So it's been a minute I know but over the summer? I joined Team Red!

RareAir23

Limp Gawd
Joined
Sep 25, 2006
Messages
310
Hi all. It's been a while I know. I've been quite busy with life and all. Over the summer during Amazon Prime Day (which for some products stretched into Prime Week really) I took advantage of 2 AMD tech deals. We'll get to the 2nd one later as I just want to focus on the GPU. Being tired of nVIDIA over the RTX 3000 series (to a degree with nVIDIA dipping their toe in the water for this) and then the RTX 4000 series (where they dove in head first) establishing what I call "The nVIDIA Premium" (think Apple, "The Apple Premium" and their iDevices only with GPUs this time) and the fact my RTX 3080 was about to turn 3 years old? I took the leap and for the same price I got my GeForce RTX 3080? I purchased a Sapphire Pulse AMD Radeon RX 7900 XT GPU. I've been able to get some game action in and so far? It's been great. I'm not using ray tracing for any games I'm playing (even if it supports it) but the framerates I'm getting are worth the sacrifice of no ray tracing. Everything is going well so far and with FSR 3 launching and growing in support? I can't wait to see what my 7900 XT can do going forward. Thanks.
 
I've been thinking about selling my 3080 for a 7900 XTX, but I might just wait and see what the next new card is. 3080 is good enough for 1440p for most things.
 
AMD's current offerings are pretty tempting. It seems like Nvidia knows this and is probably why they are leaning so hard on the proprietary features (DLSS hype, etc) and you rarely hear them talking about raw performance anymore.

I might have gone AMD, but 1) the main game I play has a strong nvidia bias in terms of performance, 2) the main game I play uses Ray Tracing, and 3) my monitor uses a hardware G-Sync module which only works with Nvidia cards (the monitor can work with Freesync but you lose the benefits of the hardware module).
 
Welcome! Have the 7900xt as well and I'm overall pretty happy with it. I came from a 3080 and the performance leap is well worth it IMHO.

The only thing is that it's an absolute monster in size. Just bought an H9 Flow to transfer all my parts into, so the 7900xt will fit nicely!
 
Have you been exploring FSR 3 frame generation? It makes a world of difference in Starfield. I have the XFX wannabe reference model 7900 XT and mine is quite the overclocker. I got 3.166 on the core and 2.75 on the memory and with a more aggressive fan curve it stays nice and cool.
 
Welcome back! As of a few weeks ago, all of my rigs are now 100% AMD too. (Hasn't happened since I had an Athlon 64 3700+ and X800 XL Athlon X2 5200+ and X1900 XT)
 
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Wouldn't wish the 7900 XTX on anyone. Even if you don't care about Raytracing or HDR it's been nothing but weird driver issues and crashes with this thing. My first AMD card in like 15 years, and it'll probably be about that long before I give them another chance.
 
Wouldn't wish the 7900 XTX on anyone. Even if you don't care about Raytracing or HDR it's been nothing but weird driver issues and crashes with this thing. My first AMD card in like 15 years, and it'll probably be about that long before I give them another chance.
Strange, all I’ve experienced with my 7900 XT has been increased performance with driver updates, I’ve had no more instability than I did with my 2080 or 3060.
 
I have a 6900xt sitting on a desk collecting dust. I stuck it to myself by buying a Lenovo Legion with Amd cpu and 3070ti laptop. Sure it's a fine gpu but it's not a 6900xt much less a 7900xtx. I think I'm holding out for ryzen 8000 and 8000 series GPUs to do any meaningful hardware transitions.
 
Wouldn't wish the 7900 XTX on anyone. Even if you don't care about Raytracing or HDR it's been nothing but weird driver issues and crashes with this thing. My first AMD card in like 15 years, and it'll probably be about that long before I give them another chance.
Did you reinstall your OS with the new GPU? I always do that with a fresh GPU. 99.9999% of your problems is probably that. I find your reasoning that you will never buy AMD again is due to your own failure to do a clean install more than likely.
 
