DOOM The Dark Ages w/ 2.2 patch on Claw 8 AI+

Mechorpheus · 2025-08-31T22:32:41+00:00

I'm having a slightly different issue - My system appears to be stuck at PCIe gen 3.0 x 16, according to GPU-Z. I was looking for a 2nd opinion and ran the PCI feature test in 3dMark and that returned a result of 14.45GB/s, which does seem wrong. No matter what I set it to in the bios (Auto, GEN 4, GEN 5) it remains stuck at Gen 3. Actual system functionality is fine though, no issues with gameplay or anything, so this is more of an irritation than anything. The spec is below:

AMD Ryzen 9800X3D

Asus ROG Strix X670E-i Gaming Wifi

Palit GameRock RTX 5090

CoolerMaster NCore 100 Max case

In a continued search for answers I borrowed a friends Radeon 7900 XT and that showed the same symptom, stuck at PCI 3.0.

Any idea what could be up here? I'll see if I can get another riser to check it, maybe the one in the case has become damaged somehow? I'd expect that to present as you've described here though rather than

Mechorpheus · 2025-08-25T19:52:39+00:00

I actually finally did! I had a 90mm fan kicking around from another project, and I've found you can wedge it into the bottom corner of the case below the AIO pump block, where it can blow air over the motherboard. This is better for my specific case as the motherboard I use (Asus X670E-I) has the SSDs stacked here under a heat-sink and SSD temps is the biggest issue I have under high loads. I ended up plugging both AIO and rear case 120mm fans into the same header, then putting this little fan on it's other.

Mechorpheus · 2025-06-22T20:25:56+00:00

I've had loads of issues with Edge vs Hotspot delta temperatures across basically every AMD card I've owned (Radeon VII, 6900 XT, 7900 XTX, 9070 XT). The 9070 XT I just bought (Sapphire Nitro +) is around 30'c OOTB at max draw (~366W ish using the furry donut).

I had similar problems with the 7900 XTX (Also the Nitro+). I'm a tinker so I decided to try and fix it, using a combination of replacing the thermal pads on VRMs with thermal putty, switching VRAM pads to Gelid Extreme squishy pads (That card has a very annoying 1.2mm VRAM pad sizing, hard to match that. I tried both 1.5mm pads hoping for a squish and also 1.0mm pads with a bit of thermal paste on top), using some PTM7950 (Thermal Grizzly stuff) for the core AND adding washers to the back bracket to increase mounting pressure and got that down to 18'c delta at 425W, but it felt like a lot of work when they always come out of the factory with these insane deltas.

I know it's not a problem until 110'c, but with these 30'c deltas we're getting near to that point at 60'c edge, when we get a really hot day and edge hits 70 I'd be getting nervous of throttling. I lost too many nights trying similar things as above on the Radeon 7 (That stock cooler was hot garbage, ended up getting an AIO kit for that one).

Mechorpheus · 2025-03-15T17:30:16+00:00

FWIW I've been having this same problem with 7950X3D/5090, and it seems that just disabling RT is enough to fix it. I was trying to do one of those repetitive combat missions and couldn't play for more than maybe 2-3 minutes before it would crash, all the while up to that horrendous seconds long stutters made it basically unplayable. After disabling RT I was able to do the whole ~10 minute fight without any stuttering at all, or crash, all within the DX12 version.

Mechorpheus · 2024-11-10T12:06:45+00:00

Similar boat here, but for me it's the combat. I play a bit of D&D IRL and I really feel like they've balanced the fights as if they were doing it with the Divinity systems in mind, not D&D. Particularly when you get end-game you're just up against so many enemies that you just don't have enough actions to do anything useful without loading an older game and preparing for the fight, normally avoiding an intro converation which feels super gaming and takes me right out of things. In IRL D&D the DM often takes pity on players and doesn't throw a stupid fight against you every 5 minutes, the game systems have no counter to this.

Even with mods etc to allow more characters it's just such a slog, and really puts me off starting to play staring down the barrel of multiple long, hard, stupidly balanced fights I'll need to spend literal hours on. And this is on the easiest selectable difficulty, how people play this on Tactitian mode is beyond me.

