Major issues /w 9070XT in an Asus B850M mobo

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I managed to buy my new PC components before tariffs hit and thought I was in for a smooth sail - but instead have had major issues getting the Radeon 9070XT to work with the rest of my setup.

Started off with a Gigabyte Gaming OC 9070XT, figuring it goes well with Ryzen 7 9800x3D. The motherboard is an Asus TUF Gaming B850M Plus Wifi, mATX - I am using a Fractal Design Meshify 2 Mini case. I am also dual booting Win 11 and Nobara linux, running one OS per M2.2280 drive.

From the very start, the Gigabyte 9070XT was freezing at game loading screens and prompted me to run OCCT VRAM 100% load stress test. Well, the 9070XT freezes less than 2 minutes in, twice, like clockwork. By all accounts looked like a bad card, bad VRAM, so I went and RMA’d it.

Today I received a new PowerColor Reaper 9070XT and eagerly popped it in. Same exact issues - freezes on game loading screens (Path of Exile 2) or during combat transitions (Clair Obscur Expedition 33). The OCCT VRAM test was attempted and the Reaper 9070XT freezes at 2:14. I removed the GPU and tried OCCT CPU + RAM testing with the CPU’s onboard Radeon video, this time OCCT test passed with flying colors, cool temps, no errors logged, no freezing.

I put the 9070XT back in, I thought I’d flash BIOS to the most recent version, Asus released v1028 literally 2 days ago. BIOS flash was fine, but from there PC would not boot. Black screen, no signal, no bootloader, no POST. CMOS clear resets it so it can boot to BIOS again, but try to go to OS and again, black screen no signal.

Removed 9070XT, clear CMOS, boom, easily boots to GRUB bootloader and from there into Win 11 or Nobara linux without incident. Ran an OCCT memory test in Win 11 - passed no problem.

Kind of at my wit’s end here - either need to downgrade to RDNA 3 card, possibly try Nvidia (prefer not to with Linux), or switch to a different motherboard. I thought about PCIE 5.0 being too young to work with such a new card (RDNA4) and relatively new mobo (B850) but the BIOS has no option to set the slot speed to PCIE 4.0.

Issue:

  • Under BIOS 0327, both 9070XTs boot into OS but freeze under VRAM stress (OCCT, games).
  • After updating to BIOS 1028, system POSTs but black screens on boot with either GPU installed — no GRUB or Windows login appears.
  • Issue is consistent across both Linux and Windows.
  • Only recoverable by removing the GPU and clearing CMOS.
  • Once on iGPU only, OCCT CPU and memory tests pass 60+ minutes, no errors.
  • BIOS has no PCIe link speed override; suspected Gen5 auto-negotiation failure.
  • ASUS support claims CSM exposes Gen4 setting (not found), and suggests BIOS reflash in sequence, instead of flashing from original version to most recent at once (questionable).
  • No visual damage to DIMMs or slots; CPU and RAM stable under stress.
  • GPUs work in BIOS but hang during OS handoff.

Build:

  • Ryzen 7 9800X3D
  • ASUS TUF B850M-PLUS WiFi
  • G.Skill DDR5 6000 (2x16GB)
  • Corsair RMx Shift 1000W PSU
  • RX 9070XT (tested: Gigabyte Gaming OC and PowerColor Reaper)
  • Samsung 9100 Pro (Windows), Samsung 900 Pro (Nobara Linux)
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2

Sounds like bad RAM settings. AMD GPUs in my experience are more sensitive to it than NVIDIA.

I’d set RAM to the lowest speed for the DDR version (2133MHz DDR4) and highest voltage safe for the memory type (I recall Samsung tolerating 1.5V vs Hynix needing lower).

I had a X470 board with a RTX 3060 and RX 6600 XT. I tried to go with XMP at 3600Hz 1.35V on 4 sticks which was good-enough to boot and do general desktop stuff:

  • With the 6600 XT, games using Vulkan (Dota 2) or DX12 would crash. Interestingly not DX11 stuff though with PCVR. This had me thinking it was driver or GPU-related at first.
  • With the RTX 3060, everything was fine with the unstable XMP RAM settings.

I had the 3060 first, didn’t memtest, and thought my settings were fine. I later memtested and found errors and did 3200Hz @ 1.5V. The 6600 XT was fine after setting stable RAM settings.

3

We have the same build. Same everything.
My issue is FPS drops and stuttering in some selected games
Any fix?

4

Couple of things.

  1. That RAM is actually intended for Intel XMP 3.0 ONLY… it does NOT support AMD Expo (just something to take into account) and is not on the G.Skill Compatibility matrix for this motherboard. I’m hoping you simply didn’t identify the actual line of G.Skill RAM you installed.

  2. There are entire reddit threads about your issue; but a good place to start troubleshooting is:

Megathread: RX 9070 / XT Black Screen & Freezing Issues

https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDHelp/comments/1j6ksd1/megathread_rx_9070_xt_black_screen_freezing_issues/

Hope this helps.

