Radeon Thread

[Azdeus]

19 minutes ago, Keyrock said:

@ComradeYellowhas a rather different definition of "a few hundred" than I do, it seems.

Yeah, it's kind of hard to call it "just a few hundred" when it's 60% more money... I'd buy that if we're otherwise talking tens of thousands.

[majestic]

Any particular reason you guys are taking a SonicYellow117 post seriously?

[Azdeus]

On 12/15/2022 at 12:34 AM, majestic said:

Any particular reason you guys are taking a SonicYellow117 post seriously?

Edited December 16, 2022 by Azdeus
Oh ****, it's happening again! :O

[majestic]

Meanwhile, I just checked stores for availability and prices, and the 7900 XT - the one without the extra X - costs about as much as a RTX 4080. Good job, retailers.

edit: removed Amazon link, the shop was hacked.

Edited December 18, 2022 by majestic

[Zoraptor]

There's a $500 (300US) dollar difference here which is spot on the difference in MSRPs. ~1800 for the cheapest XT, ~2000 for the (only in stock) XTX, 2300 for the cheapest 4080. And of course, as is their wont, a handful of retailers trying to sell 6950s for 2300. You'd think AMD had bought out a bunch of random NZ (r)etailers to make the 7900XT look good value or something.

Euro prices seem to be a bit weird since covid.

[Keyrock]

Damn, the situation abroad is rough. Here in Murica you can get a 7900 XT or a RTX 4080 at retail price easily if you have the slightest bit of patience. When those cards drop at retail they stay in stock for quite a while, giving you ample time to buy one, if you so choose. The 7900 XTX and RTX 4090 disappear quickly, on the other hand.

[Zoraptor]

Unlike Europe our prices aren't bad at all. Take off sales tax and do the currency conversion and the xtx is ~1100USD, and for a pretty decent AIB instead of a reference card (Powercolor Hellhound). For a small market with high transport costs that's about as good as it can get.

[Azdeus]

1 hour ago, Zoraptor said:

Unlike Europe our prices aren't bad at all. Take off sales tax and do the currency conversion and the xtx is ~1100USD, and for a pretty decent AIB instead of a reference card (Powercolor Hellhound). For a small market with high transport costs that's about as good as it can get.

It ends up about the same here at my local store for a Powercolor one, the cheapest 4080 is at 200 dollars more

[majestic]

Prices in Euroland are sure on a wild ride.

Today's 7900 XTs:

Down from 1400+ yesterday:

Today's 4080ies:

And the extra X 7900 XTX:

All prices include 20% VAT and the obvious markup retailers got used to when one Euro bought 1,2 Dollars and they kept selling at a 1:1 ratio, adjusted for tax. Those 4080 prices are down from 2000+€ from last week.

At this rate I'm more likely to buy a leftover 3070 Ti once they drop down to something like 600€ than any of the new generation. The leaked specs on the 4060 Ti aren't all to great either, and the 4070 Ti is probably going to be the same bad value as these other jokster cards here.

Edit: prices taken from a portal giving the cheapest retail option.

Edited December 19, 2022 by majestic

[Humanoid]

The 4080 has seen recent specials bringing it down from its $2219 AUD MSRP down to $1899 AUD, which would be low enough to start eating AMD's lunch if sustained. But it's only been one day so who knows? (For comparison the XTX MSRP is $1789 AUD, so the price difference is/was down to the equivalent of ~$70 USD)

I suppose nVidia had more room to move here because they inflated their prices more in the first place. US price + tax + 15%, versus AMD doing US price + tax + 9%.

[majestic]

Yeah, looking at market prices at the moment, it's kind of funny. In spite of having better MSRPs than nVidia at the same or similar performance in their respective performance class*, all AMD cards are ludicrously overpriced in retail to the point where they look like they're just supposed to get the RTX 4080 out of stock. Mileage might be a lot better in the English speaking world our outside of Europe, but if one really wants a card of this generation right now and is in the Eurozone, then there's no way the 7900 series can be recommended.

*Sans the obvious 'AMD can't launch any new architecture without driver troubles and/or hardware kinks' as evidenced by some benchmarks being all over the place, there are some things that are a bit disconcerting.

