Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 XT Nitro+

[BoggledBeagle]

barbecue cables.

The power draw at idle is small, so the cooler fins will be lukewarm at worst and in use they probably will not be warmer than 50°C.

I think that the plastic insulation of the cables may harden due to temperature stress after 5 years or so, but who cares...

 

[springs113]

Thank you very much kind sir.

To also add, I have no case fans. The only fans in my case are on the aio(Arctic LF3). My case is an inverted layout, my gpu is at the top.

 

[AusWolf]

Based on my experience with 2x PowerColor cards now, the default fan curve seems to be WAY too low. I recommend cranking it using LACT.

So far, no luck.

Bazzite only has Mesa 24.3 which is not good enough for the 9070 XT. It runs, gives me desktop with Freesync and HDR, also runs Superposition for some reason, but neofetch sees the card as "AMD Device 7550", and my games won't start. I guess I'll have to wait for the Bazzite team to update Mesa.

Let me know how it went for you because it looks 9070 series is not supported out of the box on launch day...
It is supported but you need to install Mesa 25.0, (nearly) latest linux-firmware on Arch (at least kernel is good on Arch).
Today I will need to see after work if the "official" package bumped for Mesa or I really need to swap to mesa-git.
Which is doable but I was not expecting to spend time on it. I just wanted to play yesterday night. And it was quicker to put my GRE back to the machine and fire it up

But weekend will come and either
A) arch will push the needed packages
B) I will spend some time to make the switch
C) put the A770 back to my son's PC and call it a day

It looks like it is really not supported. Not fully at least.

The card starts up, works in desktop, has Freesync, HDR and everything. It even runs Unigine Superposition with 13.7k points, but... it doesn't run my games.
I've only tried Space Marine 2 (won't start), and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (pops an error on startup).

Neofetch sees the card as "AMD Device 7550".

Unfortunately, the latest version of Bazzite only has Mesa 24.3, I hope it will be updated soon. I don't know how a manual Mesa update works, my searches don't return anything useful.

Edit: Bit of a duplicated post, sorry about that. I just thought I'd provide both of you as much info as possible.

 

[Chrisy]

So far, no luck.

Bazzite only has Mesa 24.3 which is not good enough for the 9070 XT. It runs, gives me desktop with Freesync and HDR, also runs Superposition for some reason, but neofetch sees the card as "AMD Device 7550", and my games won't start. I guess I'll have to wait for the Bazzite team to update Mesa.


It looks like it is really not supported. Not fully at least.

The card starts up, works in desktop, has Freesync, HDR and everything. It even runs Unigine Superposition with 13.7k points, but... it doesn't run my games.
I've only tried Space Marine 2 (won't start), and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (pops an error on startup).

Neofetch sees the card as "AMD Device 7550".

Unfortunately, the latest version of Bazzite only has Mesa 24.3, I hope it will be updated soon. I don't know how a manual Mesa update works, my searches don't return anything useful.

Edit: Bit of a duplicated post, sorry about that. I just thought I'd provide both of you as much info as possible.

Welp I have spent some time on it yesterday night.
I messed up first and my motherboard kept reporting 0x8F error so I had to roll back the packages.
Nothing irreversible happened but was tricky with no video output to help me out

This morning I (only) did a mesa devel 25.1 upgrade and lo and behold it works
So far only have one game that is not starting because I did not bother with the lib32 mesa package (I am lazy right now).
Bottom-line: basically just had to install one AUR (mesa-git) and things are fine so I recommend the same for you. And don't forget vulkan-radeon like I did at first .
(Also you need kernel 6.13.5 but for me that was already there so you might need that one as well).


I am not sure how to update your mesa on Bazzite. I have only used Bazzite for a few hours to try it out and see how it is different. Sorry I cannot help with that.
I know I know, "iAm aN aRCh usER" but you might want to give it a shot. I personally think it is much simpler than other repos. And SteamDeck running Arch means it has all the Steam and AMD support one can wish for. Also package management is super strong on it.

Note: by fine I mean the games I am daily driving are starting but one. With good performance. And HDR gaming as well.
GPU monitoring and other firmware dependent stuff are not 100% (duh I have a month old firmware package) but I do not care about that at this moment.
I think last night going with the HEAD on linux-firmware did lead to my troubles with 0x8F code.
Usually around this time of the month we will get a linux-firmware update on Arch anyhow. And I can live a week without GPU info and such.

