matrix vBIOS and good to go.

No white one at this time. Although I didn't even know about the resistor issue as I had not been keeping up on the overclocking for the last 6 months or so.

[Mr. Fox]

 

 

[Papusan]

11 hours ago, johnksss said:

So, are any of these unlocked vbios files any good or just bs. Meaning they are unlocked, but the way they are unlocked they just boost power to the moon and no real efficiency gains with true voltage control? The same problem people had back in the day where it looks good, but no meaningful performance increase.

 

You can get the xx.xx.xx.50 Asus XOC but the efficiency is pretty bad from the Asus XOC. This is one of  the few options if you can't use the Matrix/Lightning vbios due fan problems/move some resistors to make it work on Asus. But running the GPU at 1000W without chiller/huge custom cooling for the GPU ain't what I would do. Benchmarks... Yes but not as dayly 24/7 usage. X-flash vbios versions for better performance this gen have been a mess. Even with the better stock Gigabyte vbios without custom cooling create a mess with the fans. Especially if you have Asus cards. Even retail Lightning can't use their own XOC firmware. So pretty screwed.

 

See also....

NVIDIA’s Warranty Claims Have Increased By 1000% Since The Launch of 16-Pin Connector GPUs

 

[johnksss]

4 minutes ago, Papusan said:

 

You can get the xx.xx.xx.50 Asus XOC but the efficiency is pretty bad from the Asus XOC. This is one of  the few options if you can't use the Matrix/Lightning vbios due fan problems/move some resistors to make it work on Asus. But running the GPU at 1000W without chiller/huge custom cooling for the GPU ain't what I would do. Benchmarks... Yes but not as dayly 24/7 usage. X-flash vbios versions for better performance this gen have been a mess. Even with the better stock Gigabyte vbios without custom cooling create a mess with the fans. Especially if you have Asus cards. Even retail Lightning can't use their own XOC firmware. So pretty screwed.

Hummmm.... Well I do have my water block, I was just trying to make sure I have a better sample to start with than I did the first time around. I'll probably do the evc2, resistor and shut mods later today, then block the card back up. 

 

Did anyone manage to get the software that goes with these vbios files?

[Papusan]

20 minutes ago, johnksss said:

Did anyone manage to get the software that goes with these vbios files?

 

Not  sure what you mean. From what I know only MSI offer XOC tools. But I haven't seen it in use outside of some fab clockers/elite.

 

Edit. Also Galax offer own XOC tool. But only for own cards (5090D and 5090D2).

 

[Mr. Fox]

2 hours ago, Papusan said:

NVIDIA’s Warranty Claims Have Increased By 1000% Since The Launch of 16-Pin Connector GPUs

I suspect the defective design of the Founder's Edition trash GPUs is also affecting their warranty claim frequency. There is no way that fragile garbage can be serving them well. Engineered to fail by engineers that are failures. Their demented machinations are ludicrous, and you can tell at a glance that the product design is predestined for failure.

  

1 hour ago, johnksss said:

Did anyone manage to get the software that goes with these vbios files?

As far as I know there is no ASUS software for XOC. I have not heard of any. Just the Astral XOC vBIOS that reduces performance for most. I do not recall having seen anyone report a performance increase using that vBIOS versus Gigachad or Matrix firmware. I have only seen the opposite reported. I loved what it did to my default voltage, but my benchmark scores decreased using it.

[johnksss]

4 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

I suspect the defective design of the Founder's Edition trash GPUs is also affecting their warranty claim frequency. There is no way that fragile garbage can be serving them well. Engineered to fail by engineers that are failures. Their demented machinations are ludicrous, and you can tell at a glance that the product design is predestined for failure.

  

As far as I know there is no ASUS software for XOC. I have not heard of any. Just the Astral XOC vBIOS that reduces performance for most. I do not recall having seen anyone report a performance increase using that vBIOS versus Gigachad or Matrix firmware. I have only seen the opposite reported. I loved what it did to my default voltage, but my benchmark scores decreased using it.

