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AMD RX 480 Fails PCI-E Specification

If redistributing the power from PCI-E Slot to the Connector doesn't affect performance, which it shouldn't (happy to be corrected), then that's fine by me. Without the power issue it's a great card for the cost & I would be 100% happy with it. So hopefully, problem solved, and hopefully AMD will have learned a lesson from this and next time they won't be clever & just stick a darn 8 pin connector on it.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
But obvious it's AMD so it is big issue, while for Nvidia...not so much.
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Yep, Nvidia would have handled it differently though. Nvidia would have just told their customers that it isnt an issue and that would have been the end of the story. LOL :p

In all seriousness though I hope this is sorted quickly as it seemed as though AMD had a winning card on their hands at that price level. I hope the AIB cards really push the Polaris 10 chip and get to those 390X/980 sought after levels. I do think that it is an issue, however I also believe that certain types have really seen their chance to blow it out of proportion and to kick the 480 as hard as they can to discourage sales (I have seen people say they have canceled cards over this).

It does teach people a lesson though, and that is never pre-order brand new cards especially reference models of either Nvidia or AMD. Wait for reviews and any fallout before committing your hard earned cash. It looks like the AIBs will make good and put this one to bed. Hopefully AMD can do something for those that already have reference 480s. It is hard to see how this could have slipped through though. In 15 years time when Raja brings out his autobiography I am sure he will tell us. ;)
 
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maonayze said:
Yep, Nvidia would have handled it differently though. Nvidia would have just told their customers that it isnt an issue and that would have been the end of the story. LOL :p
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NVidia would have told their customers that it was an added bonus.

Remember the GTX 970, it comes with 3.5gb of memory but we at NVidia have tweaked it so you get an extra 0.5gb as a bonus.:D
 
Kaapstad said:
NVidia would have told their customers that it was an added bonus.

Remember the GTX 970, it comes with 3.5gb of memory but we at NVidia have tweaked it so you get an extra 0.5gb as a bonus.:D
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Actually their official response at the time was more along the line of "The 970 should have been a 3GB card, but we are so "considerate" of our customers so we added "1GB" more vram to it (so be grateful you lot!)". Nvidia was expecting people to bow and thank them being so "generous", despite it was mis-advertising on 4GB vram the grandest scale :p

Their solution to the complain about the 970 vram after their official response- putting earplugs into their ears :D
 
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D.P. said:
Copper traces will degrade and literally burn up if too much current is passed.
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If you are passing enough current to destroy the traces then that's almost an immediate failure, not degredation.

Also the issue with this sort of draw being at that level it means a board must have been designed right on the limit and the board running normally would have the traces getting very hot and wasting a lot of power. You would want to put a much better margin on it than that.
 
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Meaker said:
If you are passing enough current to destroy the traces then that's almost an immediate failure, not degredation.

Also the issue with this sort of draw being at that level it means a board must have been designed right on the limit and the board running normally would have the traces getting very hot and wasting a lot of power. You would want to put a much better margin on it than that.
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Generally this would be more evident with extra voltage too than a small amount of wattage added. It's very difficult to cause damage to systems without adding volts.
 
Meaker said:
If you are passing enough current to destroy the traces then that's almost an immediate failure, not degredation.
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If its way too higher current then yes will go toaster style red hot & burn out ...but if its say just on the edge..I'm sure it will expand and de expand so over time will degrade tracer and become weaker and will eventually fail.

But i would say the pci slot pins to the card pins would fail before the MB tracer
 
harney said:
If its way too higher current then yes will go toaster style red hot & burn out ...but if its say just on the edge..I'm sure it will expand and de expand so over time will degrade tracer and become weaker and will eventually fail.

But i would say the pci slot pins to the card pins would fail before the MB tracer
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Yet an mxm connector with fewer 12v pins which are smaller can manage 180w?

I mean really what it comes down to is don't put the rx480 into a cheap motherboard inside a cheap case with no airflow inside a hot room with poor ventilation for a 2-3 years without applying the BIOS fix.
 
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Within 48 hours apparently.

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%. 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.
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Angilion said:
That might not be an issue in this case because motherboard manufacturers don't necessarily design for the minimum requirements of the PCI-E spec. It's not difficult or expensive to make a motherboard exceed that particular minimum and it seems that manufacturers usually do.
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Problem is not everyone builds in sufficient margins - unfortunately seems that the better made boards are capable of ridiculously more current than you are ever likely to encounter while the basic 1oz boards are cutting it fine.

Meaker said:
If you are passing enough current to destroy the traces then that's almost an immediate failure, not degredation.

Also the issue with this sort of draw being at that level it means a board must have been designed right on the limit and the board running normally would have the traces getting very hot and wasting a lot of power. You would want to put a much better margin on it than that.
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Excess current generates more heat which can over time degrade most electronics including interconnects - there is quite a range between nominal current conditions and a short circuit and likewise a range in the effect from long term degradation to burn up in a fire.

Meaker said:
Yet an mxm connector with fewer 12v pins which are smaller can manage 180w?

I mean really what it comes down to is don't put the rx480 into a cheap motherboard inside a cheap case with no airflow inside a hot room with poor ventilation for a 2-3 years without applying the BIOS fix.
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I believe MXM is a bit different doing more of the power conversion off board? with around 7 connectors spreading the load over 1 or 2 high voltage pins and several low voltage pins - most of the core is fed from what 4-6x 1.8v rather than the one 12v connection.
 
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shankly1985 said:
Believe it happens on every GPU the problem here is the crashing depends on the motherboard quality. Cheap motherboard seems to be effected more than more premium quality products.
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I'm assuming he means nVidia GPUs also draw more than 75watt from the PCI-e socket?
 
shankly1985 said:
Believe it happens on every GPU the problem here is the crashing depends on the motherboard quality. Cheap motherboard seems to be effected more than more premium quality products.
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My motherboard is quite happy running Trifired RX480s so if a M/B can not run a single RX480 it does raise a few questions about the motherboard.

I hate to think how some of these motherboards would get on if they ran power hungry Kingpins or similar.:D
 
Kaapstad said:
I hate to think how some of these motherboards would get on if they ran power hungry Kingpins or similar.:D
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Normally though those Kingpins, etc. would be pulling that extra load from the additional connectors not the PCI-e socket itself. Even heavily overclocked the draw from the socket is usually under 55 watt on most GPUs.
 
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