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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Michael Bay - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
>burnt sockets>not a mess
I guess in amdworld it isn`t.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
Have any legitimate professional reviewers had this happen or just random people in forums who could easily be astroturf?D. Lister - Sunday, July 3, 2016 - link
Pro reviewers usually have high-quality test systems and much greater experience with hardware setups compared to an average buyer of a budget GPU. Hence it is much less likely that one of the reviewers would end up being the one with the damaged equipment.Nonetheless, this link is to the official AMD forum, and the guy has provided pictures:
>> https://community.amd.com/thread/202410
fanofanand - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
He also overclocked the card and played newer AAA titles for 7 hours straight. At least be honest about what you are linking.D. Lister - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
"He also overclocked the card and played newer AAA titles for 7 hours straight. At least be honest about what you are linking."So I am dishonest because I did not add details completely irrelevant to my point, that in your opinion, may have painted AMD in a slightly better light? lol
HomeworldFound - Monday, July 4, 2016 - link
A few isolated cases, probably people pushing hardware too far but they can't admit they've fried it.I recall when the 3770K came out, two reviewers burnt their socket with too much voltage and one received a melted motherboard. It makes it on Anandtech and suddenly its a massive issue, every 3770K can burn its socket, its a complete disaster and Intel should do a recall. Sigh.
HomeworldFound - Monday, July 4, 2016 - link
I haven't had an AMD product since the 9800 Pro. I have my own mind. I love it when people make accusations, it just makes people like Michael Gay look bad.Michael Bay - Tuesday, July 5, 2016 - link
I love your cries of pain, please continue.Geranium - Saturday, July 2, 2016 - link
I think the problem is related to inefficient VRM. Does retail cards also have this kind of problem?DanNeely - Saturday, July 2, 2016 - link
Do you really want to add something that would increase the amount of work needed to do a review - and thus how long until after release it's published - even more?