Wouldn't wish the 7900 XTX on anyone. Even if you don't care about Raytracing or HDR it's been nothing but weird driver issues and crashes with this thing. My first AMD card in like 15 years, and it'll probably be about that long before I give them another chance.
I had a great experience with mine - but I mostly play Fortnite. 🙃
 
Did you reinstall your OS with the new GPU? I always do that with a fresh GPU. 99.9999% of your problems is probably that. I find your reasoning that you will never buy AMD again is due to your own failure to do a clean install more than likely.
I've tried several amd/ATI cards over the years and it's always the same song and dance from AMD fans... "oh it must be your fault" "works fine for me!"

The truth is that in most cases it is indeed the amd product that's the problem... I say that as someone whose first ATI card was a Radeon 9700 pro. It gave me issues. Only one that didn't was the x800xt aiw.

The x1800gto2, HD4870, 5870, and R9 290 all did too, before I finally gave up on them for good. All cards bought at launch and either returned or sold at some point soon due to issues.

Meanwhile, my Nvidia cards rarely gave me issues and when they did they got fixed promptly. Nvidia's become 88% of the market for a reason. I hate only having one real choice, but it is what it is.
 
I've tried several amd/ATI cards over the years and it's always the same song and dance from AMD fans... "oh it must be your fault" "works fine for me!"

The truth is that in most cases it is indeed the amd product that's the problem... I say that as someone whose first ATI card was a Radeon 9700 pro. It gave me issues. Only one that didn't was the x800xt aiw.

The x1800gto2, HD4870, 5870, and R9 290 all did too, before I finally gave up on them for good. All cards bought at launch and either returned or sold at some point soon due to issues.

Meanwhile, my Nvidia cards rarely gave me issues and when they did they got fixed promptly. Nvidia's become 88% of the market for a reason. I hate only having one real choice, but it is what it is.
AMD definitely has a "polish" chellenge versus NVIDIA. They've been working hard on closing that gap. This gen they have some of the cool tuning stuff that NVIDIA has. It's not as good but it is getting there for sure.

GeForce Experience is awesome, IMO. AMD doesn't really have something at that level.

They're great cards, though. I just didn't keep my 7900 XTX's once the 4090s got more plentiful and the used market went down. The $600 gap got smaller and it is hard to justify if you want the best.
 
Did you reinstall your OS with the new GPU? I always do that with a fresh GPU. 99.9999% of your problems is probably that. I find your reasoning that you will never buy AMD again is due to your own failure to do a clean install more than likely.
That is so unnecessary in this day and age it's a wonder you would advise someone to do that. If you're worried about a driver issue use DDU, simple as that.
 
That is so unnecessary in this day and age it's a wonder you would advise someone to do that. If you're worried about a driver issue use DDU, simple as that.
Yeah DDU should cover you 99.9% of the time. Every now and then it doesn't.

I haven't tried an AMD card for myself since my 5770's of which I have zero complaints aside from man Crossfire was pointless most of the time. Before that had an x1650 pro, 9700 pro, 7500. All of which I never really had issues with.

My 3080 Ti on the other hand has been crashing the display driver which gives a black screen, and then taking up to 30 seconds to recover, quite a bit lately while I am in the middle of various games. No idea what's going on there. I had that same issue occasionally with my old 980 system too. Guessing it doesn't like current driver and will probably fix with the next driver or if I revert.

That said, I would generally agree that Nvidia has the bigger and better software/driver support team and as such are usually fairly quick to respond. Though, Nvidia is not without its own driver controversies over the years where they bricked cards.
 
Yeah DDU should cover you 99.9% of the time. Every now and then it doesn't.

I haven't tried an AMD card for myself since my 5770's of which I have zero complaints aside from man Crossfire was pointless most of the time. Before that had an x1650 pro, 9700 pro, 7500. All of which I never really had issues with.

My 3080 Ti on the other hand has been crashing the display driver which gives a black screen, and then taking up to 30 seconds to recover, quite a bit lately while I am in the middle of various games. No idea what's going on there. I had that same issue occasionally with my old 980 system too. Guessing it doesn't like current driver and will probably fix with the next driver or if I revert.
If it doesn't fix it with a driver revert/change then that's typically bad news.
 