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I am also having a lot of weird issues with my 9070XT on an Asus Rog Strix B650E-E Gaming WiFi. I noticed it seems to have issues setting the correct pcie gen unless that is a GPU-Z or Driver readout issue. But I have a weird hang on boot where the monitor flickers. When I first installed the 9070XT resizable bar had been greyed out even forcing it off. Resetting the BIOS or loading a profile would resolve the issue. But on occasion the system boots as if the GPU was just detected and can sometimes revert back to resizable bar being forced off. I absolutely hate the board and my previous 7900XT works perfectly fine without any pcie issues. BIOS version is 3208
with AGESA 1.2.0.3a Patch A. Have you noticed any similar issues with pcie not being the correct gen but always the right lane count? I have seen GPU-Z readout 1.1 and the drivers 5.0 or both being different. It is driving me nuts too.

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Yea mate, I have a 9070XT paired with a 9800X3d on an MSI X870 Tomahawk Wifi MB, every other boot or when it resumes from sleep it is negotiating as PCIe Gen 2x16 instead of 5x16. Really fkn annoying I have to restart or sleep/wake the computer a few times to get it to negotiate 5x16

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That is frustrating. At least we know it isn’t something faulty with the hardware (hopefully) and more likely software. The bigger issue is what this post highlights, updating your BIOS seems more likely to break it further so we have to wait on an official acknowledgement with an microcode/driver fix.

I have noticed some other issues regarding audio. Basically if the GPU is idle or not rendering a video because it is off screen audio skips which seems to be an issue I can only imagine is with the infinity fabric of the GPU because the same can happen on desktop when it isn’t getting enough voltage. There may be a way to work around that issue if you can stop the GPU from going down to the state which causes the issue.

I am a tad disappointed with the issues while also impressed by the product. Fingers crossed it is fixed sooner rather than later.

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It is also worth noting that what you are doing (in terms of inserting more hardware) may also be altering your GRUB boot loader M.2 configuration due to the remaining PCIe lanes available for other impacted PCIe slots. You must decide which M.2 drive is going to be CPU driven and which (at this point) may likely become Chipset driven; because of the particular slot it may reside in or if the lack of lanes forced the grub boot drive to change from CPU to Chipset driven after 16-lane GPUs (or other devices) are installed. Chipset driven (vs CPU) will slow down the drive and it will not auto boot if it disappeared from the boot order because of the Video Card insertion as the available lanes on power-up define this. There are ways to check this as you proceed.

First, let’s fix it all and address the BIOS version issues, try these steps with no video cards installed:

  1. Update the BIOS to Version 1006, after the reboot, enter BIOS and save defaults. Then Update BIOS to Version 1022 and once complete, again enter BIOS and save defaults. Finally, update BIOS to Version 1028 (following the renaming instructions as indicated on Asus website for each update as necessary).

Note: This incremental update is actually very important as along with saving/applying new default settings to new BIOS fields after each update, it will increment your BIOS flashback! When you are done, your rollback boot will actually be Version 1022 which importantly includes all of the fixes that you can’t see (to fix now) because you are reverting all the way back to factory (instead of the last incremented BIOS version). Once you have completed all of these steps, Version 1022 will remain as your flashback alternate until some future date when Version 1028 (running) is replaced by the next version when 1028 will then move to occupy the flashback position, and so on with each new version.

  1. Once you have completed incremental BIOS updates and are on Version 1028, boot into Windows, download and install all Asus Drivers (especially the Chipset driver firmware to v7.01.08.129), reboot as necessary until all driver installations are complete, perform all Windows updates and reboot until it doesn’t have anything left.

  2. Once that is done (and only once that is done) and Windows is recognizing everything correctly and using the latest igpu and chipset drivers, power down.

  3. Install the new video card; however most importantly, leave the HDMI cable plugged into the igpu!

  4. Boot into Version 1028 BIOS. Alter your graphics adapter boot settings from “IGP” to PCIe or “PEG”. Then alter your PCIe slot definitions as necessary for that newly installed GPU. Finally, move over to “boot order” settings and make sure that you can see the M.2 Drive containing the GRUB Bootloader and most importantly, that it appears in the correct boot order on the list; because if the slot properties of that drive changed from using CPU lanes to using Chipset lanes, it may no longer appear at all, or may be listed at the bottom of the boot order! Once that is fixed, Save your BIOS settings and Shut down.

Note: When installing any 16-lane PCIe card, that act will alter how certain M.2 slot lanes are configured and the devices plugged into them and thus any PCIe slot changes may impact slot assignment in terms of the lanes being CPU direct versus lanes through the Chipset) Note: Slots impacted are noted in your Motherboard Manual!

  1. Once powered down, move the HDMI cable from igpu to gpu and everything should now boot normally and be working properly; but note you will likely need to download, install and configure the latest drivers for that video card (and your igpu configuration) once you get back into Windows.

Remember… installing more PCIe hardware becomes a “lanes available” issue. You have 24 total PCIe CPU lanes to work with. If you slide in a 16-lane video card, with one M.2 is using 4-lanes and another is using 4-lanes… guess what? You are out of PCIe lanes!

If you try to use that 16-Lane card plus another 8-Lane video card, neither of your M.2 slots are going to operate how you might expect, as those CPU PCIe lanes are now all Chipset lanes and depending on how many lanes each M.2 device needs (or can assign at all, be that 1,2,4 lanes), may not even be recognized. If you want to run multiple video cards or slide in more PCIe lane consuming hardware, you probably want to consider an architecture actually designed to support more PCIe lanes (think Threadripper, Epyc or Xeon).

Hope this helps!
Note: Edited for grammar and presentation; guts are the same.

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