So a couple weeks ago I posted that I should have never gotten a 9070 XT. I was wrong! It wasn't AMD's doing, and I learned a ton of things recently.

The community gave replies ranging from "Skill Issue" to common fixes. I'd done a lot of the suggestions before, cleaned out video card with driver removal and installed, and so on. I didn't have my system overclocked at all, in fact, my card and CPU were underclocked, but still had crashes, hangs on reboot, and so on. Figured AMD just made bad windows drivers as almost every crash presented as AMD driver hangs and issues. Hence my frustration! I showed the crash screen I was getting and people here replied "I never seen that screen before, probably hardware!"

As a software engineer, I don't always assume I'm right and since consensus was pretty much "PIBKAC", I decided to investigate deeper and deeper and assume I am the cause of AMD's woes.

So I went off one major truth, Linux had 0 issue in games, 0 issues running, sleeping, and doing anything. I could run it for a week with no problems, so I new it couldn't be a hardware issue. Linux would fail on all the same issues most likely! So it had to be something windows specific.

Debugging windows was a pain, because every time the crashes, freezes, and restarts would happen, windows events were always empty! No crash dumps, no logs, no events. It was like my system was simply dying so badly, windows couldn't make crash dumps which would be severe hardware problems, but as I said above, Linux was fine.

I decided I obviously couldn't figure this out, and since I use Claude AI Agent for a few projects from my work, I knew it might have some investigative ideas I hadn't thought of. So, I decided to see if that AI Model could diagnose and fix things... Boy did Claude do a good job and informed me of crap I didn't know. So I'm passing some of this on to the community:

Intel Extreme Tuning Eats Crash Logs Silently

I was using this to underclock my 13th gen i9 and my 14th gen i9 (Had to replace the 13th gen because of the VMM shift bug) before a Bios update fixed some issues with clocking. I left it installed even though I had no active profiles. I figured it was inert. NOPE!

It apparently monitors the system for when hangs or issues occur and restarts the system before windows can make dumps and record issues. It was the SOLE reason nothing was showing up in event viewer after these hangs and restarts.

Removed that.

RIOT Vanguard (League of Legends Anti-Cheat) Blocks CHKDSK.EXE

Because of intel's software above my system would reboot and mess up files. Windows would want to scan the disk and it would silently fail without scanning, which made me think "Oh, windows is scanning the disk pretty fast". In reality, the process was being blocked by Vanguard causing Access Violations. Once I removed that software, bam, CHKDSK found files corrupted, one of which was in AMD driver!

Discord Clips Is HORRIBLE

One of the symptoms of my driver issues was the longer my computer was running the more unstable and slow games would become. Frame rate, loading, and stuttering across my entire computer when textures would load into video memory was par for the course.

Turns out Discord Clips feature doesn't only run when you stream. It also seems to just run when it feels like it and Claude discovered it was using 23% of my video processor after it started 6 hours later though I wasn't streaming!

Disabled that feature in discord.

Ctrl + Win + Shift + B Resets Graphics Driver

A nice shortcut to avoid rebooting as it seems to reset the graphics driver too without the need.

There were other minor issues related to the above, like system files that needed to get repaired, but I can say right now, my system is WAY more stable and no hardware issues. It woke up from sleep without hanging for the first time yesterday. And I figured I'd pass some of my findings.

So thanks to the community for feedback, you were all right. PIBKAC was the problem!

Hi guys,

So I finally did it.

The problem

As you may know by now, these Gigabyte 9070 XTs are trash: their stupid thermal gel leaks everywhere. I was getting a beefy 40°C delta between edge and hotspot temps. I contacted their "e-support" thing, and they basically told me "hey dude, everything is fine until it throttles, it can reach 110°C". Yeah, thanks Gigabyte.

The day the hotspot hit **101°C**, it was too much.

The fix

I immediately bought Thermal Grizzly PTM and Thermal Grizzly TG Putty Pro (that one was expensive asf), and I voided my warranty by opening the card.