RDNA 3's specs to real world performance, for instance. The 7900 XTX has what, 60% more memory bandwidth and almost thrice the computing power of an 6950 XT, and in real world application it's 20% faster (outside of a few outliers that are probably due to software and driver issues)**? The 7900 XTX 'flagship' doesn't even have the maximum possible infinity cache, because... well, who knows. It becomes really ludicrous one you look at power draw charts, the stock configuration of the 7900 XTX draws 20% more power than the stock RTX 4080, and that's at a 300 m² combined graphics chiplet die size (GCD) compared to the 4080's 397 mm² traditional die.

**Sure, specs don't scale linearily, but... uh... not a good look, regardless.

[Azdeus]

That price difference really annoys me. Just as planned I suppose. They're also flogging 6950s for 15000sek, while 4080s are 16000+.

[Zoraptor]

The price difference here is now ~250USD (probably close to what it ought to be officially) and 7900XTs are selling under MSRP for AIBs already. XTXs are back in stock too, so it seems that AMDs claims of decent availability at least were right.

At that price the XT is decent value, at least comparatively. Still not great value when you take the generational shift into account.

[majestic]

Yeah, 7900 XT prices have been plummeting here in Central Yurop too. 1000€ now, which is a little less than MSRP when factoring in VAT. With the prices what they are, at the moment, the 7900 XT is actually in a pretty good spot. They're cheaper than the slower RTX 3080 Tis and higher cards and are currently a good chunk cheaper than the RTX 4080ies (which are also cheaper than any available 3080 Ti / 3090 / 3090 Ti and sold under MSRP).

Kinda funny, in Central Europe, both of the greedy upsell cards are currently decent value, if one for some reason really HAS to upgrade right NOW and can't wait. Prices fluctuate pretty heavily though. Still no good reason to buy any of the cards over a 3060 Ti or a 3070 Ti unless you want that 4k performance boost, or play high res VR (although in that case, it's probably the 4090 or the highway and money isn't a factor anyway).

Edit: considering one can get the EVGA 3070 Ti or regular 3080ies for 700€ or less, the upgrade to a 7900 XT looks relatively bad still. It's faster, but at that price point only at a really bad ratio.

Edited December 23, 2022 by majestic
Missed a Ti

[majestic]

TL;DW: There's a temperature point where, in some of the 7900 XTXs (and presumably, the non-second-X too), the vapor chamber coolant circulation potentially breaks down. As of yet unclear whether it is a design flaw or a construction/material issue, but it sure looks pretty bad.

Would watch, but yo no hablo español:

Der Bauer bought or traded several 7900 XTX cards affected with the 110° hotspot issue from his subscribers, the proceeded to do some testing. The cards ran hot when mounted vertically, but were still within limits. Mounting them horizontally (i.e. the 'regular' way), the went to throttling and had their fans spin at 2800 RPM after a few minutes. He used both Furmark and Remnant: From The Ashes for the testing, then dropped Furmark as it yielded the same result.

He then goes to eliminate all possible causes. It is not gravity pulling the cooler off the GPU, it is also not the mounting pressure (he opened one of his cards and replaced the spring and screws and shaved off some metal here and there to have mounting pressure he would consider unsafe) or the conductor plate between the heat sink and the PCB. He then proceeded to flip the cards while running. Vertically mounted, they were steady at 1800 RPM and a ~90° hot spot. Flipping them to vertically mounted while running increased GPU and hot spot temperatures. The cards reproducably reached 110° hotspot at 2800 fan RPM and throttled down to prevent heat damage.

He then flipped them back to vertical mounting, but the temperature did not go back down. Since his testing eliminated all other potential issues, it looks like the vapor chamber is the problem, once past a certain temperature point it no longer works properly. There's either a construction flaw with many of the cards that got delivered, or there's a design flaw.

Yeah, sorry Linus, but Jensen is probably doing his best Palpatine laugh impression right now. I know I am, because I feast off copium, and the copium is really, really strong with this launch. Hey, AMD, in hindsight, was it a good idea to laugh at the burning cables that turned out to be by far and large user error where nVidia the anti-consumer monster replaced no the affected cards no questions asked, while you went "110° junciton temperatur is within the design specs, sorry, no RMA" until recently?

*snort*

Edited January 1, 2023 by majestic

[Zoraptor]

Wonder who actually made/ designed the reference card cooler this time around. Coolermaster used to make (may still make, though they're down to... the Stealth only now? bundled in a few SKUs) the CPU coolers and Sapphire the reference coolers for GPUs, but last time out it was someone else.

