AMD's Tuesday Radeon RX 480 Status Update: New Driver By Late Thursday
by Ryan Smith on July 6, 2016 12:45 AM EST
Following up on this weekend's statement from AMD about a potential power issue with the reference Radeon RX 480, AMD has just sent over their previously promised update on their progress dealing with the issue.
In short, they are nearly finished preparing their updated driver, 16.7.1, which will be posted "within the next 48 hours" (which at this point is late Thursday). The new driver will offer two solutions to the power problem.
The default solution: shift some of the power load off of the PCIe Graphics (PEG) slot connector, presumably in order to bring power consumption within PCIe spec. Note that AMD doesn't say anything about reducing the total power consumption, and given option #2, it's reasonable to assume that this involves holding the power requirements as-is and shifting the load to the external 6-pin power connector. Based on earlier data this would potentially put the 6-in connector further over spec, but the vast majority of PSUs are very tolerant of this going out of spec.
The optional solution: a toggle that reduces the total power consumption of the card, presumably ensuring both the PEG slot and 6-pin power connector stay below their respective limits. Since the RX 480 is already throttling at times due to power limits, this would further hurt performance, but it's also the most standards-compliant solution (and aptly named "compatibility" mode). AMD notes that this option will have "minimal performance impact", and while we'll have to see the results in the benchmarks, it's worth noting that power consumption is cubic - that is, roughly to the 3rd power of frequency - so a small reduction in frequency can significantly reduce power consumption, as we've seen in the case of the Radeon R9 Nano.
Along with this, AMD is also touting some slight performance optimizations in this driver that they hope will offset any performance loss (though I'd note that these optimizations would have come anyhow). We'll have more on this when AMD ships their driver.
In the meantime AMD's full statement is as follows:
We promised an update today (July 5, 2016) following concerns around the Radeon™ RX 480 drawing excess current from the PCIe bus. Although we are confident that the levels of reported power draws by the Radeon RX 480 do not pose a risk of damage to motherboards or other PC components based on expected usage, we are serious about addressing this topic and allaying outstanding concerns. Towards that end, we assembled a worldwide team this past weekend to investigate and develop a driver update to improve the power draw. We’re pleased to report that this driver—Radeon Software 16.7.1—is now undergoing final testing and will be released to the public in the next 48 hours.
In this driver we’ve implemented a change to address power distribution on the Radeon RX 480 – this change will lower current drawn from the PCIe bus.
Separately, we’ve also included an option to reduce total power with minimal performance impact. Users will find this as the “compatibility” UI toggle in the Global Settings menu of Radeon Settings. This toggle is “off” by default.
Finally, we’ve implemented a collection of performance improvements for the Polaris architecture that yield performance uplifts in popular game titles of up to 3%1. These optimizations are designed to improve the performance of the Radeon RX 480, and should substantially offset the performance impact for users who choose to activate the “compatibility” toggle.
AMD is committed to delivering high quality and high performance products, and we’ll continue to provide users with more control over their product’s performance and efficiency. We appreciate all the feedback so far, and we’ll continue to bring further performance and performance/W optimizations to the Radeon RX 480.
1: Based on data running ’Total War: Warhammer’, ultra settings, 1080p resolution. Radeon Software 16.6.2 74.2FPS vs Radeon Software 16.7.1 78.3FPS; Metro Last Light, very high settings, 1080p resolution, 80.9FPS vs 82.7 FPS. Witcher 3, Ultra settings, 1440p, 31.5FPS vs 32.5, Far Cry 4, ultra settings, 1440p, 54.65FPS vs 56.38FPS, 3DMark11 Extreme, 22.8 vs 23.7 System config: Core i7-5960X, 16GB DDR4-2666MHz, Gigabyte X99-UD4, Windows 10 64-bit. Performance figures are not average, may vary from run-to-run.
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D. Lister - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
"I imagined Lisa Shu saying the M word every other second and it wasn`t pretty."lol, she could pull it off though, she looks like a tough lady. With a shaved head and an eye-patch, she could be practically intimidating.
"Huang would make a great villain though."