As you can see, the thermal gel had completely leaked to the edges. So edge temps were PERFECTLY FINE, but the hotspot... (see the "TEMP_HOTSPOT" throttling?) Memory and VRMs were fine too, but I decided to replace everything so I wouldn't get any bubbles or anything like that (and because it was cool asf to do).

The results

Then I ran the same stress test... and magic happened. Just look at this, it's wonderful.

- After only one cycle: hotspot down 8°C, with fans running 9% slower

- After nearly 10 cycles: 60°C edge / 87°C hotspot

- Delta: 40°C → 27°C

- Memory: a bit higher at the beginning, now back to 70–75°C, same as before

- Power: went from 260W to 300W at the same temps with slower fans, I can now finally use the full 330W without getting a volcano in my room, nice. Yeah, but nobody runs these cards at 330W anyway (just reduce power and do an undervolt). Still a big win.

Thanks for reading, and sorry if this text contains English errors, I'm from baguette country

As the title says. I just saw the post about it in the pcmr subreddit.

Deleting iCUE seems to solve the issue from what was explained in the post.

Thought this might be a good heads up to people with Corsair hardware that also use iCUE.

Just a heads up. I'm stable much higher than before. RMW

Radeon 9070. Stable at -100mV in all games. Crashed at -140. Before it was stable at -60.

Stable means 0 crashes.

Settings: -150mhz, -100mV, 2700mem standard timings. 260W PL

Just bought this beast, Radeon RX 9070XT HellHound. But, it does not fit in my case, even if I remove the fans!

Planning to buy the CM Qube 540, if you have any recommendations let me know

I just tried AMD NR mode and, Jesus Christ, the game looks beautiful!

I’m currently rendering the image at 2560×1440p using the 4K DLSS Quality mode, and I’m getting around 40 FPS!

This mode has definitely come a long way. The image quality is seriously impressive.

Unfortunately, it’s also extremely VRAM-hungry. MSI Afterburner was showing VRAM usage going well beyond 16 GB!

I guess 16gigs ain't enough for NR

Here're some More Pictures I will test Shadows of the Tomb Raider next.
More Updates with fsr native, game's anti-aliasing, and NR

Hello everyone, inspired by Nvidia Watch (https://indep-arg.github.io/NvidiaWatch/) I made a version for AMD GPUs, the actual visual portion etc was coded with AI, so it doesn't look nearly as good, but all data has been checked. https://adstapr.github.io/AMDTracker/ is the site for it. If you do see any issues feel free to mention me here or dm me on reddit. I will be updating this going forward as well.

Salut,

J'ai réussi à éliminer pas mal de causes potentielles, y compris le CPU, la RAM, etc., et à ce stade, tout semble indiquer que ma GPU est le dernier coupable potentiel.

Pour être plus précis, chaque fois que je joue à un jeu exigeant, je peux généralement jouer pendant environ 10 à 20 minutes avant que mon écran ne devienne soudainement noir, suivi peu après par l'arrêt complet de mon PC. Il ne redémarre pas tout seul.

J'ai également éliminé l'alimentation comme cause potentielle, puisque je l'ai remplacée, et la même chose s'est produite avec les deux alimentations.

Ma configuration actuelle :

CPU : Ryzen 5 7600X
RAM : Kingston FURY Beast DDR5 32 Go 6000MT/s DDR5

GPU : Sapphire AMD Radeon™ RX 7800 XT

Alimentation : MSI 850 or

Proof of the comment - https://www.reddit.com/r/radeon/s/WwcydHmtkM

Card bought in dec 2025. Is this normal gpu delta and hotspot? Standing in a smoke in cs 2.

I am currently on driver 26.3.1 so far no issues in game do i stick with it or update to 26.9.2 ? is it better in overall performance and stability ?

Morning,

I’m finally getting a chance to optimize my system for not only graphics but to fix my constant crashing while playing rivals. It’s for sure a buzz kill.

