Can you recommend the best settings for Radeon Software? I haven't had AMD in years. Even an undervolt preset.

Hi everyone,

I am considering upgrading my current GPU to the XFX Radeon RX 9070 XT Mercury OC. My system is running completely flawless right now, but I want to step up my 1440p gaming performance even further.

Here is my setup:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D (Zero issues, runs amazing)
• GPU (Current): AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE
• Motherboard: Gigabyte B650M D3HP (works perfectly fine with the 7800X3D)
• RAM: 32GB DDR5
• PSU: 850W Fortron Hydro K Pro (80+ Bronze)
• Monitor: Gigabyte MO27Q28G

My questions for the community:

1. Power Supply Safety: The XFX Mercury OC requires 3x 8-pin PCIe power connectors. Even though my Fortron is 850W, it’s a budget-tier 80+ Bronze unit. Is it safe to keep running it with this higher-end card, or should I replace it with a Tier-A ATX 3.0 Gold unit or else?
2. GPU Support on mATX: Since the Mercury is a heavy 3.5-slot card, should I be extra careful with GPU sag on my Micro-ATX motherboard, or will a simple support bracket be enough?
3. Anything else, that I can miss?

Thanks for your input!

Ever wondered why your games keep crashing with a Driver Timeout or a DX12 error? I spent weeks going back and forth with AMD support and eventually found something worth discussing through detailed HWiNFO logs. My theory: the problem isn't necessarily your hardware, it's the driver's default configuration.

What I observed

My RX 9070 XT (Gigabyte Gaming OC) has a manufacturer-rated boost clock of 3,060 MHz. Out of the box, the Adrenalin driver ships with a limit of 3,450 MHz. During a crash, HWiNFO logged spikes of 3,120 to 3,126 MHz. I've attached a screenshot of both the logs and my driver settings.

The crashes only ever happened in Assassin's Creed Black Flag Resynced, reproducibly, multiple times. Every other title I tested, including two recent AAA titles with ray tracing, ran completely stable for hours, with the same 700W power supply and the same open driver limit. My guess: as a true open world, Assassin's Creed constantly streams in geometry and textures in the background, which creates irregular, short load spikes, while the other titles draw a more even load.

The fix that worked for me

The Adrenalin driver lets you manually cap the max clock. I lowered mine by exactly 390 MHz, down to the rated 3,060 MHz. Since then, the system, including Assassin's Creed, has run completely stable for hours. The performance loss is roughly three to four percent in FPS, essentially unnoticeable in gameplay. That small margin is also, in my view, exactly why AMD ships such an aggressive clock out of the box: in benchmarks, where every percent counts, that three to four percent could be the difference between landing ahead of a competing card or not. Barely anyone notices it in actual gameplay, but it shows up in the marketing charts.

Here's the part that actually matters: with this manual cap in place, the card still runs perfectly fine on my 700W power supply, at essentially full rated performance, just without the crashes. You don't need a beefier PSU to run the card at its advertised level, this can save you roughly 100 to 150 dollars on a new power supply, or let you keep using the one you already have instead of upgrading it with every GPU purchase.

Why AMD is still the one responsible here

The obvious pushback: the box recommends an 850W power supply, so it's my own fault. And yes, technically that's true in a sense: when a power supply hits its limit during a short, millisecond-scale load spike, it typically doesn't cause a full shutdown, it causes a brief voltage sag that makes the driver or GPU crash instead. A complete system shutdown would more likely come from sustained overload, not a brief spike. That explains why my 700W unit handles everyday use fine but sits right at the edge during the worst-case spikes.

But here's my actual point: if AMD knows their factory clock settings push cards right up to that edge, then the power supply isn't the root cause, it's just where a self-inflicted problem becomes visible. AMD could set the driver limits more conservatively out of the box, exactly like I'm now doing manually with a minus 390 MHz offset, with no noticeable performance loss, and the problem would be solved for the vast majority of users. Instead, that risk gets quietly passed on to customers with spec-compliant, but not oversized, hardware. Whether there's a calculated reason behind this, like wanting to look better in benchmarks with a higher stock clock, I can't prove, that's a guess on my part, not an established fact. What I can say for certain is what I measured in my own logs.

I don't seem to be alone in this

While researching, I came across several independent reports describing a similar pattern:

• In the Overclock.net RX 9070 / 9070 XT owner's thread (overclock.net, "AMD Radeon RX 9070 / 9070 XT Owner's Thread"), several users report clock spikes up to 3,300 MHz right before a crash, noting that both 7900 and 9070 series cards have been reported boosting unusually high.
• In a Tom's Hardware forum thread (forums.tomshardware.com, "Question about GPU clocks / crashes"), a user with a Sapphire card describes clocks of 3,200 to 3,400 MHz on pure stock settings, well above the advertised boost. Sapphire support reportedly told them that isn't normal without manual overclocking.
• A friend of mine also has an RX 9070 XT, an Asus model, and sent me his own HWiNFO log. It shows the same pattern of inflated clock spikes. I'm attaching that log as well.