And I've read somewhere that mesa-25 package is also brewing quicker now (for Arch) due to RDNA4 so I can probably roll back my mesa devel 25.1 to the "official" 25 package when it comes out soon.

Things are good and my son is super happy with "his" "new" 7900GRE

ps) my take: RDNA4 is supported on Linux on launch day but most repos are not prepared to support it on launch day. Hence the poor user experience on Linux.

 

[N/A]

The power draw at idle is small, so the cooler fins will be lukewarm at worst and in use they probably will not be warmer than 50°C.

if anything cables could be laid inside a circular duct to facilitate the airflow around it. It defeats the whole purpose of a flow through fans by putting a bed on which the cables will fry and dry out like grapes.

 

[AusWolf]

Welp I have spent some time on it yesterday night.
I messed up first and my motherboard kept reporting 0x8F error so I had to roll back the packages.
Nothing irreversible happened but was tricky with no video output to help me out

This morning I (only) did a mesa devel 25.1 upgrade and lo and behold it works
So far only have one game that is not starting because I did not bother with the lib32 mesa package (I am lazy right now).
Bottom-line: basically just had to install one AUR (mesa-git) and things are fine so I recommend the same for you. And don't forget vulkan-radeon like I did at first .
(Also you need kernel 6.13.5 but for me that was already there so you might need that one as well).


I am not sure how to update your mesa on Bazzite. I have only used Bazzite for a few hours to try it out and see how it is different. Sorry I cannot help with that.
I know I know, "iAm aN aRCh usER" but you might want to give it a shot. I personally think it is much simpler than other repos. And SteamDeck running Arch means it has all the Steam and AMD support one can wish for. Also package management is super strong on it.

Note: by fine I mean the games I am daily driving are starting but one. With good performance. And HDR gaming as well.
GPU monitoring and other firmware dependent stuff are not 100% (duh I have a month old firmware package) but I do not care about that at this moment.
I think last night going with the HEAD on linux-firmware did lead to my troubles with 0x8F code.
Usually around this time of the month we will get a linux-firmware update on Arch anyhow. And I can live a week without GPU info and such.

And I've read somewhere that mesa-25 package is also brewing quicker now (for Arch) due to RDNA4 so I can probably roll back my mesa devel 25.1 to the "official" 25 package when it comes out soon.

Things are good and my son is super happy with "his" "new" 7900GRE

ps) my take: RDNA4 is supported on Linux on launch day but most repos are not prepared to support it on launch day. Hence the poor user experience on Linux.

It seems there's no way to update Mesa on Bazzite besides waiting for the official channel to pick up.

I'm not against using Arch at all. It's only that the installer I've got has no GUI, so I can't use it. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm not that much of a Linux pro.

I'm gonna try Nobara on an external SSD next. It's got a driver manager, hopefully it picks up the latest Mesa. Fingers crossed.

 

[davidhhh]

Ok, so I'll relate my experience, if it helps dispel some myths and rumors. Just to be clear, I'm only talking about the 9070 XT models, since I wasn't paying any attention to the non XT ones. I decided fairly last minute that I wanted to upgrade from my 7900 GRE, after watching the reviews. My initial justification was that I could get $380 back for Newegg by trading the GRE in. (Yeah, I know I could sell it for more than that, but honestly, I know I never will!) So, $220 plus tax to upgrade to a card that I could actually use in 4k, why not? Especially, since the reviews were showing it as a 40-ish% upgrade. And pretty much all the reviewers were saying that this would be the last chance to get these cards at MSRP, with the prices going up AND the tariffs going into effect. So, it's now or never.

I found a Youtube video by "PC Builder" titled "Don't Buy Wrong", which discussed the different models, and more importantly, had a link to a spreadsheet he created with all the details of all the different models, including some details that weren't yet public. (He contacted the manufacturers directly, with media inquiries, and managed to get some answers.) I had kind of narrowed it down to the Sapphire or Gigabyte models, because they had 2 HDMI ports. I currently watch media from my PC to my TV and surround, both of which use HDMI (and neither of which has ERC or eARC, and I haven't had great luck with DP>HDMI converters.)