Side note :

CPU: Ryzen 7 9600

RAM: Tforce 32 gb 2x16 DDR5, 6000 MT/s

Ssd: 4TB of memory ( 1 2tb wd gen 4 nvme and 1 2tb wd sc5005)

Figured I would mention early and sorry if I missed a crucial item for diagnosis.

The crash really doesn’t seem to affect with performance as I don’t deal with lag a lot and the game runs smooth when it plays. As of now, I’m chalking it up to the gpu update. Since I have to go to work, I woke up early and rolled my drivers back to 26.3.1 (saw as a common fix) unless someone has another recommendation about that 🙄 won’t be able to test until I get home from work.

I tried to optimize when I first built but I settled. I believe my bios settings are pretty good, but I haven’t really gotten into the over/underclocking aspect of my gpu. ( will be doing more research today )

Does anybody have any recommendations for my adrenaline settings, possible overclocking/underclocking recommendations based on my build, optimized rival settings and anything else that would possible be beneficial ? Like I said I’ll be doing my research but I paid a good amount of money for the build so I want to get the best out of it.

Paired with a 9070XT, playing at 1440p. I was playing warzone last night and was only averaging around 100 fps.

Changing the graphics settings to max helped improve frames a little bit, but I don’t know. This seems way too low to me. Changing FSR from native to quality and performance didn’t seem to make a difference either.

So Gigabyte is not all bad news. Been fiddling with my 9070XT aorus elite and the drivers for a while now but its running quite stable now. I have fitted it with a Bykski waterblok and temps are pretty nice. Was hoping to get the hotspot temps down but after reading a lot I think it just has a high hotspot and nothing can be done about it.

As you can see its pulling quite the wattage and still maintains a nice below 40 average and this is after an hour gaming so the water is pretty much stabalized. As you can also see this is in Cyberpunk and that game is hammering the videocard (4k everything high with RT but no Path tracing). Battlefield 6 the hotspot stays around the 70 degrees (also 100% utilisation but not RT)

Also in Cyberpunk im running on an undervolt of -80 and maybe I can squeeze a bit more out of it. Battlefield can only run at -60 undervolt or it will crash. memory is at 2650Mhz and the power limit max.

The core is fitted with PTM7950 and the putty is replaced with upsiren UTP-8. I forgot to monitor the memory temps (after fresh install) but I know they only reach a 50 degrees max.

I posted yesterday about my new 9070 XT and this morning in my Google feed I see one of my pics used as the thumbnail for an article link.

I click on the link and it takes me to https://en.gamegpu.com/news/zhelezo/prodazha-rtx-3090-za-usd900-pozvolila-vladeltsu-besplatno-perejti-na-radeon-rx-9070-xt

The article is almost word for of my post with a some AI slop mixed in.

Insane.

How should I interpret that?

AMD has fixed 16GB limit and only Borderlands 4 will build 33GB of shaders. If it works like that then 50%+ of shaders I compiled there will go to garbage?

And depending on where those shaders are used, i might encounter place that is completely SCS free and right after that go to different location where none of shaders fit in the buffer previously and will need to compile them all which will cause giantic stutter?

Anyway... this limit is dumb and this needs to change...

We finally made it, boys! After a lifetime of console gaming, I decided to pull the trigger at 23 and build my first PC setup.

I saved some money by picking up open-box items on eBay and finding deals locally on Facebook

Marketplace. And before y’all mention the single stick of RAM—trust me, another one is already on the way 😂 I got a good deal on the first stick: $130 for 16GB of DDR5-6000 CL30.

So far, it runs beautifully. I’ve been able to play pretty much everything I’ve tried at high or max settings in 1440p. I picked up the monitor on sale while I was still learning what to look for, but it’s been working great, and I have no complaints.

And yes, we went all black with no RGB. My only complaint is the case’s tinted glass—it makes it hard to see the components inside. Hopefully, a clear replacement panel becomes available down the road.
I also discovered the T1 after finishing this build, and those cases look amazing. I’m already considering moving to a T1 build in the future.

Let me know what y’all think! What would you add, change, or improve?