I had a great experience with mine - but I mostly play Fortnite. 🙃
I thought Fortnite has issues with AMD cards/drivers, too? :) No? :)

I read lots of msgs about 'use DDU' when you switch cards especially Nvidia <-> AMD (& vice versa) - some ppl claim no difference or it didn't help - so, sometimes a re-install should solve it for sure but like the other guy said - it really shouldn't be necessary.

However, now with drivers - it seems, increasingly, that driver updates are often bringing complex changes or issues - I guess the change in the subsequent driver either a) isn't tested enough or b) the driver update is meant to solve a previous issue and either it doesn't or it introduces new problems?

What is frustrating though - is that it doesn't matter if it's nvidia or amd - there seems to be the 'mixed reviews' - one guy says 'driver worked for me' while the other guy claims it introduced so many problems and they're ready to switch from nvidia/amd to the other. :)
 
I thought Fortnite has issues with AMD cards/drivers, too? :) No? :)

I read lots of msgs about 'use DDU' when you switch cards especially Nvidia <-> AMD (& vice versa) - some ppl claim no difference or it didn't help - so, sometimes a re-install should solve it for sure but like the other guy said - it really shouldn't be necessary.

However, now with drivers - it seems, increasingly, that driver updates are often bringing complex changes or issues - I guess the change in the subsequent driver either a) isn't tested enough or b) the driver update is meant to solve a previous issue and either it doesn't or it introduces new problems?

What is frustrating though - is that it doesn't matter if it's nvidia or amd - there seems to be the 'mixed reviews' - one guy says 'driver worked for me' while the other guy claims it introduced so many problems and they're ready to switch from nvidia/amd to the other. :)
You never know, there are so many variables going on. There is another forum member who just bought a new AMD card and moved his old one into another PC and it's not working properly in it, even though it had an older AMD card in it as well. So chances are slim it's a driver problem.

People have HW problems a lot and you almost always see replies telling them to reinstall windows. But of course that rarely fixes the problem.
 
I thought Fortnite has issues with AMD cards/drivers, too? :) No? :)

I read lots of msgs about 'use DDU' when you switch cards especially Nvidia <-> AMD (& vice versa) - some ppl claim no difference or it didn't help - so, sometimes a re-install should solve it for sure but like the other guy said - it really shouldn't be necessary.

However, now with drivers - it seems, increasingly, that driver updates are often bringing complex changes or issues - I guess the change in the subsequent driver either a) isn't tested enough or b) the driver update is meant to solve a previous issue and either it doesn't or it introduces new problems?

What is frustrating though - is that it doesn't matter if it's nvidia or amd - there seems to be the 'mixed reviews' - one guy says 'driver worked for me' while the other guy claims it introduced so many problems and they're ready to switch from nvidia/amd to the other. :)
Fortnite was great for me. Played it a lot on the 7900 XTX (desktop in work office so when I had downtime I'd game which can be quite a bit). Last year (or year prior) had a 6900 XT - wasn't as a good on that, in comparison. I figured they had worked to improve their drivers because it was pretty great.
 
I don't know nothing. Only built over 1500 PCs and several hundred servers in my 25 years of doing IT. I used to build PCs in the 90s by the hundreds in high school as a job while other kids were pushing shopping carts.

Go ahead and DDU all you like. But don't come crying to me when a clean Install of Winblows fixes all your problems. I had a threadipper, or my 3rd thread ripper build can't remember. Had winsucks 10 on it. Switched GPUs and ddu'd the living shit out of it. Nothing worked. I went old school. Reinstalled OS and it felt like wtf happened kinda wow!

So I am dead wrong and retarded. Just go ahead and ddu the living piss outta your rigs. Be my guest. Old school people like me are just retards who know nothing and all the modern kids have 300 IQ levels and know all that the universe has to offer without error.
 
I don't know nothing. Only built over 1500 PCs and several hundred servers in my 25 years of doing IT. I used to build PCs in the 90s by the hundreds in high school as a job while other kids were pushing shopping carts.

Go ahead and DDU all you like. But don't come crying to me when a clean Install of Winblows fixes all your problems. I had a threadipper, or my 3rd thread ripper build can't remember. Had winsucks 10 on it. Switched GPUs and ddu'd the living shit out of it. Nothing worked. I went old school. Reinstalled OS and it felt like wtf happened kinda wow!

