Z's 4090 Thread

[Zarathustra]

Just curious, what boost clock speeds did you see during these tests? Mine will go upwards of 2880 and mostly stay there, with lows around 2650, at stock. Other than Timespy, I've stopped OC'ing it because just by pushing power to +110 it'll hit those clock speeds and then be totally stable and quiet. It's fun to watch it try for 3 GHz but realistically gets pretty close just by upping the power limit.

Edit: I keep forgetting to check what BIOS switch setting my 4090 is set to. When I was rebuilding the 3700X with the 3090 Ti I remembered and saw it was on quiet and switched to OC mode. I need to check the 4090 for the same. That could be the wall I was hitting with my tests earlier.

I've only done timespy thus far, as I only just got it installed in the box late last night.

Highest clock I think I saw was 2805, but it tended to hover around 2780.

I'm thinking using TimeSpy to tease out any issues I have is probably not productive, because of its well documented dislike of threadrippers.

This does remind me, I have a firmware update to do that I have been putting off, which reportedy has a new AGESA in it for my system. Maybe I should try that and retest.

I'll have to try to find some other good benchmarks to test with, but I am not white sure what to use. Most of what I used to use is severely dated at this point (Unigine Heaven, etc.)

Any suggestions?

 

[LazyGamer]

The more I think about it, I want to build a dedicated box for games with the 4090, and keep the Threadripper as my workstation.

I really loved the concept of one "no compromises" box that is awesome at everything, but that just doesn't seem possible anymore.

I've been trying to say this different ways for a bit... but essentially, this is really just a 'global' best practice, and should be the default. Exceptions should be well supported; so personally, I'd want to keep 'play', 'work', 'infra', and so on separate, physically.

This is really what has kept me from truly considering HEDT. Unless I needed the single-node multi-threaded compute, and I get that some do, the downsides associated with these systems (lower clockspeeds, slower refreshes, potential finickiness from a consumer application perspective, higher cost...), really override any wishful benefits.

Consider if you were trying to minimize additional system costs; you could grab a 13600K + cheap Z690 DDR4 board + cheap 32GB kit of DDR4, and you'd relieve any game-related pressure on your TR system for upgrades. You could build a complete loop for that system too, if you wanted to limit noise under load, but generally speaking there isn't much reason to do so otherwise.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

This does remind me, I have a firmware update to do that I have been putting off, which reportedy has a new AGESA in it for my system. Maybe I should try that and retest.

and that reminds me, don't forget to turn on the Resizable bar in the BIOS (if that CPU and motherboard have it). That could make a difference as well.

 

[Grimlakin]

and that reminds me, don't forget to turn on the Resizable bar in the BIOS (if that CPU and motherboard have it). That could make a difference as well.

And of course on the AMD bios's I've dealt with it hasn't been called resizable bar in some time it's always under some other weird option. Just FYI.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Highest clock I think I saw was 2805, but it tended to hover around 2780.

That is on par and still pretty good.

All the canned benches I use came with the games. I think the Forspoken demo has it and I seem to remember a Final Fantasy one recently but haven't tried it in a while. Otherwise, Metro Exodus, CB 2077, SOTR, and Horizon Zero Dawn all have built-in canned benches.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

And of course on the AMD bios's I've dealt with it hasn't been called resizable bar in some time it's always under some other weird option. Just FYI.

No worries. I was totally shocked this weekend when the B550 Bios had it listed w/ my 3700X and 3090 Ti. I think it said Re-Bar but still, close enough. I was just happy it was there right out of the box.

 

[Zarathustra]

I've been trying to say this different ways for a bit... but essentially, this is really just a 'global' best practice, and should be the default. Exceptions should be well supported; so personally, I'd want to keep 'play', 'work', 'infra', and so on separate, physically.

This is really what has kept me from truly considering HEDT. Unless I needed the single-node multi-threaded compute, and I get that some do, the downsides associated with these systems (lower clockspeeds, slower refreshes, potential finickiness from a consumer application perspective, higher cost...), really override any wishful benefits.