I just tested it to see and yep. Trash. All that noise about wanting the XOC bios and it's just as I suspected. Give people the warm and fuzzy's so they can say I pulled 1200W from the wall, but yet....nothing else to show for it.

[Papusan]

On 7/26/2024 at 2:57 AM, Papusan said:

 @Prema you have seen my old robot friend in works several years ago but my old good helper is now almost dead. So I needed a new friend to help us in Papusan's Plaza. I bought it in white because the black version will be more ugly with time.

 

Can you see the black in front of the white box bro @electrosoft😁

 

New tech for old Papusan bro @Prema🙂 Norway have a very good varranty (5 years whatever happens). The old robot failed and the tech service failed to fix it. All money back. Bought the brand new flagship for this year from Dreame and got a free handheld vacuum cleaner due the intro offer due this is brand new model. I paid $350 on top of the refund and got this two babies for the wife. Happy Wife... Happy life🤩

 

What I think... Modern vacuum robots won't last 5 years. This means I' will get new models without paying much extra years forwards. First paid for one, then you can just upgrade to next flagship model for free and at minimum costs above the refund when it fails. 

 

 

 

On 3/1/2026 at 12:30 AM, Rage Set said:

Another reason why I want to live part time in Norway @Papusan besides the Snow and Cold.

When a government agency can produce an entertaining video that also points out a serious consumer issue, you got to give it to them.

"The memories may be yours, but the photos are mine" WOW. The Norwegian gov took shots at all companies. 

 

 

Look at it this way... No new technology is meant to last. At least not for as long as 5 years. I'm going to seize every opportunity to exercise my Norwegian consumer rights @Rage Set🙂

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

2 hours ago, Papusan said:

 

New tech for old Papusan bro @Prema🙂 Norway have a very good varranty (5 years whatever happens). The old robot failed and the tech service failed to fix it. All money back. Bought the brand new flagship for this year from Dreame and got a free handheld vacuum cleaner due the intro offer due this is brand new model. I paid $350 on top of the refund and got this two babies for the wife. Happy Wife... Happy life🤩

 

What I think... Modern vacuum robots won't last 5 years. This means I' will get new models without paying much extra years forwards. First paid for one, then you can just upgrade to next model for free and at minimum costs above the refund when it fails. 

 

 

 

 

Look at it this way... No new technology is meant to last. At least not for as long as 5 years. I'm going to seize every opportunity to exercise my Norwegian consumer rights @Rage Set🙂

 

 

It seems like almost everything new is trash now. Built to fail and only last long enough for the warranty to expire to keep revenue streams on repairs and sale of replacement products flowing. Even in construction, materials and building techniques are engineered in a deliberate manner so as to require ongoing maintenance rather than durability. Pharmaceuticals are not a remedy because big pharma, doctors and hospitals do not make money on cures. They only make money when people stay on meds for life and stay sick and require medical care until they die. Natural remedies can't be patented and require no maintenance from the medical profession, so they label it as quackery.

[Mr. Fox]

New version of ZenTimings with new features. Works nice and looks nice. Square corners FTW! Much better than icky round Winduhz 11 ugliness. https://github.com/irusanov/ZenTimings/releases/tag/v1.38 

@jaybee83 @Raiderman wassup?

[electrosoft]

@win32asmguy someone wrote an article for 2026 for WoW CPU performance and X3D.

 

Article pushing for X3D superiority for WoW.

 

I agree with some of his points, but two things:

 

#1. There is NO WAY his "friend" was keeping a consistent 165fps+ in Dorongal or Raids even on X3D at 1440p 7 settings. No, just no. Maybe spikes here or there or nights with low to no players in town but on average? No....