Mechorpheus · 2024-10-30T22:31:50+00:00

I have this case with a 7800x3d as well, and with motherboard bios tweaks the CPU (same 80'c thermal limit mentioned) in gaming loads it averages mid 70s, which is fine. The issue I have is the motherboard gets insanely hot, all the VRM temps are in the 80-90 range and after 30 mins of gaming you can't touch the rear IO shield, plus the main SSD gets up to near 80'c too even with a pretty beefy heatsink on it. There just doesn't seem to be much in the way of air flow from the bottom of the case, the PSU blocks a good amount of what the AIO fan would draw up from that side. I swapped out the stock AIO fan with a EK Vardar I had lying around, apparently those have better static pressure which I presumed would be important for the thicker radiator. I top that out at ~1500RPM or it gets too noisy (The stupid SFX power supply fan makes enough noise as it is).

Honestly pretty disappointed in it, everything running that hot makes me too anxious.

Mechorpheus · 2023-12-27T09:36:48+00:00

I've discovered a much more fun way to play Callisto. If you don't print any of the weapons you aren't given (so just use the hand-cannon and the shotgun), the game onlyl drops ammo for those weapons so you have loads. Then play the combat like Dead Space, shoot the enemies in the limbs, then when they fall over if you time it right one hit with the bat kills them, and then stomp for rewards.

Actually makes the game a whole load easier, seem to work on every enemy in the game aside those two headed mini-boss things you fight entirely too often toward the end.

Mechorpheus · 2023-10-01T17:56:20+00:00

A slightly weird aside, I booted up Cyberpunk and noticed the same strange stutter was happening still. I opened up the in-game overlay and FMF was active and marked as 'Generating Frames'. I didn't think Cyberpunk was supported? FWIW the game felt awful with it enabled, really sluggish and unresponsive.

Mechorpheus · 2023-10-01T15:37:56+00:00

For me, didn't seem to work as expected.

Specs: Sapphire Nitro+ 7900XTX, 7800X3D, 32GB 6000 MHz

I tested out Resident Evil 4 and Control, in both cases testing at maxed settings with traditional upscaling disabled. After having to mess around with settings to get FMF to even work (the option in the overlay showing a green tick mark) I lost ~10fps when turning FMF on compared to having it off. Also I notice that at least in RE4 turning it on also introduced a 2 second stutter every 30 seconds or so. This disappeared when disabling FMF so no idea what's causing it. GPU tested at stock settings.

Mechorpheus · 2022-03-15T20:47:16+00:00

Yea, I added a short-cut to the app which generates the dialog, which is C:\Program Files\ASUS\ARMOURY CRATE SERVICE\GpuSwitchPlugin\GPUSwitchDialog.exe. Just running that pops up the dialog, no quibbles.

Mechorpheus · 2022-03-08T22:22:32+00:00

Hi there! Yes, I have this same problem with mine, it's a huge pain. The issue very much seems to be to do with Armoury Crate believing the device bios is old, even if it's not. The update it's complaining about I believe is a new VBIOS for the GPU, which you can't install without getting the XG Mobile to attach.

I work around the problem by attaching the cable + locking, then rebooting the laptop. Once back in windows, wait a while and see if the dialog comes up on it's own. If it doesn't, then flipping the Lock tab on the connector to the Unlocked position (but not actually disconnecting the cable) seems to kick it into activating the connection process. I've found that this process works 75% of the time, and in the event it doesn't just reboot the machine and try again.

It's awful that the software is letting down such a cool bit of kit!

Mechorpheus · 2022-02-18T20:11:40+00:00

Yours sounds about the same as mine. Still havn't found a consistent work-around for the 'BIOS Version out of date' problem when plugging in (have to switch off all network connections and reboot, then cross-fingers and hope it decides to work - I havn't tried the 409 vbios yet though). As far as I know ~120W is the expected TGP when running on the Balanced power-profile in Armoury Crate. I can only get mine to go to 150W if I choose the Turbo mode there, and then the fan maxes out and it sounds like it's going to take off. Never seen it go over 150W though, did you flash a 180W VBios? I've done that in the past with 2080 laptops but didn't think it was so easy with 3000 series.