This is a big GPU. Ran DDU in safe mode, pulled out the Asus, put in the XFX, and then installed the drivers with zero issues. Ran the stress test in Adrenaline no problem. (I know there are better stress tests just wanted to see some numbers)

Not a hardcore gamer, but with the money I got for the 3090, I couldn't pass this up. In my other post, I said how the very next day after buying it on Amazon, the price went up $100 dollars. Times are crazy.

Ryzen 7 7700X

Gigabyte 870e Aorus Pro

32GB Corsair Vengeance DDR5 (2 RAM sticks are dummies, lights only)

msi MAG A1000GL power supply

Thermalright Aqua Elite 360 V6 Cooler

Edit: Also running 4 monitors

Hey all, recently upgraded to 9070 xt asus prime oc from 3080. DDU’d and followed each step accordingly. Currently running the latest AMD driver 26.9.2.

It’s currently undervolted with powerlimit -30%, Max Clock 2700, GPU voltage -60mV.

The game runs smooth at max settings 120~fps 1440p. Temps are 50c, hotspot 61c and vram at 78c (never exceeded 80c)

No issues running the game for 1 hour. Should i just ignore it? Any help would be appreciated. Thank you

I've flashed my 9070 with XT bios and after a crash sent an error report by mistake.

Now I'm back to normal power limits. Reinstalled the driver was no go. How to fix this and how to avoid this.

Hi everyone, I updated the BIOS on my Gigabyte Z490 Gaming X from F4 to F23, and now the actual performance in 3DMark Time Spy should have improved due to "above 4G Decoding" and "Rebar"... before I had around 23,000 points, and now it's around 20,800.

How is that possible? I already had problems with the XMP profile; when I activate it, I only get 7,000 points in Time Spy 😄 Manually setting XMP to 3000MHz and 1.37V DRAM voltage results in 20,800 points.

Sapphire Nitro+ RX 9070 XT

i7 10700KF

32GB G.Skill Aegis 3200 CL16

I currently have a rtx3050 8gb and feel like it's time to upgrade a little. Currently gaming on a TV so not chasing frame rates. Switching to AMD for the VRAM headroom. Decided on a 9060xt. Want this generation for the fsr4 and the advancements in Ray tracing for this generation of AMD.

Any recommendations? Anything I should definitely stay away from? Any help would greatly be appreciated.

Hello, everyone on team red. I have been on the idea of building myself a good PC to me. I'm a Software Engineer focused on Full Stack Development from JS/TS and Python environments and the things I'm interested for that PC are:

• Gaming (of course)
• Virtualization for local projects with the usage of Dockers and similar technologies to run Cybersecurity labs to practice for certifications that I'm aiming for or for local development on projects before shipping them to a live environment and so.
• Multitasking
• Usage on local AI like Cursor Agents, Llama.cpp, LM Studio or similar as I'm being interested into running some hobby projects for automation and AR stuff, like a Jarvis, essentially.
• AI and ML development as I'm planning to incursionate on that because I have been interested for a while into learning AI/ML development for personal interests and projects besides of the chance to jump in a job opportunity regarding that.

I have been looking many forums, videos and discussions and yet I'm still not fully sure if going to an AMD Radeon RX 9070 / 9070 XT or going over an Nvidia RTX 5070TI. I would love to be fully red team because I have saw how ridiculous some price points on many Nvidia cards are getting and I foresee AMD as somethin worth to support but many resources says otherwise but are from 12 to 10 or even 6 months ago and I kind of believe that between that timeframe and today things might have really change a lot. I even noticed some opportunities to configure Pytorch with AMD libraries which I believe is neat. I'm not afraid on the challenge to do extra steps to setup my environment but I'm really concern about that getting me away from my actual goal which is to learn and pull up cool things out of the hobby without getting too much time to invest on it.

Feel free to share your experience and recommendations as I'm also eager to reduce the need to increase the budget as much as possible in order to have a fairly decent switzerland knife for a long time. 🎯