So, I waited until go time, refreshing madly on Newegg (and Amazon, too.) I already had the trade-in set up in my cart, and made sure all my account and payment info was current. Newegg was actually slow at getting them online by a few minutes, and models were flying out of stock. I was looking through the models, and was trying for the Gigabyte Gaming OC, but it sold out. Then I had the Sapphire Pulse in my cart. But I took a minute to think about it, which was enough time for it to sell out! Damn.

At that point, I realized what was a sellout this was going to be. And immediately got dressed and called an Uber to Microcenter. In the Uber, I was studying the spreadsheet, and had picked my first, second, third and fourth choices. (Gigabyte Gaming OC, Sapphire Pulse or Pure, or Asus Prime OC.) I managed to get there by around 9:30, which is half an hour before they usually open, but a half hour after they actually started selling them. And the line was around the block. I kept turning corners to find absurd numbers of more and more people waiting. I'd guess it was somewhere between 300-400 people. If I'd known it would be that bad, I probably wouldn't have bothered, since I was still up from the previous night! But, since I'd Ubered there and invested $20 already, I was committed. So, I unhappily got in the very, very long, slow moving line.

Well, we had over 3 hours to talk about everything, because MicroCenter was remarkably slow at selling these! So, if you saw many of them still available online an hour or two after they opened, that doesn't actually mean that you could have gotten them, since there were hundreds of people ahead of you waiting for that quickly depleting stock!

A few things that struck me from talking to others:
1) the primary motivating factor for most people was that they'd heard that prices were going up, either from manufacturers and stores raising them, or more commonly Trump's tariffs.
2) Nvidia was pretty universally hailed as the bad guys, for their lack of stock, their overprices, and all the other mishaps they'd had.
3) but the most striking thing of all to me was that almost no one had any idea which card they wanted, besides a vague idea that they MIGHT want one of the MSRP models. A few people wanted a white one to match their build or some other specific interest, but even then, they didn't really care to investigate the specifics. And while maybe a little under half of the people I talked to were hoping to get one of the MSRP models, the majority didn't care. The general assumption was that those us of that far back in the line weren't going to get one of them. Remember, we had THREE HOURS in line, with nothing to do, but talk to each other. And they had their phones in their hands, checking the stock of the different cards. And I pointed out the spreadsheet to many of them. But almost no one was looking at the actual details of the differences between the cards. They would just be happy to get any of them, even if it was $150-200 more than MSRP. It was so weird to me. I had enough trouble convincing myself to blow $600, but to spend $150-200 more on cards with the same specs seemed just crazy. I just can't comprehend spending $600-700 without doing at least SOME research! One important thing to note is that most of the cards that went out of stock on the website while we were waiting were the more expensive models. Only one of the $600 cards sold out before I got in the store, 3 hours later.

Now, for those who are believing conspiracies that AMD deliberately limited availability of MSRP cards, I'd say that Micro Center proves them wrong. They had at least 7-9 models at $600. The funny thing is that at least two of them (the Gigabyte and Asus OC models) were selling for $730 at both Amazon and Newegg, as well as in Europe. It's pretty obvious that AMD paid MicroCenter incentives to keep prices low for launch. (And now, the reports that some stores have gotten more stock and haven't yet raised prices just backs that up.) If they only had a few of the MSRP models, I can say that in this store at least, that many of the more expensive models sold out first. And they had lots of $600 cards for at least 3.5 hours after opening. Funny side note: ALL day, the website had a banner saying that the 9070 and 9070 XT were in stock and widely available! I wonder how long it took someone to notice that was still up?

The one thing that baffled me most while waiting was why it was taking so long to move the line. I know that there were a lot of people, but it just wasn't moving very quickly at all. Like how long could it take to ask for one product, pay for it, and leave? Once we got to the front of the store, where the entrance and exits are, it became even more baffling, because maybe 2-3 people would leave every 5-8 minutes. We could see cashiers taking 5-8 minutes to ring up ONE person. Part of it was that the customer had a sheet of paper, and they had to go get the card, but why didn't they have a runner for that? (later, a manager finally stepped up to do that!)