So I am dead wrong and retarded. Just go ahead and ddu the living piss outta your rigs. Be my guest. Old school people like me are just retards who know nothing and all the modern kids have 300 IQ levels and know all that the universe has to offer without error.
Dad, is that you?
 
I don't know nothing. Only built over 1500 PCs and several hundred servers in my 25 years of doing IT. I used to build PCs in the 90s by the hundreds in high school as a job while other kids were pushing shopping carts.

Go ahead and DDU all you like. But don't come crying to me when a clean Install of Winblows fixes all your problems. I had a threadipper, or my 3rd thread ripper build can't remember. Had winsucks 10 on it. Switched GPUs and ddu'd the living shit out of it. Nothing worked. I went old school. Reinstalled OS and it felt like wtf happened kinda wow!

So I am dead wrong and retarded. Just go ahead and ddu the living piss outta your rigs. Be my guest. Old school people like me are just retards who know nothing and all the modern kids have 300 IQ levels and know all that the universe has to offer without error.
While I feel this post (I am old and have been doing this a long time, as well). There have been some improvements to modern operating systems that don't make the "old ways" bad or anything (it is certainly safer) - but that make quality of life easier. An example that blew me away, personally was I moved my son from AMD's X570 platform (AM4) to AMD's X670E platform (AM5) and I thought I would need to do a fresh Windows install. If it were my personal box - I would either way. However, Windows recognized everything and it worked - really well. No hiccups in the nearly a year since. Blew me away. In that case it safed me from having to use meticulously created backups and going through a restore that may miss small things that add up to a poor experience for my son (who is on the spectrum and does not like change). So anyway - I love old timers (because I am one) but just be careful to not close your mind to new, improved ways (options?) of doing things.
 
Fortnite was great for me. Played it a lot on the 7900 XTX (desktop in work office so when I had downtime I'd game which can be quite a bit). Last year (or year prior) had a 6900 XT - wasn't as a good on that, in comparison. I figured they had worked to improve their drivers because it was pretty great.

Fortnite played fine over the years on my last 3 Radeons (Fury, 6600XT and 7900 XTX). The Fury was ages ago now though, on a very different build of the game when I wasn't very into it.

My experience with GPU's, both directly and indirectly reading forums like this and others since Radeon & GeForce brands started... is team green and red have been fairly equal-esc now for well over a decade when it comes to drivers. Yes, both have moments of stupidity... especially when new hardware drops or feature hits... but overall the grass isn't really any different on either side. We all love to dive into the minutia, but over all really both sides stabilized out ages ago. Not to say you can't encounter issues, on both sides, but the idea that Radeons some how have more driver issues is mostly FUD.
 
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I don't know nothing. Only built over 1500 PCs and several hundred servers in my 25 years of doing IT. I used to build PCs in the 90s by the hundreds in high school as a job while other kids were pushing shopping carts.

Go ahead and DDU all you like. But don't come crying to me when a clean Install of Winblows fixes all your problems. I had a threadipper, or my 3rd thread ripper build can't remember. Had winsucks 10 on it. Switched GPUs and ddu'd the living shit out of it. Nothing worked. I went old school. Reinstalled OS and it felt like wtf happened kinda wow!

So I am dead wrong and retarded. Just go ahead and ddu the living piss outta your rigs. Be my guest. Old school people like me are just retards who know nothing and all the modern kids have 300 IQ levels and know all that the universe has to offer without error.
I've been building PCs since the 386SX days. Once upon a time I used to reinstall Windows for issues when changing out video cards. As Windows and video card drivers got along better it became obvious to me that having to reinstall the OS became unnecessary in almost all cases. These days if I suspect drivers are conflicting I run DDU and it fixes the issue almost every single time. I work smarter now, not harder. Some of us boomers know how to use new tools to our advantage.
 
I've been building PCs since the 386SX days. Once upon a time I used to reinstall Windows for issues when changing out video cards. As Windows and video card drivers got along better it became obvious to me that having to reinstall the OS became unnecessary in almost all cases. These days if I suspect drivers are conflicting I run DDU and it fixes the issue almost every single time. I work smarter now, not harder. Some of us boomers know how to use new tools to our advantage.