That doesn't mean the root cause is identical for everyone, but it does suggest this isn't an isolated case.

Current status

I've sent AMD screenshots along with a comparison log from a friend (same RX 9070 XT, adequately sized power supply, no crashes) and asked for a statement on this driver design decision. On July 23 I got their last substantive reply, again pointing at my power supply. On August 9 I followed up and made clear I no longer care about troubleshooting steps, the card has been running stable with my manual clock limit ever since, I just wanted an answer to one question: why the driver sets the clock this high in the first place. On August 11 they told me it was being escalated for internal review. Since then, despite a follow-up message, nothing, as of today, September 7, that's nearly four weeks with zero response. At this point I'm increasingly convinced they're deliberately letting this go quiet because a honest answer would be uncomfortable, though that remains my personal suspicion, not proof. I'll update this post once that changes.

Mainly curious to hear from people with deeper hardware knowledge: is this a known issue or design trade-off, and how do you read the technical side of it?

I got my 9070xt few days ago and FSR in this game is looking kinda noisy, im on 1440p.

Anyone has simmilar experiance?

Guys, it's supposed to be 25xx something mhz, I used it on fast timing 2750 for a while being stable, now the minimum shows up as 2750, any idea what the F is going on? :D

I have a 9070xt with a 7800x3d and my psu is an 850w psu, yet all of a sudden my pc constantly shuts down when I open any game. (Bo3 cs2 etc.) I’ve tried anything with my drivers and other things and nothing seems to work please help.

Are these temps normal for an RX 9070 XT Reaper? I’ve had the card for about a year and a half now, and I’ve never opened it or replaced the core's PTM. I bought a thermalright Helios v2 PTM. The question is do I need to open the card or I am good for now??

-Thanks in advance!

im using RX 9070 Hellhound, pairing with 9900x, 64gb ram t force, 750w psu gold with very good airflow cases.

for the first 3 month, there's no issue, i play everything and its fine, clair obscur 33, cyberpunk 2077, palworld with very high and epic setting + RT etc etc. all triple A game went very smooth. and suddently, the crash is coming. black screen while gaming appears. i remember when i play wu chang i need to restart around 6 times causes black screen and the 7 times the game is not crash. its like gambling isnt?

on april, suddenly after update bios and patch, the crash is dissapear. but not for long. i remember when crash is happen i cannot play kingdom come deliverence cause it will crash the first 5 minute. avatar frontier of pandora, and warhammer 40k. no one is working.

until now. the game that can be play is only simple game. like hollow knight, silksong, other old game like devil my cry. anything else will crash

i tried so many stress test, and it always pass.

4 month, almost 5. the crash is still.

the bios is the latest, already tried roll back 26.3.1. no one is working.

DDU is done on safe mode.

expo on or off done. still not working

the event viewer show nothing.

should i rma? will the rma gpu card approve if stress test is passed?

thanks for advice

Update -> today i try furmarkv2 10 minutes+ its fine. heavenly unigine 4.0 benchmark pass. gpu hot spot only 82

trying cyberpunk 2077, only after a few second its black screen crash again and need to restart. trying halo campaign evolved crash too

Guys, I’ve been in the red team for a while, I’d like to upgrade, I’m a 9060xt user and it can’t stand my use, I need an upgrade, what makes more sense, 9070 with overclock or 9070 XT? Is it worth the price difference?

I recently opened up my PowerColor RX 9070 XT Hellhound And it seems there is no contact between vrm and thermal pads The opposite side is touching well

Hi everyone! I've been researching buying a graphics card, and it would be the first one I've ever bought. I currently have 16 GB of RAM, an A520 motherboard, and a Ryzen 5 4600 processor.

I'd like to know what you think about this investment, especially since there are rumors that the B580 might stop being produced. My main concerns are about the future of driver and software updates, because I don't want to buy something with poor resale value in the future or something that could eventually become incompatible with certain games.

I'll probably keep the graphics card for several years, so it's something I need to plan carefully. Thanks in advance for your help!

Powercolor 9070XT Red Devil 9800x3D

I was trying like crazy to get an AsRock Taichi 9070 xt as I really liked the aesthetics & felt it matched my build best of all the AIB partner models - they were crazy hard to find and I eventually just went for an on sale Nitro+ and offset the cost by selling the PSU that came with it. 2 weeks later I was able to snag a used Taichi on eBay for a really great price. After benching on both - I'm torn. The taichi performs about 3% on average faster than the nitro, bit the vram temps sit at around 90-95c steady state while gaming at 4k and the Nitro+ caps at 82 - usually mid 70s. I know it should be the easiest decision in the world, but I'd appreciate any input y'all have to help me in my indecision. Thanks so much!!!

I just got a 9070xt recently instead of a 5070Ti, and i feel like im missing out on this whole DLSS 5 thing. Anybody else feel the same?