But once I FINALLY got in the store, it became clear why everything was taking so long. NO ONE KNEW WHAT CARD THEY WANTED! There was a table with sales slips for the various cards, and people were mulling around, confused and asking 100 questions!

A sales rep walked up to me, and I quickly blurted out that I want the Gigabyte $600 card. He took me over to one of the terminals, played with it for a minute, and I think it was frozen, because he walked away with a concerned look on his face, and left me there! I asked if they had any left, and he said, he'd go see. And there was nothing on the screen related to video cards at all. Eventually, he came back with the gigabyte card and a printout piece of paper, with the details about my card. (The sheet also said that that morning they had had 85 of the Gigabyte cards in stock!) After he tried to sell me the extended warrantee and anything else I wanted to buy, he took me over to the very long checkout line, and brought my card over near the exit, where you would normally pick up your web orders.

Only one of the five guys I'd been waiting with, all of whom entered the store in front of me, managed to get in the checkout line before me. But the others eventually made their way over, with sales sheets in their hands. In the end, 3 of the 5 ended up getting $700-750 boards. And none of them even seemed to know why they were paying $100-150 more when there WERE still $600 boards left! One of them who'd been discussing it with me earlier ended up getting the Gigabyte card, since we'd discussed how it was one of only two overclocked models at MSRP. Another had tried, but was told it was sold out. So, either I got one of the last two, or they screwed up! And he ended up getting a less powerful $750 card instead, but couldn't really say why. SO weird.

Meanwhile, we waited another 30-45 minutes in the checkout line, even though there were 6 registers open and maybe 25 people in the line. WTF? The line started moving a bit more quickly when the manager started taking people's slips and going to get the cards. He took our slips, and I went to the register, and gave the cashier my phone number, and he pulled up my account, which I verified. Then we both stood there doing nothing and making small talk while waiting 5-8 minutes for the manager to come back with the card that they could have just given me before I got in the line! And before this, the cashiers had all been going for the cards themselves! Eventually, I paid. I went over to customer service to get a quote for trading in my old cards, and FINALLY left 3.5 hours later, but with the Gigabyte card in my hands! Given that it the card sells for $730 and will likely go even higher, and I got it for $600 MSRP for the line, but not the actual board, I feel accomplished! but that wasn't the end of my mishaps!

When I left, the line was still around the block, with at least 100-140 people still outside waiting to get in! I did some shopping at the Trader Joe's next door, and then put on my headphones and headed to the bus home. After I got on the bus, I realized I'd left the headphones charging case in my shopping cart! So, I had to go back. (Amazingly, I did find the case where I'd left it!) At this point, it was over an hour after I'd left the store, and there were STILL 50-75 people waiting to get in! Apparently, they hadn't fully sold out. I didn't go back to see what was left, though i did occasionally peek at the stock online, out of curiosity. Their site listed a few random cards of different models still available, but one of the cards was the Gigabyte card (two of them!) they'd told one guy was sold out. So, I think that some cards got lost/misfiled in their system. By the next day, they reported everything sold out.

 

[Caring1]

Ok, so I'll relate my experience,

tldr?
I'm not reading a novel.

 

[wheresmycar]

Ok, so I'll relate my experience, if it helps dispel some myths and rumors. Just to be clear, I'm only talking about the 9070 XT models, since I wasn't paying any attention to the non XT ones. I decided fairly last minute that I wanted to upgrade from my 7900 GRE, after watching the reviews. My initial justification was that I could get $380 back for Newegg by trading the GRE in. (Yeah, I know I could sell it for more than that, but honestly, I know I never will!) So, $220 plus tax to upgrade to a card that I could actually use in 4k, why not? Especially, since the reviews were showing it as a 40-ish% upgrade. And pretty much all the reviewers were saying that this would be the last chance to get these cards at MSRP, with the prices going up AND the tariffs going into effect. So, it's now or never.

I found a Youtube video by "PC Builder" titled "Don't Buy Wrong", which discussed the different models, and more importantly, had a link to a spreadsheet he created with all the details of all the different models, including some details that weren't yet public. (He contacted the manufacturers directly, with media inquiries, and managed to get some answers.) I had kind of narrowed it down to the Sapphire or Gigabyte models, because they had 2 HDMI ports. I currently watch media from my PC to my TV and surround, both of which use HDMI (and neither of which has ERC or eARC, and I haven't had great luck with DP>HDMI converters.)

