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The Radeon RX9070XT / RX9070 Owners Thread

I have a genuine question. Why do people lower the power limit of their GPU to save power rather than getting the best performance they can (from UV, power limit increase, custom fan profile etc.) and then setting an achievable frame limit on a game by game basis? They both have the effect of using less power but the latter ensures that you'll have a smooth experience and in demanding areas it can, if required use the extra power, whereas the former means when you hit the power limit you've **** out of luck and will get frame dips. What's the advantage of the former?
 
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Funky-Melon said:
Ugh, I've been experiencing these issues over the last few days too.


Once or twice I've turned the PC on and nothing has happened, just black screen and it's taken 3-4 attempts to get it to start. Also had poor performance in some games. Avatar was only getting 50fps maxed out and I've reinstalled the drivers using DDU. I've just transferred my hardware to a new case and installed some other parts so wondered if it was that but I fear it's just the usual half baked AMD crap.

I was with Nvidia for 10 years, did one stint of AMD and quickly retuned it after **** like this kept happening and it's sad to see that nothing has changed. Might just have to return this and suck up the cash for team greedy again :(

EDIT: Just before I posted this the PC did it again, some random GPU bluescreen after playing Call of Duty BO6 then refuses to boot. I had to clear the BIOS to get the thing to post again.
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It's probably some Nvidia stuff that's still there.
If you haven't already, delete your steam shader cache, as that often causes conflicts when switching from nvidia to amd or vice versa.
 
Kirkatron said:
I have a genuine question. Why do people limit the power on their GPU to save power rather than getting the best OC they can and then setting an achievable frame limit on a game by game basis? They both have the effect of using less power but the latter ensures that you'll have a smooth experience and in demanding areas it can, if required use the extra power, whereas the former means when you hit the power limit you've **** out of luck and will get frame dips. What's the advantage of the former?
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These cards OC themselves and will clock higher when undervolted than when simply OC'd.
AMD cards have responded well to undervolting for some time - it used to raise the 1% lows by reducing thermal throttling
 
JBone said:
Had the 9070xt Sapphire Pulse for over a week now, all around very happy with it, particularly noise levels, rivals my old 970 Windforce. As always my main focus is powersaving, I do not care for increased performance, more efficiency is king (to me :p)

Have tested in both Timespy and Cyberpunk, you can see my results here:

zjN5MnM.png



At -100mv && -18% Power Limit we are getting the same or marginally better results for 54w less power usage

At -100mv && -10% Power Limit we are getting 2.61% better fps in Cyberpunk for 30w less power usage than stock

At -100mv && +10% Power Limit we are getting 5.23% better fps in Cyberpink for 30w more power usage than stock, yet only 2fps more performance than -100mv/-10% for a whopping 60w more power usage.


In conclusion I will be running -100mv/18% in general usage for much less power usage, or 100mv/10% should I need to squeeze out a little extra performance.

Time will tell regarding stability, I have a 2 hour test in Cyberpunk and 2 hours in RDR2 at -100mv && -10% with no issues. I am sure to run into issues in some games but I will ammend my results as time allows


Note - cyberpunk running at ULTRA settings with RT medium, FSR QUALITY, 3440x1440
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Have you tested on Steel Nomad?
I'm intrigued to see how the performance difference in Steel Nomad compares to Cyberpunk. I did loads of testing in Steel Nomad to work out the performance gains with each setting and would be very much interested in how they translate to real world gains. I don't have any demanding games really. Currently playing Space Marine 2, Forbidden West and Zero Dawn Remastered which all run stupidly well on this card and don't use RT.
 
stuartharrison said:
These cards OC themselves and will clock higher when undervolted than when simply OC'd.
AMD cards have responded well to undervolting for some time - it used to raise the 1% lows by reducing thermal throttling
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That wasn't what i was trying to ask. I'll edit and reword.
I know UV improves performance as it basically pulls the Voltage frequency mapping forward and you get higher clocks at lower voltages resulting in effectively an OC. Nvidia cards are the same, and I used this technique on both my 3090 and 7900 XTX, the former actually mapping out my own custom voltage frequency graph which i'd like to do with my 907 XT once the tools become available.
I'm asking why people lower their power limit rather than use a frame limit.
 
eeii said:
Have you updated the bios on your motherboard and installed the latest chipset drivers. What power supply do you have and what is the rating and age.
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Yep, it's only an MSI B450 carbon gaming AC so don't theres no new BIOS for it but it's on the latest.