Yeah, I've come to the same conclusion, though it saddens me. There was a time when you could have both in the same machine, the most badass workstation and the most badass gaming solution, but now more and more they are diverging.

In 2011 my 6C12T i7-3930k in an era where 4C8T was a high end solution was like this, especially after I overclocked it to 4.8Ghz.

Gaming has never been a priority for me. I built high end computer systems because I was into high end computing. Then I ran games on them because I had them. Building a system dedicated to gaming just feels wrong. It really rubs me the wrong way. it's like buying a console, something which I would never do.

The whole point of PC's is that they can do everything and are not just single purpose machines.

But I guess that is where we are. Long term it will wind up being cheaper separating the workstation from the game machine, simply because workstation hardware is so much more expensive to upgrade, and doesn't need to be upgraded as often if you don't play games on it.

Consider if you were trying to minimize additional system costs; you could grab a 13600K + cheap Z690 DDR4 board + cheap 32GB kit of DDR4, and you'd relieve any game-related pressure on your TR system for upgrades. You could build a complete loop for that system too, if you wanted to limit noise under load, but generally speaking there isn't much reason to do so otherwise.

I've been thinking about a two-in-one system.

My Corsair 1000D actually supports putting two motherboards in it. One EATX and one Mini-ITX. While I need the EATX slot for my expansion heavy workstation needs, the Mini-ITX could easily be the game box.

I'd want to network them together using a high speed network, so I could share storage and stuff between them though, and for whatever reason Mini-ITX boards often have less networking capability on board. At a minimum I'd want to link them at 10gig speeds, but I'd need a mini-ITX board with two nics, one 10gig (for local link) and one gigabit for LAN/WAN access. This is surprisingly rare and hard to find.

If I go up to an ATX board suddenly 10g+1g on board networking is more common, but now I'm thinking if I have expansion options, why not go 25G so I can link the two at NVMe speeds? And then it becomes difficult again. I can't find any consumer motherboard that supports simultaneous electric 16x+8x activity (even though this should be possible if you pull lanes off the chipset for a slower (gen 4 or gen3?) second 8x slot. All of the boards out there drop the 16x slot down to 8x when you use the second slot, which is a huge bummer, since I can't find any 25G nics that are less than 8x (even though a 4x gen4 slot should have plenty of bandwidth for a single 25G port...)

I'll figure something out eventually, but I keep running into "why the hell doesn't this product exist" problems, and they annoy the hell out of me.

 

[Zarathustra]

That is on par and still pretty good.

All the canned benches I use came with the games. I think the Forspoken demo has it and I seem to remember a Final Fantasy one recently but haven't tried it in a while. Otherwise, Metro Exodus, CB 2077, SOTR, and Horizon Zero Dawn all have built-in canned benches.

Thanks, I'm going to flash the new BIOS tonight and then try those, as well as re-running Timespy to see if it made a difference.

I have Metro Exodus (both normal and enhanced edition) as well as Cyberpunk. Not familliar with SORT or Horizon Zero Dawn, but I'll look into them. If I recall Far Cry 5 and 6 have built in benches as well, but as I recall they are VERY CPU heavy and hold back the GPU.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

The whole point of PC's is that they can do everything and are not just single purpose machines.

The 7000 series X3D might, might fill that gap. I seriously am chomping at the bit for those reviews to come out. The 5800X3D is pretty close but not quite there for the heavy-duty workstation but it is fairly close. For gaming, it's an absolute beast and only misses out by about 1-3 percent in comparison to many things that are much more expensive.

 

[Zarathustra]

But I guess that is where we are. Long term it will wind up being cheaper separating the workstation from the game machine, simply because workstation hardware is so much more expensive to upgrade, and doesn't need to be upgraded as often if you don't play games on it.

Not to mention not having to work until 2am to get the work machine up and running for work the morning after That gives you some flexibility.

