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.
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Makaveli - Saturday, July 2, 2016 - link
If Anandtech is so AMD biased and you are clearly NV biased why do you keep coming back?Wreckage - Saturday, July 2, 2016 - link
I explained above. I don't believe the site or Ryan are biased. The forums are very much so. I assume they are run separate from the site. Reading the cicrlejerk in the forums is entertaining at least.just4U - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
Wreckage,Considering your posting habits, I could see where you might get that impression. You are brand loyal and constantly trashing AMD so you focus in on responders, and sometimes even set the tone of the entire discussion..
Most here are not biased though.. (from what I can tell) Their hardware enthusiasts not fanboys.
ACE76 - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
I, for the life of me, will never understand this "brand loyal" nonsense...I have owened many AMD setups back in the day when they were competitive...I built an AMD system for a friend who wanted custom but not pay a lot a few years back...I have owned many Nvidia videocards...today, i waited for the AMD RX480 because I can't justify in my head spending $700 for a videocard that will likely only be used to play one or two games over the next few years for me...people should just buy whatever is available to them at the best pricepoint...I'm hoping AMDs Zen finally helps put the company back on track after so many years of disappointing CPU architectures.Horza - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
Sorry but you've got no credibility due to your well known zealotry.You were banned from these forums though right? For intentionally misquoting people so you could try and win your pathetic fanboy disputes? Bit sad your still looking through the windows but aren't allowed back in. This is one of those cases where the problem is very much you.
atlantico - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
I've heard many things in my life, but none as detached from reality as calling Anandtech "AMD biased". Also this is much ado about nothing, turns out it was just a bunch of trolls on reddit, spreading misinformation because Tom's Hardware didn't realize that the RX480 is drawing as much as a GTX960 from the PCIe.No motherboards have fried, nor will they, this is perfectly normal. The only practical issue is that older motherboards (pre-2006) may shut down the computer under heavy load.
That. is. all. Wow. So drama. Much bias.
BlueBlazer - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
AMD's RX480 is worse than GTX960, and PC Perspective explains the differences here http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Power-... or better yet watch their highly detailed explanation (which includes the GTX960) here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjAlrGzHAkI As for fried mainboards, already have quite a few, especially this one by a bitcoin miner https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1433925.ms... quote "No, it's an Asus P7P55-LX, it was the 1st rig I built. Ran for 3 years with 3 280x and non-powered risers. 6 hours with the 480s and poof!!" Using 3x AMD RX480s overloaded his mainboard's 24-pin ATX power connector...shabby - Saturday, July 2, 2016 - link
AINT GOT TIME FOR THAT!Murloc - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
they might just as well get the data from tom's hardware since they're Purch AFAIK.Soon they will be posting the whole reviews from tom's since they're unable to do them.
SunnyNW - Saturday, July 2, 2016 - link
I find it hard to believe AMD did not notice this before releasing the cards, this is after all something that is not apart of the "normal" reviewing process. If not for Tom's who knows how long til this issue would have been noticed.In the quote above AMD states "we identified select scenarios where the tuning of SOME RX 480 boards was not optimal." I find it hard to believe that this issue is only affecting certain boards...Can that be the Case?
I'm sure this will be a non-issue with AIB cards but as someone that has already purchased a reference RX 480 am I very concerned with this. I have an Asus Sabertooth board, is a board like that less vulnerable to this issue?