So, I waited until go time, refreshing madly on Newegg (and Amazon, too.) I already had the trade-in set up in my cart, and made sure all my account and payment info was current. Newegg was actually slow at getting them online by a few minutes, and models were flying out of stock. I was looking through the models, and was trying for the Gigabyte Gaming OC, but it sold out. Then I had the Sapphire Pulse in my cart. But I took a minute to think about it, which was enough time for it to sell out! Damn.

At that point, I realized what was a sellout this was going to be. And immediately got dressed and called an Uber to Microcenter. In the Uber, I was studying the spreadsheet, and had picked my first, second, third and fourth choices. (Gigabyte Gaming OC, Sapphire Pulse or Pure, or Asus Prime OC.) I managed to get there by around 9:30, which is half an hour before they usually open, but a half hour after they actually started selling them. And the line was around the block. I kept turning corners to find absurd numbers of more and more people waiting. I'd guess it was somewhere between 300-400 people. If I'd known it would be that bad, I probably wouldn't have bothered, since I was still up from the previous night! But, since I'd Ubered there and invested $20 already, I was committed. So, I unhappily got in the very, very long, slow moving line.

Well, we had over 3 hours to talk about everything, because MicroCenter was remarkably slow at selling these! So, if you saw many of them still available online an hour or two after they opened, that doesn't actually mean that you could have gotten them, since there were hundreds of people ahead of you waiting for that quickly depleting stock!

A few things that struck me from talking to others:
1) the primary motivating factor for most people was that they'd heard that prices were going up, either from manufacturers and stores raising them, or more commonly Trump's tariffs.
2) Nvidia was pretty universally hailed as the bad guys, for their lack of stock, their overprices, and all the other mishaps they'd had.
3) but the most striking thing of all to me was that almost no one had any idea which card they wanted, besides a vague idea that they MIGHT want one of the MSRP models. A few people wanted a white one to match their build or some other specific interest, but even then, they didn't really care to investigate the specifics. And while maybe a little under half of the people I talked to were hoping to get one of the MSRP models, the majority didn't care. The general assumption was that those us of that far back in the line weren't going to get one of them. Remember, we had THREE HOURS in line, with nothing to do, but talk to each other. And they had their phones in their hands, checking the stock of the different cards. And I pointed out the spreadsheet to many of them. But almost no one was looking at the actual details of the differences between the cards. They would just be happy to get any of them, even if it was $150-200 more than MSRP. It was so weird to me. I had enough trouble convincing myself to blow $600, but to spend $150-200 more on cards with the same specs seemed just crazy. I just can't comprehend spending $600-700 without doing at least SOME research! One important thing to note is that most of the cards that went out of stock on the website while we were waiting were the more expensive models. Only one of the $600 cards sold out before I got in the store, 3 hours later.

Now, for those who are believing conspiracies that AMD deliberately limited availability of MSRP cards, I'd say that Micro Center proves them wrong. They had at least 7-9 models at $600. The funny thing is that at least two of them (the Gigabyte and Asus OC models) were selling for $730 at both Amazon and Newegg, as well as in Europe. It's pretty obvious that AMD paid MicroCenter incentives to keep prices low for launch. (And now, the reports that some stores have gotten more stock and haven't yet raised prices just backs that up.) If they only had a few of the MSRP models, I can say that in this store at least, that many of the more expensive models sold out first. And they had lots of $600 cards for at least 3.5 hours after opening. Funny side note: ALL day, the website had a banner saying that the 9070 and 9070 XT were in stock and widely available! I wonder how long it took someone to notice that was still up?

The one thing that baffled me most while waiting was why it was taking so long to move the line. I know that there were a lot of people, but it just wasn't moving very quickly at all. Like how long could it take to ask for one product, pay for it, and leave? Once we got to the front of the store, where the entrance and exits are, it became even more baffling, because maybe 2-3 people would leave every 5-8 minutes. We could see cashiers taking 5-8 minutes to ring up ONE person. Part of it was that the customer had a sheet of paper, and they had to go get the card, but why didn't they have a runner for that? (later, a manager finally stepped up to do that!)