 

#2. Properly tuned, a 13th and 14th gen Intel chip is competitive vs X3D while providing better overall  even lows. With Midnight, I'll end up retesting this on the wife's rig (SP109 14900KS tuned B-die at 59/45/50) when she plays, 14900KS is locked at 5.9ghz everywhere vs 9800X3D vs tuned 270k when I get time.

 

I recently gave her SP109 14900KS the yearly, "is it degraded" test with Intel's tool, OCCT and tons of decompression and shader compiles and it is running just as crisp and right as ever. Then again, it was tuned from day one.

 

I really want to take each GPU I have (5090, 2x 9070xt, 1x B580) and CPUIs I have (14900KS, 9800X3D, 265k/270k)  at 1440p and 4k through the Twin Dragon's fight especially for this:

 

WoW in the twin dragons encounter has a moment it puts a beating on the GPU and CPU to the next level. I've seen the 5090 at stock (which this is for both GPU and CPU) hit 596w and the CPU pull 80w+ which in WoW for a 9800X3D and mostly single threaded is rather  juicy let alone actually seeing near capped GPU utilization.....

 

 

 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

 

14 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

 

 

 

I'm shocked..... (not).

 

I would be curious to see how much is in the AI sector vs consumer sector for GPU failures and how much are card related vs power connector related.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

New version of ZenTimings with new features. Works nice and looks nice. Square corners FTW! Much better than icky round Winduhz 11 ugliness. https://github.com/irusanov/ZenTimings/releases/tag/v1.38 

@jaybee83 @Raiderman wassup?

 

I'm still running 1.36. I'll snag it....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[jaybee83]

On 4/4/2026 at 10:11 PM, Papusan said:

If we ordered the flight to go from Oslo (500km away) we would need to stay in trashy Oslo 2 more days. When we travelled from Trondheim (home) it was the last chance to avoid that. Now we have paid the full price because Norways is a small country that prefer profits over what people want/prefer.

 

 

Trondheim! Was actually there a while back to visit a friend, why didnt u say something? couldve gotten some beers 😄 

 

On 4/12/2026 at 11:23 PM, johnksss said:

So I was in Microcenter the other day to get me a shiny new Astral 5090 replacement and I see this on the rack for $2700

https://www.microcenter.com/product/698807/samsung-9100-pro-8tb-samsung-v-nand-tlc-nand-(v8)-pcie-gen-5-x4-nvme-m2-internal-ssd

 

That use to cost $800. 

 

LOL boy am i glad i upgraded my storage setup when i did, i paid less than 500 bucks per 8TB SSD (WD SN850X/P pcie 4.0).

 

10 hours ago, Mr. Fox said:

New version of ZenTimings with new features. Works nice and looks nice. Square corners FTW! Much better than icky round Winduhz 11 ugliness. https://github.com/irusanov/ZenTimings/releases/tag/v1.38 

@jaybee83 @Raiderman wassup?

 

I have been summoned! thanks for the headsup, havent checked the forums in a while. was on my own this week with our little princess, mommy on a business trip to italy. and OF COURSE its the exact week that the little one was going through youngling daycare (9 months to < 3 yrs) to kindergarden transition (3-6 years). so needed to juggle work, household and taking care of the little one cuz during the transition shes only staying in kindergarten for 2-4 hours at a time..... SO ready for some sleep this weekend! 😄 

 

On 4/4/2026 at 5:46 PM, Talon said:

 

Sometimes this is why I love this hobby. O it's no supposed to work Intel? Lets see about that. 

 

btw, absolutely LOVE this 😄 ive been thinking for quite a while now, whether i should get my lady a 14900K(S) or maybe wait and go for bartlett lake. either way, id need to do extensive testing iterations with a bios mod with bro @Prema (if hes got timie), so very curious to see how this compares to the standard 14th gen. keep us updated bro!