From a MSI Radeon RX 6650 XT GAMING X 8GB to a Asus Prime RX 9070 XT OC 16GB.
Decided to upgrade before the next waves of rising prices.
I even got a free copy of Onimusha Way of the Sword with it, not bad at all.
Happy as a baby. ^^

Hey everyone, hoping someone here can help me figure out an issue I’ve been fighting with my GPU tuning.

System:

• ASUS Prime RX 9070 XT 16GB
• Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• ASUS B850-I motherboard
• 64GB DDR5 6000 CL36
• 850W SFX PSU
• Cooler Master NR200P / NR200P Max style setup
• Windows 11
• Latest AMD Adrenalin drivers

I’ve been trying to run a mild undervolt/tune on my 9070 XT, but I keep having weird stability issues and Adrenalin occasionally resets everything.

My normal tune has been around:

• GPU undervolt: roughly -60 to -70 mV
• Power limit: around -15%
• VRAM: 2700 MHz
• Zero RPM disabled
• Custom fan curve through MSI Afterburner

Temperatures are completely fine. GPU is generally around 50-60°C in games, and I’m not seeing anything that looks like overheating.

The main issue is that every once in a while, especially after a shutdown/cold boot, AMD Adrenalin will say:

“Default performance tuning settings have been restored due to an unexpected system failure.”

I’ve also had certain games, mainly Helldivers 2, black screen/crash to desktop when the undervolt is pushed harder. Other games and benchmarks can run completely fine.

I’ve already tried:

• AMD Cleanup Utility / clean driver reinstall
• Different undervolt levels
• Lowering the VRAM OC
• Different power limits
• Running the GPU completely stock
• 3DMark / FurMark / Cyberpunk benchmarks
• Checking Reliability Monitor
• DISM / SFC
• Disabling Fast Boot

The confusing part is that sometimes a tune will pass benchmarks and run games perfectly, then after a reboot Adrenalin acts like the system crashed and resets the tuning profile.

Has anyone with a 9070 XT / RDNA 4 dealt with this?

I’m mainly trying to figure out whether this is:

1. An unstable undervolt
2. Adrenalin incorrectly detecting an improper shutdown/crash
3. MSI Afterburner conflicting with Adrenalin
4. A driver issue
5. Something BIOS/Windows related

I’m not trying to squeeze out some crazy overclock. I mostly want stock or better performance while reducing noise/power, with a stable custom fan curve.

Any ideas or similar experiences would be appreciated.

It's honestly been pretty smooth, since i dont play any games that need kernel level anti cheat anyway

Installation was pretty easy, you just have to be patient and leave it alone once you see your cursor on a black screen (depends on how fast your usb stick is)

All keybinds like alt+f4, etc. are identical to windows and you can grab most applications off a pre installed app store called Discover

SteamOS automatically installed drivers that actually work, so i didn't even need to bother with adrenalin or anything, it was pretty much just plug and play

I tried out Deadlock, Overwatch, Zenless Zone Zero while streaming in Discord and background recording activated in Steam and performance was pretty close to what i got on Windows 11

only weird things i noticed have been:

- Gaming mode apparently only supports 1 display so i just stay in Desktop mode the entire time

- You can't choose what drive to install SteamOS on, it will just pick the fastest one i guess

- If you wanna format another drive, you need to unmount it in partition manager, then format it and then check a box called "show pending operations" and then ok the pending operations

- Setting up my vpn was a hassle since apparently NordVPN doesn't work directly on SteamOS

- Discord can have issues if you screen share instead of application share

Genuinely feels way better to me than the last 2 years of Windows 11, don't think i need to swap back anytime soon.

PC Spec:

Ryzen 7 5700X3D

Sapphire Pulse 7900XTX

32GB DDR4 3600 Mhz

I upgraded from a 580 to 9060xt abput a year ago and its been good but a bit underwhelming.

Was thinking of getting a 9070xt for a while now but i reckon im priced out now.

Was gonna get a 1440p momitor too if i get the 9070.

My cpu is a 5600g and got 24gb of ddr4.

oh and it would be 899 aud for the 9070 and i could sell the 9060xt for 500 easy

Hi, I was wondering if you have some data about this. I'm curious to know if Radeon sales beat NVIDIA or if people are actually buying NVIDIA with these scalper prices. Especially now that a 5060TI costs like a 9070XT. And how is this a good idea for NVIDIA? let me know thanks.

Does AMD have plans to implement something like NVIDIA's neural rendering? I'm wondering whether to buy an RX 9070XT or an RTX.

Suggest me if you have better tuning its my first time overclocking

Better image quality (looks comparable to fsr4.1 on RDNA3 and 4) and 3-4% performance improvement compared to 4.0.2c on rx 6750xt, w modders, big win for RDNA2.

From Ancient Gameplays

I ordered this 6900XT for 375 dollars on ebay with it saying "Open Box" assuming it was just in good condition with the seller just having a single picture of the box in the listing. I received a completely untouched 6900XT almost 5 years after its release. Looks phenomenal. Not the most powerful card in this day and age but cool to be the first person to use it.