But once I FINALLY got in the store, it became clear why everything was taking so long. NO ONE KNEW WHAT CARD THEY WANTED! There was a table with sales slips for the various cards, and people were mulling around, confused and asking 100 questions!

A sales rep walked up to me, and I quickly blurted out that I want the Gigabyte $600 card. He took me over to one of the terminals, played with it for a minute, and I think it was frozen, because he walked away with a concerned look on his face, and left me there! I asked if they had any left, and he said, he'd go see. And there was nothing on the screen related to video cards at all. Eventually, he came back with the gigabyte card and a printout piece of paper, with the details about my card. (The sheet also said that that morning they had had 85 of the Gigabyte cards in stock!) After he tried to sell me the extended warrantee and anything else I wanted to buy, he took me over to the very long checkout line, and brought my card over near the exit, where you would normally pick up your web orders.

Only one of the five guys I'd been waiting with, all of whom entered the store in front of me, managed to get in the checkout line before me. But the others eventually made their way over, with sales sheets in their hands. In the end, 3 of the 5 ended up getting $700-750 boards. And none of them even seemed to know why they were paying $100-150 more when there WERE still $600 boards left! One of them who'd been discussing it with me earlier ended up getting the Gigabyte card, since we'd discussed how it was one of only two overclocked models at MSRP. Another had tried, but was told it was sold out. So, either I got one of the last two, or they screwed up! And he ended up getting a less powerful $750 card instead, but couldn't really say why. SO weird.

Meanwhile, we waited another 30-45 minutes in the checkout line, even though there were 6 registers open and maybe 25 people in the line. WTF? The line started moving a bit more quickly when the manager started taking people's slips and going to get the cards. He took our slips, and I went to the register, and gave the cashier my phone number, and he pulled up my account, which I verified. Then we both stood there doing nothing and making small talk while waiting 5-8 minutes for the manager to come back with the card that they could have just given me before I got in the line! And before this, the cashiers had all been going for the cards themselves! Eventually, I paid. I went over to customer service to get a quote for trading in my old cards, and FINALLY left 3.5 hours later, but with the Gigabyte card in my hands! Given that it the card sells for $730 and will likely go even higher, and I got it for $600 MSRP for the line, but not the actual board, I feel accomplished! but that wasn't the end of my mishaps!

When I left, the line was still around the block, with at least 100-140 people still outside waiting to get in! I did some shopping at the Trader Joe's next door, and then put on my headphones and headed to the bus home. After I got on the bus, I realized I'd left the headphones charging case in my shopping cart! So, I had to go back. (Amazingly, I did find the case where I'd left it!) At this point, it was over an hour after I'd left the store, and there were STILL 50-75 people waiting to get in! Apparently, they hadn't fully sold out. I didn't go back to see what was left, though i did occasionally peek at the stock online, out of curiosity. Their site listed a few random cards of different models still available, but one of the cards was the Gigabyte card (two of them!) they'd told one guy was sold out. So, I think that some cards got lost/misfiled in their system. By the next day, they reported everything sold out.

Mate, i just read the first line:

"Ok, so I'll relate my experience"

and the last one:

"By the next day, they reported everything sold out."

In short would I be correct to assume you arrived on day two expecting stock, only to leave empty handed with nothing but a great story?

 

[Delta6326]

tldr?
I'm not reading a novel.

"I upgraded my GPU to the 9070 XT series after watching reviews and seeing a $380 trade-in offer for my old card. I aimed for an MSRP model (Sapphire Pulse, Gigabyte Gaming OC), but things sold out quickly online. I rushed to MicroCenter, waited in a massive line for 3 hours, and observed that most people didn’t know what card they wanted, with many willing to overpay by $150-200 for the same specs. I eventually got the $600 Gigabyte card, despite others ending up with more expensive models. The store was slow, with confused customers and disorganized checkout. The line remained long even after I left. It was chaotic, but I managed to secure a card under MSRP, which felt like an accomplishment!"

 

[Chrisy]

It seems there's no way to update Mesa on Bazzite besides waiting for the official channel to pick up.

