AMD announces driver that reduces PCIe power usage RX 480

by Hilbert Hagedoorn on: 07/06/2016 08:32 AM | source: | 25 comment(s)

AMD is to release a new driver soon that will reduce the power draw from the PCI-Express bus. The Radeon Software driver 16.7.1 will also offer performance increases that would boost up perf with 3%

In a statement, AMD says it is confident to have dealt with the power demanded by the Radeon RX 480 over the PCI-E slot, it poses no risk of damaging the motherboard or other components. The manufacturer nevertheless comes up with a solution, in order to eliminate worries of users.

The change should result in less consumption through the PCI-E slot. AMD probably modifies the driver so that the video card can draw more power from the 6-pin power connector. While that one also is likely to exceed the specification of 75W, in practice that should not be a problem.

There will also be a second option in the Radeon software that reduces the total consumption of the card, with minimal performance loss, says AMD. This setting is named "compatibility" and will be located in the Global Radeon Settings Settings menu. By default, this feature is disabled. AMD gives no precise details yet on what this feature, but possibly the speed of the GPU in this setting is adjusted so that the consumption does not exceed the specified 150W.

Radeon Software 16.7.1 is available within 48 hours, indicating a release on Friday. The new driver also performs general performance improvements for video cards with the Polaris architecture. Some games should result in a gain to three percent.

The next driver update is a response from AMD on the consumption of the RX 480. In some reviews it was discovered that the video card requires more than 75W of the PCI-E slot on the motherboard. AMD responded over in the weekend and promised an update on this topic, which is the announcement of Radeon Software 16.7.1.

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Athlonite
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#5301420 Posted on: 07/06/2016 08:21 AM

but they tout the card as having an 150W TDP shouldn't perform within that envelope and not exceed it unless absolutely necessary otherwise they should have given it a 170W TDP

SirDremor
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#5301424 Posted on: 07/06/2016 08:30 AM

but they tout the card as having an 150W TDP shouldn't perform within that envelope and not exceed it unless absolutely necessary otherwise they should have given it a 170W TDP

When you have a dud and you need to present it as new cure for cancer, you start hyping unrealistic features. Sometime it works, sometime it backfires.

I would very much like to see the "reduced performance" numbers. Hope Hilbert will update Review (at least by a 1-2 additional tests) once this new driver emerges.

0blivious
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#5301465 Posted on: 07/06/2016 10:19 AM

Cheaper than a recall.

BrimStone101
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#5301505 Posted on: 07/06/2016 12:06 PM

People cant reproduce what was happening,
running 4k on this card seems kind of silly because it cant run 4k anyway.
How does the performance increase with less power if its not throttling i wonder.
I read the performance per watt increased 20% wile maintaining the same performance.
I would like to see how close it is now to nvidia 16 fin fet for efficiency now its just closed the gap.

Finisterre
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#5301512 Posted on: 07/06/2016 12:18 PM

I'd like to see a new thermal image after the software fix.
At over 80degC the power phases are very hot.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-radeon-r9-rx-480-8gb-review,7.html

Note that the image is of the backside of the board. The power fets junction temp will be approx. 10..15degC higher.
The power phase near the 6pin molex hardly lights up in the thermal image.

schmidtbag
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#5301557 Posted on: 07/06/2016 02:01 PM

but they tout the card as having an 150W TDP shouldn't perform within that envelope and not exceed it unless absolutely necessary otherwise they should have given it a 170W TDP

Since when has any company ever given realistic TDP estimates? Ever seen Intel's estimates? Sometimes they're almost uselessly vague.

cyclone3d
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#5301656 Posted on: 07/06/2016 03:52 PM

Since when has any company ever given realistic TDP estimates? Ever seen Intel's estimates? Sometimes they're almost uselessly vague.

Stukov
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#5301743 Posted on: 07/06/2016 05:48 PM

TDP is not even a measurement of total power used anyway. It is "Thermal Design Power", or rather, how much power is dissipated as heat.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_design_power

So those complaining that it uses more than 150w and referencing a stated TDP don't know what they are talking about anyway.

Thank you, I've gotten to the point that when I see people talking about TDP as power draw I don't even correct them because I spend all day doing it and it wouldn't help.

And to another posters comment, they said the new driver is supposed to add 3% performance boost, so it would probably negate any performance loss from lowering the power, if you choose to do that (you can keep the power and add the 3%).

vase
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#5301754 Posted on: 07/06/2016 06:10 PM

Thank you, I've gotten to the point that when I see people talking about TDP as power draw I don't even correct them because I spend all day doing it and it wouldn't help.