[Mr. Fox]

Yet another example of denied RMA/warranty for totally bogus reasons by a fundamentally dishonest company. GPU was malfunctioning due to defective factory thermal paste application, not the bent I/O bracket. Seems like the notion of having a warranty is just a joke. They did not even take it apart. We're truly on our own now. In addition to getting screwed over on ludicrous pricing you get screwed again when their predisposition to dereliction of duty manifests itself in a denied warranty claim.

 

[Papusan]

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

7 hours ago, Papusan said:

 

 

I still think these were the best CPUs I have ever owned. I wish I still owned my Z790 Apex and best 14900KS. I don't hate the CPUs I have now. They perform well (about the same as 14900KS by most measurements) but they are pretty boring products when it comes to overclocking CPU and RAM. I really do not like the hard-coded performance limiters AMD bakes into their products. They are not truly "fully unlocked" or "unlimited" like Intel. If and when the retarded tech landscape corrects itself and prices return to something that resembles sanity my next build will most likely be a return to Intel. 9950X3D2 is going to be a DOA product to me.  Zen 6 will likely be good, but we haven't seen Intel's answer to that yet.

[electrosoft]

7 hours ago, Papusan said:

 

 

 

My SP109 14900KS + Z790i lightning 8400 was a beast and is now still going strong on that Z690 D4 for almost a year now in the wife's system rock solid and error free.

 

You can't deny there were issues with the microcode and there are still some stray systems out there from unknowing users that need to update their BIOS (and that doesn't even guarantee a save) but the "crisis" has been over for quite some time.

 

1 hour ago, Mr. Fox said:

I still think these were the best CPUs I have ever owned. I wish I still owned my Z790 Apex and best 14900KS. I don't hate the CPUs I have now. They perform well (about the same as 14900KS by most measurements) but they are pretty boring products when it comes to overclocking CPU and RAM. I really do not like the hard-coded performance limiters AMD bakes into their products. They are not truly "fully unlocked" or "unlimited" like Intel. If and when the retarded tech landscape corrects itself and prices return to something that resembles sanity my next build will most likely be a return to Intel. 9950X3D2 is going to be a DOA product to me.  Zen 6 will likely be good, but we haven't seen Intel's answer to that yet.

 

I absolutely love 12th-14th gen. My personal favorite is still 10th gen, Intel's last monolithic design. With Intel opting to extend LGA1700 now, I hope they "officially" embrace Bartlett and let it fully sing. An all P 12 core chip? Heck yeah....

 

The real star is the Asus Z690 Strix-A D4 that has been in service since December 2021 and has seen everything from the 12900k to the current 14900ks and keeps on truckin'. Rear USB ports are a little loose now, but that's it.

 

I also realized I've been running AM5 now since December 2024, so 16 months in service on this Crosshair X870e as my main driver. That might be a record for me. 🙂

 

I definitely plan on giving Nova a shot while I continue to play around with Arrow Lake atm. Unless reviews are amazing, I am not seeing the upside to the 9950X3D2 unless it has some of the reported fabric improvements slated for AM6 in play to let those dual X3D CCDs truly shine in unison especially in gaming.

 

The increased PPT and overall power draw potential bodes well but we will see.

 

 

 

 

 

[Mr. Fox]

2 minutes ago, electrosoft said:

Unless reviews are amazing, I am not seeing the upside to the 9950X3D2 unless it has some of the reported fabric improvements slated for AM6 in play to let those dual X3D CCDs truly shine in unison especially in gaming.

 

The increased PPT and overall power draw potential bodes well but we will see.

A decrease in boost by 100MHz creates a very unfavorable first impression with me. I would have been lukewarm to it staying the same and I think it is lame that it was not increased by 100-200MHz. It will also be interesting to see if they have better quality and matched CCD bin. If they continue with having one good CCD and one trash CCD that's going to suck, too. Considering the massive increase in price it needs to deliver a scaled increase in performance. If it doesn't do that then it's just a worthless gimmick to entice people that are obsessed with the notion of having more 3D cache regardless of whether it actually does anything for them.