Power supply is an EVGA supernova 850W G2 so should be OK.
 
swiss toni said:
How would a 9070XT perform with a Ryzen 5950X?
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If gaming at 1440 i'd suspect you'd be only slightly CPU limited compared with more modern CPUs.

This shows the impact on a 4090, around 30% quicker at raster at 1440 than a 9070 XT. Here the 7800x3d is around 40% quicker than the 5950x at 1440p which is more than the difference in GPU performance between the cards so it would suggest you'd be slightly CPU limited (Most likely only in older games).
dXQmGZbdFLC5izEoqZVB8Z-1200-80.png.webp
 
Kirkatron said:
I have a genuine question. Why do people lower the power limit of their GPU to save power rather than getting the best performance they can (from UV, power limit increase, custom fan profile etc.) and then setting an achievable frame limit on a game by game basis? They both have the effect of using less power but the latter ensures that you'll have a smooth experience and in demanding areas it can, if required use the extra power, whereas the former means when you hit the power limit you've **** out of luck and will get frame dips. What's the advantage of the former?
Click to expand...

Because setting a frame rate limit that is under the GPUs maximum usage will use almost the exact same power regardless of your power limit or undervolt.

For example

CP2077 Full Ultra RT at 1440p with FSR4 Performance =107 FPS. Stock 9070 XT 304w

Set FPS limit to 60FPS in game and it uses ~115w

Set -30% Power limit and 60FPs in game and it uses ~115w

Set my max stable OC that gives ~10% extra performance but still limit to 60 FPS. And it uses ~115w

It already set well above the minimum FPS, so power usage is identical. It’s just thermodynamics. Don’t get me wrong there will be cases a max OC is beneficial to keep minimum FPS higher in highly demanding games. But when you are fighting to get 55 FPS and 10% balls to the wall overclock gets you 60 FPS, it kinda becomes moot if you have a VRR monitor.

Now from an unlimited FPS perspective in the same game and settings

Stock 9070 XT
~107 FPS for 304w

Max OC with 10% increase on PL limit
~119 FPS for 340w

-50mV Undervolt and minus 20% PL
~105 FPS for 240w

In that scenario I prefer to have a GPU that is giving imperceptibly similar FPS but with 100w less power used. Each to their own of course.
 
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Funky-Melon said:
Yep, it's only an MSI B450 carbon gaming AC so don't theres no new BIOS for it but it's on the latest.

Power supply is an EVGA supernova 850W G2 so should be OK.
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Latest BIOS update was September 2024. These cards don’t like being in BIOS mode. They need to run in UEFI mode. If you can check to see if this is running. If you still get problems. Return the card and get your money back.
 
JBone said:
Had the 9070xt Sapphire Pulse for over a week now, all around very happy with it, particularly noise levels, rivals my old 970 Windforce. As always my main focus is powersaving, I do not care for increased performance, more efficiency is king (to me :p)

Have tested in both Timespy and Cyberpunk, you can see my results here:

zjN5MnM.png



At -100mv && -18% Power Limit we are getting the same or marginally better results for 54w less power usage

At -100mv && -10% Power Limit we are getting 2.61% better fps in Cyberpunk for 30w less power usage than stock

At -100mv && +10% Power Limit we are getting 5.23% better fps in Cyberpink for 30w more power usage than stock, yet only 2fps more performance than -100mv/-10% for a whopping 60w more power usage.


In conclusion I will be running -100mv/18% in general usage for much less power usage, or 100mv/10% should I need to squeeze out a little extra performance.

Time will tell regarding stability, I have a 2 hour test in Cyberpunk and 2 hours in RDR2 at -100mv && -10% with no issues. I am sure to run into issues in some games but I will ammend my results as time allows


Note - cyberpunk running at ULTRA settings with RT medium, FSR QUALITY, 3440x1440
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Lovely write up! I agree that the power usage is key for me too.
But not in winter time; I find something very cosy about the computer keeping my feet nice and warm during winter so I will be sticking with -100mv +10%
In summer time, on the other hand, i will be probably going the other way, and cranking that baby down to -100Mv -10%
 
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Dontrocktheboat said:
Lovely write up! I agree that the power usage is key for me too.
But not in winter time; I find something very cosy about the computer keeping my feet nice and warm during winter so I will be sticking with -100mv +10%
In summertime probably going the other way -100Mv -10%
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do your GPU's run hot? with my 9070 at -75mv +15% i game at 65c with the wife's setting the heating to full as normal
i cant imagine the summer getting much warmer
 
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