This is the same reason I eventually stopped running pfSense as a guest on my VM box. It kind of sucked to take down the entire network when I needed to work on the VM box

 

[Zarathustra]

The 7000 series X3D might, might fill that gap. I seriously am chomping at the bit for those reviews to come out. The 5800X3D is pretty close but not quite there for the heavy-duty workstation but it is fairly close. For gaming, it's an absolute beast and only misses out by about 1-3 percent in comparison to many things that are much more expensive.

I think it is a good CPU, but for my purposes still limited too much when it comes to expansion.

If I am honest about it, nothing I do on my workstation requires my 24C48T Threadripper. The only reason I bough tit was for the massive numbers PCIe lanes allowing me to install enterprise NIC's, SAS controllers, more m.2 drives than you can shake a stick at, etc. etc.

I don't need the - what - 64? 72? Whatever it is PCIe lanes the Threadripper has, but I do need more than the 28 lanes consumer boards ship with. My x79 system was perfect in that regard. 40 lanes was a perfect balance for me, allowing me enough expansion to not feel limiting, without needing the huge socket and high expense associated with the Threadripper.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

Thanks, I'm going to flash the new BIOS tonight and then try those, as well as re-running Timespy to see if it made a difference.

I have Metro Exodus (both normal and enhanced edition) as well as Cyberpunk. Not familliar with SORT or Horizon Zero Dawn, but I'll look into them. If I recall Far Cry 5 and 6 have built in benches as well, but as I recall they are VERY CPU heavy and hold back the GPU.

I've got both versions of Metro as well but really only use the Enhanced version anymore. By far, that is one of my favorite canned benches as the scene when it leaves the cabin is about as demanding as it gets for that game. I've replayed that game so many times that I can say there's only a few other moments ingame that are more demanding so its better than most canned in relation to actual gameplay. CB2077 is o.k. but definitely not representative of actual game play. SOTR (Shadow of The Tomb Raider) tests three different scenes and at moments is pretty close to game play but there are definitely some spots in the game that are more demanding. Horizon is extremely CPU demanding as well but does feature DLSS, this is a game that the X3D really shines with in terms of smoothness (still not perfect but the best I've experienced so far). I know there are more modern free demos/benches out there but can't remember them right now. Probably worth googling.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

My x79 system was perfect in that regard. 40 lanes was a perfect balance for me, allowing me enough expansion to not feel limiting, without needing the huge socket and high expense associated with the Threadripper.

I just retired my X79 this weekend and bought it for the exact same reason as you. At the time it was because I was running SLI and wanted both cards to be at PCIe 3.0 x16 and then the PhysX card at x 8. Worked out great while that stuff was supported. It was ahead of its time and gave a good run of ~10 years. It still does great for a lot of things but there's a growing list of features it doesn't have that are gaming-related that are holding it back.

 

[David_Schroth]

This does remind me, I have a firmware update to do that I have been putting off, which reportedy has a new AGESA in it for my system. Maybe I should try that and retest.

On that lane of thought, make sure you've got ReBAR running - it's likely disabled by default in the BIOS.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

On that lane of thought, make sure you've got ReBAR running - it's likely disabled by default in the BIOS.

Yep, that's what I said too.

I rebuilt my 3700X rig this past weekend and was totally shocked that the BIOS for my new B550M was mostly up to date out of the box, at least so far as that last AGESA build from August, and even happier to see that listed there to turn on.

 

[Zarathustra]

I just retired my X79 this weekend and bought it for the exact same reason as you. At the time it was because I was running SLI and wanted both cards to be at PCIe 3.0 x16 and then the PhysX card at x 8. Worked out great while that stuff was supported. It was ahead of its time and gave a good run of ~10 years. It still does great for a lot of things but there's a growing list of features it doesn't have that are gaming-related that are holding it back.