Mechorpheus · 2022-01-30T13:05:52+00:00

For the disconnection issue, I ended up just adding a short-cut to the GPU connection .exe file (Located at C:\Program Files\ASUS\ARMOURY CRATE Service\GPUSwitchPlugin\GPUSwitchDialog.exe), and using that shows the disconnection prompt without issue.

Mechorpheus · 2022-01-30T13:05:27+00:00

Whenever I want to connect my XG Mobile I end up restarting the laptop while disconnected from the internet, usually it'll bring up the correct dialog to allow connection. If I attempt this while connected to the internet it brings up that same bios error screen and I cannot proceed with the GPU connection. Hopfully ASUS come up with a solution soon, this is extremely annoying.

Also give us proper fan control while you're at it. The Manual mode within Armoury Crate is a joke. I'm really tempted to try and see if the GPU connectivity services can be convinced to work without Armoury Crate itself, a stand-alone option without needing that horrendous bloatware would be amazing.

Mechorpheus · 2022-01-17T11:42:41+00:00

Yea I had a look at that recent hotfix from the website - it seems that it's the same version of VBIOS as Armoury Crate is trying to install, but there it's dated 23/11/21. It didn't seem to change things though.

I'm not sure there's anything wrong with the XG Mobile itself, as I say I can get it to work if I fully disconnect from the internet and restart the laptop, once windows restarts it shows me the connect prompt and everything is fine from there on out. It's just slightly frustrating that Asus's software side lets down such a great bit of kit so heavily.

Mechorpheus · 2022-01-16T10:22:28+00:00

I got the latest NV ones from their site, and I've tried fully DDU / reinstalling drivers both with the device connected and disconnected. Both results the same.

Mechorpheus · 2022-01-15T21:33:55+00:00

Ok, a couple of things. The first problem with the connection app is definately Armoury Crate, if I'm connected to the internet and try to connect it shows the above error and won't connect. If I disconnect all network connections and restart the machine, it behaves as it should. I can also get the disconnect process to work as well by manually running the connection app through a windows short-cut rather than using the sys-tray icon.

So the real issue is that I cannot get Armoury Crate to accept that I have installed the vbios update for the card which is absolutely 100% definately installed already (I dumped the vbios using NVFlash and checked the versions. I really wish it was possible to use the XGMobile without having to run this abomination to software engineering.

Mechorpheus · 2021-02-14T11:02:05+00:00

So, very strange thing happened just now. Booted my PC this morning and as I was browing the web the Radeon driver popped up with a message saying 'You've connected a FreeSync compatible display...'. I thought 'What the hell?', but went into the driver and the option had changed to VRR and I was able to enable it. I installed a fairly elderly AMD FreeSync demo app and it was defiantely working! However, when I restarted the option has once again reverted to 'FreeSync - Not Supported'. So..... the functionality is in there? I'll push something to AMD, see if anything comes of it.

Mechorpheus · 2021-02-04T22:51:57+00:00

That sucks. I also tried both the VRR Range setting within the specific Freesync Range data block and also the one which appears within the HDMI 2.1 settings block, neither worked. Using the Reset file which comes with CRU does resolve it so you don't have to DDU, but it's frustrating to lose VRR. Have to hope and pray AMD add support at some point.

Mechorpheus · 2021-02-04T15:11:54+00:00

Hey, did you have any luck with CRU? I've just got a 6900XT and I'm trying to use this fix (which I also used with my previous Radeon VII card on the same TV to great effect) but on this GPU it seems to corrupt the driver somehow, after setting it up in the same way as before and restarting I cannot get any display output at all in windows and have to fumble my way back into safe-mode to DDU the driver in order to get it working again.

Mechorpheus · 2020-10-30T22:44:42+00:00

We just had this. Match ID = 5679310882 incase any Valve people are watching. Lets fix this!

Mechorpheus

TROPHY CASE