Don't know what the situation is internationally but the price difference here between AIB and reference is so small the reference cards really ought to be ignored as an option anyway.

[Azdeus]

2 hours ago, majestic said:

TL;DW: There's a temperature point where, in some of the 7900 XTXs (and presumably, the non-second-X too), the vapor chamber coolant circulation potentially breaks down. As of yet unclear whether it is a design flaw or a construction/material issue, but it sure looks pretty bad.

Would watch, but yo no hablo español:

Der Bauer bought or traded several 7900 XTX cards affected with the 110° hotspot issue from his subscribers, the proceeded to do some testing. The cards ran hot when mounted vertically, but were still within limits. Mounting them horizontally (i.e. the 'regular' way), the went to throttling and had their fans spin at 2800 RPM after a few minutes. He used both Furmark and Remnant: From The Ashes for the testing, then dropped Furmark as it yielded the same result.

He then goes to eliminate all possible causes. It is not gravity pulling the cooler off the GPU, it is also not the mounting pressure (he opened one of his cards and replaced the spring and screws and shaved off some metal here and there to have mounting pressure he would consider unsafe) or the conductor plate between the heat sink and the PCB. He then proceeded to flip the cards while running. Vertically mounted, they were steady at 1800 RPM and a ~90° hot spot. Flipping them to vertically mounted while running increased GPU and hot spot temperatures. The cards reproducably reached 110° hotspot at 2800 fan RPM and throttled down to prevent heat damage.

He then flipped them back to vertical mounting, but the temperature did not go back down. Since his testing eliminated all other potential issues, it looks like the vapor chamber is the problem, once past a certain temperature point it no longer works properly. There's either a construction flaw with many of the cards that got delivered, or there's a design flaw.

Yeah, sorry Linus, but Jensen is probably doing his best Palpatine laugh impression right now. I know I am, because I feast off copium, and the copium is really, really strong with this launch. Hey, AMD, in hindsight, was it a good idea to laugh at the burning cables that turned out to be by far and large user error where nVidia the anti-consumer monster replaced no the affected cards no questions asked, while you went "110° junciton temperatur is within the design specs, sorry, no RMA" until recently?

*snort*

English version of the video;

 

[Keyrock]

[majestic]

Aaaaaaaaaand this is why one does not simply buy cards from Moria:

 

[Bartimaeus]

tl/g;dw (too long/german; didn't watch): 3rd party sellers with lots of used cards (likely former miners) store or even wash cards improperly, short out when put to use by buyer due to moisture build-up inside cards, quick permanently dead/damaged card

Edited January 21, 2023 by Bartimaeus

[Zoraptor]

Wait, you mean it isn't due to AMD's drivers? That seemed so likely though, what with the problem being localised pretty much entirely to one store in Germany.

Wish I could blame the drivers but my Vega has finally gasped its last as its failing RAM has become too unusable for any real use at all so I'm back onto the old 580 instead. Deciding that a 550W PSU was likely to be enough because surely Vega would be the most power intensive GPU available for ages and the days of 300W GPUs were over after it is a decision that hasn't aged particularly well.

[Azdeus]

7 hours ago, Zoraptor said:

Wait, you mean it isn't due to AMD's drivers? That seemed so likely though, what with the problem being localised pretty much entirely to one store in Germany.

Wish I could blame the drivers but my Vega has finally gasped its last as its failing RAM has become too unusable for any real use at all so I'm back onto the old 580 instead. Deciding that a 550W PSU was likely to be enough because surely Vega would be the most power intensive GPU available for ages and the days of 300W GPUs were over after it is a decision that hasn't aged particularly well.

If there wasn't 18000km I'd offer my Vega 64 =(

[Zoraptor]

It's all good. Just glad I didn't give my nephew the old 580 really, and slightly annoying timing since I'd be looking at ~6700/50 tier for a replacement and they're likely to be replaced themselves in the next few months. Then again, couple of months on a slow card vs buying just before new products come out is very much 1st world problems.

[Sarex]

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1499957/amd-is-undershipping-chips-to-keep-cpu-gpu-prices-elevated.html

[Azdeus]

2 hours ago, Sarex said:

https://www.pcworld.com/article/1499957/amd-is-undershipping-chips-to-keep-cpu-gpu-prices-elevated.html

Sounds about right, Corps aren't friends.