I mean, they literally said they "ddu'd the living shit out of it". Is it working smarter not harder when what you said to do literally didn't work for them? Not that you can apply that on a general scale, but this is the issue with using any anecdotal experiences on a general scale. Some people say DDU worked, some people didn't.

Personally I've taken the NVME SSD (Windows 10) from an 11400F machine (Asrock motherboard), then moved it over to an 8700k machine (ASUS motherboard), swapped multiple things in there like the GPU, even had a different set of SATA drives with it... no issues. Then I took that NVME drive and scooted it over to my previous 5950X build (MSI MB), rehoused in a new case. Yes, that's AMD. Completely different chipset and manufacturer. Also changed the GPU, again. Zero issues. DDU had not been used once. No crashes, no instability. The only unexpected thing that happened is that the default boot priority chose an old Windows installation on one of the SATA drives (from god knows what build)--which also booted up just fine, by the way lol. My current 7800X3D machine also just straight up took the NVME drive from my old 5950X build. For the most part (outside of very rare issues, which are probably related more to AM5 than anything), it's also running fine.

Does that mean everyone else can do that? Probably not. There's all kinds of black magic and fuckery that could be involved in writing Windows drivers, and who knows what could be messed up and basically unreachable even by DDU? That said, reinstalling Windows is definitely a last resort. Older versions of Windows, I did find that a fresh install tended to be much snappier, too, but newer versions don't tend to slow down very much over time, which is nice. Haven't tried 11 yet, though.

As far as this topic, I just really wanted an upgrade from my 3080 Ti for some reason unknown to me, and I considered AMD but Nvidia just had a stronger product when I had the money, so I splurged on a 4090...
 
While I feel this post (I am old and have been doing this a long time, as well). There have been some improvements to modern operating systems that don't make the "old ways" bad or anything (it is certainly safer) - but that make quality of life easier. An example that blew me away, personally was I moved my son from AMD's X570 platform (AM4) to AMD's X670E platform (AM5) and I thought I would need to do a fresh Windows install. If it were my personal box - I would either way. However, Windows recognized everything and it worked - really well. No hiccups in the nearly a year since. Blew me away. In that case it safed me from having to use meticulously created backups and going through a restore that may miss small things that add up to a poor experience for my son (who is on the spectrum and does not like change). So anyway - I love old timers (because I am one) but just be careful to not close your mind to new, improved ways (options?) of doing things.
Yes I agree. There were many changes to the windows HAL and how it ha does hardware detection. However my original recommendation was, if all else fails you DDU it and utilize fails, and evern if everything installs smooth on the outside looking in but you still have weird performance that nothing resolves, reinstall your OS from scratch then see if the weirdness is resolved before you assume it's AMDs fault. Old school is old school because it's proven to work through the test of time. Sometimes you just have to reboot your cell phone as well. You know that kinda old school cocept that never fails such as a simple power down and power back up kinda thing.
 
Fortnite played fine over the years on my last 3 Radeons (Fury, 6600XT and 7900 XTX). The Fury was ages ago now though, on a very different build of the game when I wasn't very into it.

My experience with GPU's, both directly and indirectly reading forums like this and others since Radeon & GeForce brands started... is team green and red have been fairly equal-esc now for well over a decade when it comes to drivers. Yes, both have moments of stupidity... especially when new hardware drops or feature hits... but overall the grass isn't really any different on either side. We all love to dive into the minutia, but over all really both sides stabilized out ages ago. Not to say you can't encounter issues, on both sides, but the idea that Radeons some how have more driver issues is mostly FUD.
Sadly this hasn't been my experience. I'm running in to major issues with HDR and hardware acceleration / video decoding with the 7900 XTX I never had with the previous RTX 2080. Expecting YouTube and Amazon Prime Video HDR to work properly with a $1000 GPU and a TV that has worked without issue connected to a number of other machines isn't unreasonable. So far all the "solutions" I've found have broken HDR entirely.

I've also had drivers that won't install fully / had broken Adrenalin control panel issues. Even had to completely reinstall Windows at one point just to get current drivers working again - and yes, I tried DDU and AMD's cleanup utility first. Nothing.
 