I'm not against using Arch at all. It's only that the installer I've got has no GUI, so I can't use it. I'm not ashamed to admit that I'm not that much of a Linux pro.

I'm gonna try Nobara on an external SSD next. It's got a driver manager, hopefully it picks up the latest Mesa. Fingers crossed.

This is why 'archinstaller' script was created (text based so not a gui but a UI at least) that basically does the same as a bazzite gui installer script.
Looks and feels similar to me ;-)

But I hear 'ya and I agree hopefully it won't be a long wait

Yesterday I did some testing (gaming actually) and a saw a constant ~3200Mhz core clock (w/o any OC on my end) with some 300+ power draw in a UE5 based game.
Not sure if silicon lotto or these chips are this good and I am not complaining for $599

The one thing that baffled me most while waiting was why it was taking so long to move the line. I know that there were a lot of people, but it just wasn't moving very quickly at all. Like how long could it take to ask for one product, pay for it, and leave? Once we got to the front of the store, where the entrance and exits are, it became even more baffling, because maybe 2-3 people would leave every 5-8 minutes. We could see cashiers taking 5-8 minutes to ring up ONE person. Part of it was that the customer had a sheet of paper, and they had to go get the card, but why didn't they have a runner for that? (later, a manager finally stepped up to do that!)

This is my gripe with MC. They do this because they want to make sure that each of them get their commission for each sold card.
It would have been so much faster to put the cards in a pile and print out the paper for each of them beforehand and hand that out to the people waiting in line.

Actually that is how it was when the first time happened we must had to be lined up before opening on a launch day. I recall staff was waling along the line outside and asking and discussing what card people need then handed over the printed paper for that card with their commission sticker on it. So when I got inside I essentially was only lining up for the cashier.
It was faster and smoother.

But I assume there were people cheating/misusing this system so we slowly ended up with what we have now. Which is the worst. But this is life

 

[AusWolf]

This is why 'archinstaller' script was created (text based so not a gui but a UI at least) that basically does the same as a bazzite gui installer script.
Looks and feels similar to me ;-)

But I hear 'ya and I agree hopefully it won't be a long wait

Yesterday I did some testing (gaming actually) and a saw a constant ~3200Mhz core clock (w/o any OC on my end) with some 300+ power draw in a UE5 based game.
Not sure if silicon lotto or these chips are this good and I am not complaining for $599

That sounds good.

I've managed to do some testing on Nobara myself. It has some Mesa 25.1 beta which still doesn't recognise the card, but lets my games run.

So...
Space Marine 2 (on the battle barge): 3440x1440, Ultra graphics, no FSR: around 80 FPS.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (in a forest): 3440x1440, Experimental graphics, no FSR: around 45-50 FPS.
Hellblade 2 (in the opening scene): 3440x1440, High graphics, no FSR: around 45-50 FPS.

Not bad, but I'm expecting lots of improvement with the final Mesa version later that supports this card.

 

[BoggledBeagle]

When you install a native 12pin cable, you can run it in the channel at the edge of the card and get rid of the foam/rubber air restrictor!

Do not forget to protect the cable against the sharp edges.

 

[Chrisy]

That sounds good.

I've managed to do some testing on Nobara myself. It has some Mesa 25.1 beta which still doesn't recognise the card, but lets my games run.

So...
Space Marine 2 (on the battle barge): 3440x1440, Ultra graphics, no FSR: around 80 FPS.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 (in a forest): 3440x1440, Experimental graphics, no FSR: around 45-50 FPS.
Hellblade 2 (in the opening scene): 3440x1440, High graphics, no FSR: around 45-50 FPS.

Not bad, but I'm expecting lots of improvement with the final Mesa version later that supports this card.

Excellent news, congratulation!

 

[N/A]

Is this a PCIe 5.0 requirement or just to save gold on 50 series too. recessed pads and linked grounds.

 

[Melvis]

Won't it just be cheaper to import it yourself?

Yeah it could be! but its rare these days to be cheaper as the Government now puts a plus 10% tax ontop of anything you buy from overseas......it should be priced here at around $950 when you covert it.

 

[fb020997]

I have a water cooled 7900XT with PTM and the temperature delta is still about 20C sometimes, all GPUs since RDNA2 have similar deltas.