Same. I bought the x79 system right after Bulldozer launched and was a huge disappointment. I turned around and spent what at the time was a crazy amount of money for a motherboard and CPU, $1000 combined between the two. ($399 for the motherboard which was very expensive for a motherboard at the time, and $599 for the CPU, which also was shockingly expensive for a CPU at the time.

I used that system from 2011 when I bought it (occasionally swapping the GPU, upgrading the RAM and the drives) until late 2019 when I switched to the Threadripper. I'm still using the X79 system as the "backup/testbench" machine.

It's crazy that I got 8 years out of it. Prior to that I was a "upgrade motherboard & CPU every 1-2 years" kind of guy.

The fact that it hit 4.8Ghz (stock was 3.2) didn't hurt either. In 2011 when I got it and overclocked it to 4.8 it was the fastest thing anyone had ever seen.

On that lane of thought, make sure you've got ReBAR running - it's likely disabled by default in the BIOS.

Thanks,

I should check that, but I had it working on my 6900xt, so I presume it is still on, unless it somehow resets itself when you swap out the GPU.

 

[Peter_Brosdahl]

($399 for the motherboard which was very expensive for a motherboard at the time, and $599 for the CPU

A few years later but I think I did alright. Some BF deals at the time and thought it was a great point to try something new.


I was only ever able to take that CPU to 4.3 GHz but I did the same with that rig in terms of updating mem, drives, and GPUs through the years. Always felt a bit empty by the time I got to a 2080 Ti and walked away from SLI, and got rid of my 2 or 3 RAIDs and swapped over to a few SSDs w/ just a couple of platters for media storage.

Edit: BTW those platters and a 2 TB SATA III SSD are now in the 3700X rig.

 

[Grimlakin]

Yeah, I've come to the same conclusion, though it saddens me. There was a time when you could have both in the same machine, the most badass workstation and the most badass gaming solution, but now more and more they are diverging.

In 2011 my 6C12T i7-3930k in an era where 4C8T was a high end solution was like this, especially after I overclocked it to 4.8Ghz.

Gaming has never been a priority for me. I built high end computer systems because I was into high end computing. Then I ran games on them because I had them. Building a system dedicated to gaming just feels wrong. It really rubs me the wrong way. it's like buying a console, something which I would never do.

The whole point of PC's is that they can do everything and are not just single purpose machines.

But I guess that is where we are. Long term it will wind up being cheaper separating the workstation from the game machine, simply because workstation hardware is so much more expensive to upgrade, and doesn't need to be upgraded as often if you don't play games on it.



I've been thinking about a two-in-one system.

My Corsair 1000D actually supports putting two motherboards in it. One EATX and one Mini-ITX. While I need the EATX slot for my expansion heavy workstation needs, the Mini-ITX could easily be the game box.

I'd want to network them together using a high speed network, so I could share storage and stuff between them though, and for whatever reason Mini-ITX boards often have less networking capability on board. At a minimum I'd want to link them at 10gig speeds, but I'd need a mini-ITX board with two nics, one 10gig (for local link) and one gigabit for LAN/WAN access. This is surprisingly rare and hard to find.

If I go up to an ATX board suddenly 10g+1g on board networking is more common, but now I'm thinking if I have expansion options, why not go 25G so I can link the two at NVMe speeds? And then it becomes difficult again. I can't find any consumer motherboard that supports simultaneous electric 16x+8x activity (even though this should be possible if you pull lanes off the chipset for a slower (gen 4 or gen3?) second 8x slot. All of the boards out there drop the 16x slot down to 8x when you use the second slot, which is a huge bummer, since I can't find any 25G nics that are less than 8x (even though a 4x gen4 slot should have plenty of bandwidth for a single 25G port...)

I'll figure something out eventually, but I keep running into "why the hell doesn't this product exist" problems, and they annoy the hell out of me.

Huh this makes me want a thunderbolt networking device for local networking. Plug in two systems plus a few devices and access eachother. Seems reasonable to me.