And to another posters comment, they said the new driver is supposed to add 3% performance boost, so it would probably negate any performance loss from lowering the power, if you choose to do that (you can keep the power and add the 3%).

Sometimes I wonder if it is indeed difficult for some other people to come to the conclusions you outlined.
Or if they are somehow, out of 'base motives' driven to play dumb.

Dazz
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#5301758 Posted on: 07/06/2016 06:13 PM

From what i hear they undervolt great AMD always gives more voltage than whats needed a little too much really. Like my R9 290 i could reduce that by quite a bit and still overclock. So under volt the GPU reduce power consumption, which reduces temps and technically boost should reach higher speeds. Still have to see it in action tho cause i doubt they can reduce the voltage by that much but who knows.

Denial
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#5301776 Posted on: 07/06/2016 06:36 PM

Thank you, I've gotten to the point that when I see people talking about TDP as power draw I don't even correct them because I spend all day doing it and it wouldn't help.

Am I wrong to assume that when techpowerup measured 165w average draw from combined PCI-E/6Pin that they were talking about how much the card was drawing? They instead talked about how much heat was being dissipated? ...

Like yeah, we get it, TDP is thermal design power -- it's been mentioned before on this forum plenty of times. Regardless to how people are using the term, the RX480 still typically draws 165w in gaming and the GTX 1070 typically draws 145w and yet it's 40% faster.

And it wouldn't really be that big of an issue, except that AMD is playing weird marketing games with the TDP numbers, differentiating TDP and GPU core power + the whole 2.8x perf/w claim. The Fury Nano typically draws 185w and is faster than the RX480 so how the hell they got 2.8x perf/w is beyond me, probably some specific tessellation based benchmark. I mean Polaris was marketed for the past 6 months as some break through in power for AMD. It's pretty ironic that the chip ships with a power problem, especially when they had hardware as early as March or whenever they ran that Hitman demo on it.

And it's not like this is one sided. The same questions about the TDP perf/w numbers came up with both the release of Maxwell and Pascal. The only difference is Nvidia actually puts the stupid metrics they are measuring with on the side of their graphs. With Pascal it was like HGEMM/w or some number no gamer cares about. Unfortunately most of the tech press and forum users just see a graph and run to the forums to post their nonsense, good or bad.

Reddoguk
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#5301783 Posted on: 07/06/2016 06:40 PM

Guilty as charged your honor. We have to watch these big corporations like a hawk or they'd slip in a lot more deception if they thought they could get away with it.

Luckily for us people are alert and watching them and will not allow this behavior to escape unpunished.

It boggles my mind how incompetent these companies are sometimes.

Just a tiny mistake from AMD could lead to loss in sales and more hatred towards them. It's almost like self harm because of possible small mistakes made in power compliance.

Surely the cost of an 8pin over the 6pin is minimal but AMD was never going to put an 8pin on there no matter what because that would be being truthful about the real TDP and not the fake TDP of 150w.

PrMinisterGR
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#5301812 Posted on: 07/06/2016 07:26 PM

Noisiv
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#5301814 Posted on: 07/06/2016 07:26 PM

TDP is not even a measurement of total power used anyway. It is "Thermal Design Power", or rather, how much power is dissipated as heat.

I'll answer that.

100% of total electrical power consumed by GPU or CPU is emitted as heat.
In terms of energy - all energy consumed by PC is dissipated as heat.
Your PC does not store energy does it? Energy in = Energy out

Oh but what about the useful work you say.
Every arithmetical operation is nothing but a manipulation of states and electrical currents, and is therefore subject to the same ohmic heating.
Every electron does no other work than moving under the effect of EM force in EM potential.

In other words your PC is no less efficient as a space heater than a proper space heater.
Here is a crude but effective experiment demonstrating this:
https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Gaming-PC-vs-Space-Heater-Efficiency-511/

Thank you, I've gotten to the point that when I see people talking about TDP as power draw I don't even correct them because I spend all day doing it and it wouldn't help.

Same. But the exact opposite
I still try to correct those who don't see that the two are basically the same :nerd:

Yogi
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#5301972 Posted on: 07/06/2016 10:43 PM

Same. But the exact opposite
I still try to correct those who don't see that the two are basically the same :nerd:

Your argument is entirely correct, except your missing one small point. Thermal Design Power is not a measure of the energy that will consumed. It is the maximum heat output that the cards cooling is expected to handle.

But since you're not going to have Furmark running in the background 24/7 it is only a good reference point. It is very much a case of "Your mileage may vary".

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