Many from a competing brand's fan club already think he is one. :D
RBFL - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Did no-one else get an Apollo 13 vibe. Engineers sweating out the holiday working out how to balance all the power draws.miribus - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
If I had a card and a PSU with 8-pin power I would: 1) made sure AMD didn't do something intensely stupid like short pins 2 & 6 together that power connector on their card, and also make sure that the middle power pin on the card is actually ohms out to the other power pins... AMD might not have connected it since it technically wouldn't be needed in the spec to have it there. 2) used my 6+2pin connector 3) shorted pins 4 & 8 4) check power draw. That doesn't help people without those connectors and I think trying to get on more common (cheaper) power supplies for higher adoption clouded their judgement when considering the issues that could happen."Normal" 6-pin power supplies, even though they have 1 fewer circuit, are often laughably under-specified look up the datasheets yourself. The wiring used on this stuff is rated several amps and that's for the crappy stuff. There is a long list of reasons as to why ratings and tolerances are specified the way they are, but long TL;DR, your PSU, unless it is really really really really terribly made, can absolutely handle the 1 or 2 more amps on those wires. Don't believe me? Ask your PSU vendor how many amps at 12V your 2 wires on that connector can really do. If they're honest they'll tell you well north of 75W.
I Design motherboards for a living, including power delivery similar enough to what is used in PSUs, and we have to (or, really opt to) stay within PCIe specs on our end for obvious reasons. I can tell you for a fact that the 75W mark for the 6-pin power connector is an extremely loose specification and, again, we're talking a factor of maybe 2 amps.
On a PSU that does not have a 6+2 pin connector, one pin is missing, the middle upper power pin. That design specification limits you to 75W for absolutely no other reason than they figured it was the safest possible specification to go with. It did not at all account for kW enthusiast PSUs and it didn't have to. PCIe specs aren't law, there isn't the PCIe police per se, but the point of the specification is that if you break the spec for your own purposes, which is totally legal, you can't say: "It is fully compliant etc etc." You would be running out of PCIe spec, but not the PSU's spec.
But lets say you DO have a 6+2 pin connector, there is no good reason, except for an extremely technical interpretation of the specification, that it wouldn't be "fully" compliant except for the extremely technical reason that it is a 6 pin connector and it is known, 75W, period. Truthfully? The wires and connector likely do way north of 6 amps a piece on your PSU and I'm being really conservative. *If you've got a 6+2, you've definitely got the power. Take those +2 that are floppin' out there in the breeze and short them together and your PSU suddenly can supply 150W because it thinks you have a more powerful card.
*I haven't tried this and it is a theory, but if you have a multimeter it is easy to do safely. If I had a card I would absolutely try it. If someone wants to try it and has a 6+2 PSU, and a multimeter, and obviously an RX 480, I'll walk you through it... I really want to know if it would work. It would not only be fine stock, but it would probably be more over-clockable.
Somehow AMD is going to force the card to draw a few (very safe) more amps from your PSU by software, that is interesting. Tricking your PSU into thinking your 6-pin card is really an 8-pin card requires hardware, I'm not positive how they would do it in software.
riottime - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
I was going to buy a RX 480 to replace my aging HD 5850 but now not so much. I'll wait and see how VEGA turns out later this year instead.atlantico - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Just get a third party RX 480, with a custom cooler, they'll also have 8-pin power connectors. You'll only have wait a couple of weeks for that and it's a great replacement for an HD 5850.vladx - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Sorry but it got delayed to next year: http://www.fudzilla.com/news/graphics/41034-vega-1...Probably AMD having issues as usual.
FriendlyUser - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
So, to sum it up:1. No risk for anyone's MB with new driver
2. For people with intolerant PSUs, PCIe compatibility can be ensured at minimal performance loss.
We all wait for the benchmarks, of course, but I don't expect a seismic shift in performance. Experience has shown that it is perfectly possible to run the RX480 at slightly lower power targets with minimal change in performance.
tipoo - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Seems like the fix and lower power toggle all but confirms a last minute overclock. They also say the 3% boost in games the new driver provides should substantially offset any impact from the lower energy setting, so it seems pretty sure to me they got worried and pushed it past what they found was it's peak efficiency point, or at least the better tradeoff of efficiency to performance (since power use scales more than linearly with voltage+frequency, while performance scales less than linearly with clock), in favor of boosting it a bit more.All that debacle didn't seem worth it if it's 3-5% they squeezed out.
prisonerX - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
It's pretty amusing (and somewhat sad) that a bunch of people who would routinely overclock anything they can wail and moan about a card being a little out of power spec.Oh the hypocrisy!
Agent Smith - Wednesday, July 6, 2016 - link
Well said !!