 

[Zarathustra]

A few years later but I think I did alright. Some BF deals at the time and thought it was a great point to try something new.
View attachment 2332

I was only ever able to take that CPU to 4.3 GHz but I did the same with that rig in terms of updating mem, drives, and GPUs through the years. Always felt a bit empty by the time I got to a 2080 Ti and walked away from SLI, and got rid of my 2 or 3 RAIDs and swapped over to a few SSDs w/ just a couple of platters for media storage.

Edit: BTW those platters and a 2 TB SATA III SSD are now in the 3700X rig.

hehe. Here's mine:



I'm so glad Newegg reminded me that it is past the return period.

I think when I got this I used it with my first SSD, an OCZ Agility 120G as an install and game drive (only very few games at the time, but they were smaller then) and had a 2TB WD Green as a file storage drive. I can't really remember though. I started out with 6GB of RAM< but eventually went up to 12.

This board outlived so many GPU's. When I bought it in late 2011 I already had dual triple slot Asus DirectCUII Radeon HD 6970's, but I had nothing but problems with Crossfire, so on launch in January 2012 I bought a Radeon HD 7970, hoping a single GPU would be enough to power 2560x1600. It wasn't, so I tried to ghetto mount a corsair AIO to it to better overclock it, but I slipped with my screwdriver during cooler disassembly and wrecked it. Went for like a month without a GPU, and then bought a Geforce GTX 680 on launch. It still wasn't quite there for 2560x1600 use, but I made it work until the first Titan launched in February 2013, when I hopped on that. I felt buyers remorse for spending so much on a GPU, but then again it actually was sufficient for my 2560x1600 screen and lasted me longer than any GPU had to date. I didn't upgrade again until I made the silly mistake of being a high res early adopter again summer of 2015, when I went 4k, and I suddenly needed HDMI 2.0 and more power so the Titan didn't cut it anymore. I wound up going with dual Geforce GTX 980ti's thinking that surely SLI was a better experience than Crossfire had been. I was wrong. SLI sucked too, which is when I bought my Pascal Titan X on launch summer of 2016.


When I retired the x79 system as my main machine in 2019 I had truly taken the most out of it. I had a custom loop in it, with my Pascal Titan X, 64GB of RAM the same 3930k still soldiering on at 4.8Ghz. The board didn't support booting from NVMe drives, but it turns out that intel's SSD750 PCIe drives actually were one of the very few NVMe drives with an old fashioned boot rom on it, so I booted from a 400GB SSD750. I had a second NVMe drive, a 1TB m.2 970 Evo in a PCIe slot riser which I used for games and other storage.

Even with a GPU (16x) and two PCIe SSD's (4x Each) I still had space for my Creative Titanium HD sound card.

I truly got just about every ounce worth out of that x79 build. It was a great system while it lasted.

As previously mentioned it is still in use as my testbench, in a new Phanteks Enthoo Pro case I recently built together, with an LSI SAS-9300-16i controller and a 10gig NIC for testing drives and dumping drive images to the NAS.

(Seen above with an LSI 9300-8i board and an Intel SAS Expander before I bought the 9300-16i)

I still chuckle a little bit at the buyers remorse I had in 2011 when I bought it as I couldn't believe I had spent such a crazy amount of money on a motherboard/cpu, but 12 years later it is still useful to me, so I think in the end I got my moneys worth

8 years of mainline use as my desktop, and who knows how many more years as a testbench?

When I finally upgrade my server, I will probably move the supermicro board that is currently in it to the testbench role, and then the old x79 board will finally get some rest

 

[Zarathustra]

Huh this makes me want a thunderbolt networking device for local networking. Plug in two systems plus a few devices and access eachother. Seems reasonable to me.

I understand this is possible, just not implemented very well.

Apple made it work. in MacOS you can reportedly just connect two macs with nothing but a thunderbolt cable and they can network at up to 10gig with eachtother.

Why they didn't go all the way up to the 40gig the thunderbolt bandwidth supports, I don't understand. Seems like an arbitrary limitation to me.