Same watercooled GPU, but I have a Kryosheet on it. 15-20°C delta between core and hotspot, depending on the load.

 

[LittleBro]

In CZ/SK market, least expensive RTX 5070 Ti goes for ~ 1100 € incl. 20% VAT, while least expensive RX 9070 XT (Sapphire Pulse) goes for 775 € incl. 20% VAT.

 

[medi01]

About that Taiwanese elephant in the room.

The TSMC.

YoY increase of 43%.
Sales may have dipped slightly for feb, but marks a year-on-year increase of ~43%, an annual growth rate of ~34%.

Chipmaker TSMC’s sales quicken in first 2 months of 2025 in upbeat note for AI

The world’s largest contract chip manufacturer reported combined revenue for the first two months of US$16.8 billion.

www.scmp.com

And that on top of the last year, which was also, cough, record. As the one before that year. And the one before that one. And...

 

[AusWolf]

About that Taiwanese elephant in the room.

The TSMC.

YoY increase of 43%.
Sales may have dipped slightly for feb, but marks a year-on-year increase of ~43%, an annual growth rate of ~34%.

Chipmaker TSMC’s sales quicken in first 2 months of 2025 in upbeat note for AI

The world’s largest contract chip manufacturer reported combined revenue for the first two months of US$16.8 billion.

www.scmp.com

And that on top of the last year, which was also, cough, record. As the one before that year. And the one before that one. And...

And here we are, bitching about Nvidia and AMD on pricing and availability as if we knew nothing about how graphics cards are made. Tsk-tsk...

 

[leonavis]

This is why 'archinstaller' script was created (text based so not a gui but a UI at least) that basically does the same as a bazzite gui installer script.
Looks and feels similar to me ;-)

My xp with arch: if you can't install using the installation guide, maybe don't use Vanilla arch at all. There are plenty easier forks, Garuda, EndeavourOS, Cachy, Manjaro. Maybe a better place to learn.

 

[AusWolf]

Garuda, EndeavourOS, Cachy, Manjaro.

Does any of them come with Mesa 25 in its current version?

 

[tpa-pr]

Does any of them come with Mesa 25 in its current version?

Unlikely not because they're all based off Arch repos in some way, so what Arch has they have. And Arch currently has the below:

Mesa 25 IS in testing though so it won't be far away! I would recommend against Manjaro myself, they've made some questionable decisions in that past that cost them my trust. Something like Endeavor might be the ticket since I believe it is a glorified Arch installer, so it's not far from the vanilla base.

EDIT: @AusWolf I just had my friend running Fedora 41 check his package versions, it looks like Fedora has Mesa 25 already! So you might have luck with an updated Fedora install?

 

[AusWolf]

Unlikely not because they're all based off Arch repos in some way, so what Arch has they have. And Arch currently has the below:
View attachment 388825

Mesa 25 IS in testing though so it won't be far away! I would recommend against Manjaro myself, they've made some questionable decisions in that past that cost them my trust. Something like Endeavor might be the ticket since I believe it is a glorified Arch installer, so it's not far from the vanilla base.

EDIT: @AusWolf I just had my friend running Fedora 41 check his package versions, it looks like Fedora has Mesa 25 already! So you might have luck with an updated Fedora install?

What's wrong with Manjaro? I've used it before and can't say it wasn't fine.

If there's no Mesa 25 anywhere, then there's no point going the Arch way. Although it would be nice - the fact that SteamOS is based off Arch as well is good news for compatibility, I suppose.

 

[Chrisy]

What's wrong with Manjaro? I've used it before and can't say it wasn't fine.

If there's no Mesa 25 anywhere, then there's no point going the Arch way. Although it would be nice - the fact that SteamOS is based off Arch as well is good news for compatibility, I suppose.

There is a mesa devel 25.1 AUR you can use on Arch (mesa-git) this is what I am using now. As @tpa-pr correctly said mesa 25 is already in testing for the standard package so it is close:

Anyhow @AusWolf I would recommend check out the 'archinstall' script and if it is not to your liking you can still use an other Arch based repo (that is not Manjaro), @leonavis is correct about using a user friendly arch fork
There is absolutely no need to push Vanilla. I personally like simple and practical things hence my choice going vanilla.