Sadly this hasn't been my experience. I'm running in to major issues with HDR and hardware acceleration / video decoding with the 7900 XTX I never had with the previous RTX 2080. Expecting YouTube and Amazon Prime Video HDR to work properly with a $1000 GPU and a TV that has worked without issue connected to a number of other machines isn't unreasonable. So far all the "solutions" I've found have broken HDR entirely.

I've also had drivers that won't install fully / had broken Adrenalin control panel issues. Even had to completely reinstall Windows at one point just to get current drivers working again - and yes, I tried DDU and AMD's cleanup utility first. Nothing.
Ouch. Should open a thread in the AMD section to see if any of us can assist. I have a 7900 XTX myself, so I may be able to see if I can assist.

So not discounting your experience, but it's also not like we, and other tech forums, don't have large active nVidia/GeForce sections full of people with various issues as well.
 
I don't know nothing. Only built over 1500 PCs and several hundred servers in my 25 years of doing IT. I used to build PCs in the 90s by the hundreds in high school as a job while other kids were pushing shopping carts.

Go ahead and DDU all you like. But don't come crying to me when a clean Install of Winblows fixes all your problems. I had a threadipper, or my 3rd thread ripper build can't remember. Had winsucks 10 on it. Switched GPUs and ddu'd the living shit out of it. Nothing worked. I went old school. Reinstalled OS and it felt like wtf happened kinda wow!

So I am dead wrong and retarded. Just go ahead and ddu the living piss outta your rigs. Be my guest. Old school people like me are just retards who know nothing and all the modern kids have 300 IQ levels and know all that the universe has to offer without error.
I'm here to back you up. IMO, people should always reinstall Windows, when switching between AMD/Nvidia (I usually do it for every GPU change, regardless of brand). Hell, AMD even recommends reinstalling Windows if you downgrade from an X3D CPU, to a regular Ryzen. As the chipset driver profiles for the X3D don't clear any other way.
 
Wouldn't wish the 7900 XTX on anyone. Even if you don't care about Raytracing or HDR it's been nothing but weird driver issues and crashes with this thing. My first AMD card in like 15 years, and it'll probably be about that long before I give them another chance.
You may need to RMA it.

I do have to ask, if this model has three 8-pin connectors? If it does, I have seen several users around the net, saying that having seperate power cables for each 8-pin, fixed their 7900 XTX instability. As opposed to one with its own cable and two daisy chained on a second cable.
 
I'm trying to source a 4090, people selling BNIB are really not keeping up with the retailers lol. some still have them listed for 2K. My first ever card was an ATI Radeon. Can't remember how it performed but I have no bad memories. Maybe I jump back in?
 
I'm trying to source a 4090, people selling BNIB are really not keeping up with the retailers lol. some still have them listed for 2K. My first ever card was an ATI Radeon. Can't remember how it performed but I have no bad memories. Maybe I jump back in?
ATI Radeon was a completely different beast to AMD Radeon. Some people will tell you to stay away due to always having issues, others will tell you the issues discussed do not exist. The truth is somewhere in the middle, but it does tend to skew more towards having issues. The reality is you won't know unless you pull the trigger. So if you do, make sure you purchase from a reputable retailer that has a good return policy in case you aren't satisfied with you purchase. This goes for both AMD and Nvidia.
 
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It's nice and clean to re-install the OC when you get a new video card. Why take the chance? It takes what a few hours to get the software installed and set up correctly? As long as you are not on dial up, I don't see the fuss.
 
LigTasm recently went through hell with a 7900XTX Ryzen system new build that ended up being a faulty USB port on the new case crashing the system but it appeared to be a gpu issue. I'm not sure how the issue was discovered but I'm sure it wasn't fun for him. I've seen some crazy stupid shit cause a lot of grief over the years and I've had my share as well but patience and perseverance can win the day if applied with methodical testing.
 
It's nice and clean to re-install the OC when you get a new video card. Why take the chance? It takes what a few hours to get the software installed and set up correctly? As long as you are not on dial up, I don't see the fuss.
Take the chance. It is 2023!
But when you can't figure it out then do an OS install.
 
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