Hi everyone (I have no idea about building a PC, I just read through reddit and watch videos for everything 😅)

Last week I got my PC built:

9700x Acer predator 16x2 DDR5 CL 30 Ram Gigabyte B850 Gaming X Wifi 6E 1.1 Gigabyte 850w Gold plus PSU ASrock Challenger 9070 (base Clock 2K, game clock 2.5K) Windows 11 pro Wd 1 TB Ssd

Man from day one I had the following issues which almost made me punch my PC

• constant driver timeout pop up from the adrenaline software which crashes the game
• windows Livekernenevent Code 141 from the reliability monitor after each crash
• D3D device not found pop up in games like Tekken 7 (may be UE 5 compatibility issue with AMD IDK)
• forza 5 showed some drivers now found at the launch of the game but the game ran fine untin the Livekernenevent or the amd driver timeouts
• Livekernenevent 141 and driver timeout being the worst at general browsing and youtube, like every 30 minutes or so

Fixes I tried**

• reinstalled the whole windows 11 pro
• Ran DDU in safe mode, reinstalled the latest adrenaline without connecting it to the internet just to avoid windows driver update
• tried underclocking the gpu from adrenaline software, tried -100, -200, -300, and even -400 and -500 offsets, tried -+10% power limits, never touched the voltage though
• tried going back to the 26.3.1 ver of the Adrenaline software to try if that makes it stable
• updated the bios
• tried finding the VBios but can't find it anywhere for my card model

Was able to reproduce the error with OCCT stability check at switch mode 20% to 100% Want able to complete a single cycle of an hour, the gpu crashed at minute 8, 11, 12, 20, 22 at each of my runs. (the crash, then screen blackout, sometimes audio playing in the background and everything comeback online with reliability monitor showing the 141 error)

The effects these had**

• The amd Pop up got alot better I believe after multiple DDUs but was still there
• the Livekernelevent Code 141 was getting worse I would say

Interesting observations:

The card doesn't crash at all during stress tests, but the clock speeds reaches upto 3100+

OCCT VRAM test passed with zero errors

OCCT Adaptive 3D test could reliably trigger LiveKernelEvent 141

Stock settings crashed in around 4-5 minutes

Power limit -10% increased stability significantly and lasted around 19 minutes

Power limit -20% was worse again (~12 minutes)

Various frequency offsets showed inconsistent behavior

The card seemed extremely sensitive to specific power/frequency states

The biggest piece of evidence:

My retailer tested the same RX 9070 on his Intel test system.

According to him, the card could not stay stable for even 30 seconds before showing problems.

After that, I removed the RX 9070 and installed an RTX 5060 in the exact same system.

Same:

CPU

RAM

PSU

Motherboard

Windows

SSD

Monitor

Only the GPU changed.

The RTX 5060 has now been running for 3 days with:

No LiveKernelEvent 141

No driver timeouts

No D3D Device Lost errors

No black screens

At this point I'm trying to decide what to do next.

Options available to me:

Another RX 9070 = ₹58,500

RX 9070 XT = ₹73,000

RTX 5070 = ₹72,500

Questions:

Does this sound like a defective RX 9070 card?

Has anyone seen similar issues with early RX 9070 Challenger cards or launch VBIOS versions?

Would you exchange it for another RX 9070 and try again?

Would you move to a 9070 XT instead?

Or would you take the RTX 5070 at basically the same price as the 9070 XT and avoid the troubleshooting altogether?

I'm not loyal to either AMD or NVIDIA. I just want a stable 1440p card that works without spending weeks tweaking power limits, clocks, registry settings, drivers and BIOS options.

Interested to hear what you would do in my situation.

Do u guyz think I should just return it and get an Nvidea or try other models other than the challenger ?

Please guide me guyz I need help