AMD Releases Statement On Radeon RX 480 Power Consumption; More Details Tuesday
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2016 5:05 AM EST
Following up on this week's Radeon RX 480 launch, there has been some questions raised about the power consumption of the card. This is after some sites whom directly tap the power rails feeding the card discovered that at least some of their samples were pulling more than the standard-allowed 75W over the PCIe slot and/or 6-pin PCIe external power connector.
To that end, it would appear that AMD's staff is working weekend duty, and they have just sent over the following statement.
As you know, we continuously tune our GPUs in order to maximize their performance within their given power envelopes and the speed of the memory interface, which in this case is an unprecedented 8Gbps for GDDR5. Recently, we identified select scenarios where the tuning of some RX 480 boards was not optimal. Fortunately, we can adjust the GPU's tuning via software in order to resolve this issue. We are already testing a driver that implements a fix, and we will provide an update to the community on our progress on Tuesday (July 5, 2016).
If some of the data is to be believed, these cards are exceeding 150W total at times, which would mean there is either something causing them to run in the wrong power state, or they are just outright exeeding their power limit and need to be throttled back. As we don't do per-rail testing I don't have anything meaningful to add at this second, but it will be very interesting to see how AMD responds next week.
Update 07/06: AMD has since released their status update, which you can find here.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
181 Comments
View All Comments
tipoo - Monday, July 4, 2016 - link
That's the thing, if it's hard wired to draw 50/50 from PCI-e and 6 pin, reducing the total power to the advertised TDP isn't enough. Going below it would probably hurt performance. The only solution that would work is drawing less from PCI-E and more from 6 pin, but it's not yet sure if that's possible.prisonerX - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
It's not hard wired. It's easy to fix via software, they just reprogram the onboard IR3567B controller.Yojimbo - Monday, July 4, 2016 - link
It's supposed to be a 150 W TDP card. Even if it were to be wired for 50/50 power draw, is there any problem with that if the slot can handle 75 W? If they tune the card to make sure there isn't sustained power draw above 150 W then there won't be sustained power draw above 75 W on the PCI-E slot.pavag - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
Just minutes ago I found an GPU review in Anandtech made 19 years ago (For a video card named Hercules Thriller 3D).Couldn't resist to make the first comment!
I beat all of you, even 19 years after the article was published.
Gastec - Tuesday, September 6, 2016 - link
I'd rather have a "Vote delete" button for the ones who brag about being the first to post a comment on a web page. But yeah, I understand your irony.MATHEOS - Monday, July 4, 2016 - link
Anand come back this is a shamesonicmerlin - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
It's Tuesday... So where's AMD's comments?HighTech4US - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
M I Avladx - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Yep AMD decided to sweep it under the rug hoping most customers are too ignorant to know what blows their motherboards.wow&wow - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
As you know, we repeatedly lauch our GPUs products with oops, e.g. the noisy power component of Fury last year. Recently, a few outsiders found and told us that select scenarios where the tuning of some RX 480 boards was not optimal. Fortunately, some customers with LUCK may not have the problem, so it all depends on whether you are a LUCKY person or not, or pray before buying may help too.