Home Gaming New AMD driver fixes RX 480 power draw without sacrificing performance

New AMD driver fixes RX 480 power draw without sacrificing performance

3 min read
16

rx480

It’s been a hell of a week for graphics card enthusiasts. Yesterday, Nvidia’s 1060 was officially revealed, promising a card that matches the former flagship GTX 980 in performance, for a fraction of the cost.

It also came to light that AMD’s equally budget-conscious, recently released RX 480 has a power draw issue, frequently pulling far more power from the PCIe bus than the spec allows for. It’s ideally an issue that shouldn’t have happened. In its quest for perceived power efficiency, AMD opted to use a lone 6-pin connector to keep the card’s TDP at 150. Had its engineers instead opted for an 8-Pin, there wouldn’t be an issue with power draw, but once again AMD’s cards would be fingered as being power-hungry. It’s something that’s happened anyway, with Nvidia being confident that the 1060 has a TDP of 120w.

That said, AMD’s response to the situation has been fantastic. They’ve owned up, admitting that the card draws too much power, and promised that a driver-based solution would be coming this week. And they’ve delivered.

The new 16.7.1 Radeon driver is available, and it seems to have lowered the power draw of the card significantly, without any perceivable compromises to performance. According to the folks at PCPer the AMD RX 480 when set to compatibility mode still sometimes draws a little more juice than the PCIe spec allows for, but it’s such a small overage that it’s no longer potentially dangerous.

“With the two new fixes, AMD has brought the reference boards back to where we expected them to be. The power phase weighting adjustment is in my mind, the most crucial change. By allowing the 6-pin power connection to provide more of the power to the card than the +12V on the PCI Express graphics slot, there is significantly reduced worry about power draw through the motherboard. Even though we still found that the current readings were over the 5.5A level that the specification says is a maximum, the change gets the RX 480 much closer, and with zero impact on card performance.”

Here’s what the new driver does:

Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1 Highlights

  • The Radeon™ RX 480’s power distribution has been improved for AMD reference boards, lowering the current drawn from the PCIe bus.
  • A new “compatibility mode” UI toggle has been made available in the Global Settings menu of Radeon Settings. This option is designed to reduce total power with minimal performance impact if end users experience any further issues.  This toggle is “off” by default.
  • 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.

Fixed Issues

  • Radeon™ RX 480 limited PCI-E Bandwidth (PCI-E bandwidth is now at the correct speed on the Radeon™ RX 480) with Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1.
  • Minor stuttering no longer occurs in Grand Theft Auto V on Radeon™ RX 480 with Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1.
  • Video corruption will not be observed in DOOM with resolutions above 1920×1080 with Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1.
  • Hitman™ graphical corruption no longer occurs when the game is set to use DirectX®12 API and using zoom with weapons with Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1.
  • Display will not exhibit minor flicker on Radeon™ RX 480 when Freesync is enabled on a games launch or exit with Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1.

You can – and really SHOULD – download the 16.7.1 driver if you own an RX480 from AMD right now. Just remember that the compatibility mode that lowers TDP is off by default, so if you’re worried, you may want to toggle that on.

Last Updated: July 8, 2016

16 Comments

  1. Alien Emperor Trevor

    July 8, 2016 at 08:07

    That’s a speedy resolution.

    Reply

    • Captain JJ off track

      July 8, 2016 at 08:18

      Speaking of resolution. The other day I thought it would be cool to plug in a spare 32″ tv of mine that I never use, as a replacement second screen (I use it with racing games now mostly), but the damn text is so blurry and I just can’t get it right.

      Reply

      • Original Heretic

        July 8, 2016 at 09:22

        It’s amazing how we’ve adjusted to higher resolutions. When you look back at the old tv’s and broadcasts that we used to watch, you can barely make out any writing that appears.
        I saw an old cricket broadcast from the 80’s and I couldn’t even make out the score.

        Reply

        • Captain JJ off track

          July 8, 2016 at 09:37

          Haha. Yea man. I can believe so.
          I’ll mess around with mine a bit. But even at a decent resolution it’s jagged.

          Reply

      • Fox1 - Retro

        July 8, 2016 at 09:43

        My Samsung “gaming” monitor looks dated compared to the new standard ones from Dell. Technology just keeps moving.

        Reply

        • Captain JJ off track

          July 8, 2016 at 11:11

          I have a Philips monitor, two years old now, luckily still feels new.

          Reply

      • th3SiCn3ss

        July 8, 2016 at 13:55

        What TV is it? My 42″ Samsung did the same, in the display menu there is an option to set to pc…. This fixed it for me….

        Reply

        • Captain JJ off track

          July 11, 2016 at 09:24

          Oh thanks. Mine is also a Samsung. Will definitely give it a try.

          Reply

  2. Captain JJ off track

    July 8, 2016 at 08:16

    But sacrifices are what the AMD crowd is all about.
    Bring the hipsters! 😛

    Reply

    • Alien Emperor Trevor

      July 8, 2016 at 08:19

      More specifically, burnt offerings. 😀

      Reply

      • Captain JJ off track

        July 8, 2016 at 08:19

        Haha.

        Reply

      • Hammersteyn_hates_Raid0

        July 8, 2016 at 08:29

        You mean your supper?

        Reply

        • Captain JJ off track

          July 8, 2016 at 08:33

          Huehuehue. XD

          Reply

        • Alien Emperor Trevor

          July 8, 2016 at 08:40

          Don’t judge me for liking my steak AMD-done

          Reply

        • Admiral Chief Maximum Effort

          July 8, 2016 at 08:41

          xDxDxD

          Reply

  3. Barron

    July 8, 2016 at 10:44

    Very Good, cant wait for the partner cards!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Check Also

Hitman 2 got a sweet DirectX 12 update this week

The Glacier 2 engine received another upgrade this week, and this one adds in a bunch of n…