Saturday, July 2nd 2016
Official Statement from AMD on the PCI-Express Overcurrent Issue
AMD sent us this statement in response to growing concern among our readers that the Radeon RX 480 graphics card violates PCI-Express power specification, by overdrawing power from its single 6-pin PCIe power connector and the PCI-Express slot. Combined, the total power budged of the card should be 150W, however, it was found to draw well over that power limit.
AMD has had out-of-spec power designs in the past with the Radeon R9 295X2, for example, but that card is targeted at buyers with reasonably good PSUs. The RX 480's target audience could face troubles powering the card. Below is AMD's statement on the matter. The company stated that it's working on a driver update that could cap the power at 150W. It will be interesting to see how that power-limit affects performance.
AMD has had out-of-spec power designs in the past with the Radeon R9 295X2, for example, but that card is targeted at buyers with reasonably good PSUs. The RX 480's target audience could face troubles powering the card. Below is AMD's statement on the matter. The company stated that it's working on a driver update that could cap the power at 150W. It will be interesting to see how that power-limit affects performance.
"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 8 Gbps 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)."
358 Comments on Official Statement from AMD on the PCI-Express Overcurrent Issue
for the most part a fix is coming and as long as the fix don't kill performance... and they take care of those who's board got damaged........nothing else going on. Next story please!
.....pooka dots? Not promoting this guys taste in T-shirts.
The 960 might spike to 225w, but a lot of cards spike pretty damn high, it is a byproduct of DC to DC conversion. The difference is the GTX960 overages significantly under spec on average, like only pulling ~30w from the PCI-E slot over time. So the connector doesn't heat up, and there isn't a risk of damage. The RX 480 on the other hand average way over the spec, which will heat things up and can cause damage.
The funny thing is, I've seen a 24-pin connector melt on a PSU with two 480s connected and folding...they just weren't AMD's 480, they were nVidia's. It wasn't exactly an ancient board either, it was a ASUS 990X based motherboard. And the PSU wasn't a slouch either, it was a Corsair HX850.
This isn't a huge issue at all, however, it is something that needs to be considered depending on how many of these cards you might plan to use.
Plus, as with my experience with the GTX480s, the problem worsened over time until the connector completely melted. I didn't even realize what happened until it was too late. The machine ran fine for almost a year. Then started randomly shutting down about once a month. Then it started happening about once a week. I did visual inspections, all looked fine. I even wiped and re-installed Windows once it started happening once a week. Then one week it shut down every day for about 4 days straight. Then then finally it shut down and wouldn't power back on. It wasn't until I pulled the computer completely apart that I found the burn/melted 24-pin connectors on the PSU/Motherboard.
And that is the thing that concerns me, even with only running one card. Over time, if you are constantly over-driving the connector, it can deteriorate. And the problem with a power connector is, when it start to deteriorate it takes more current to overcome the resistance of the poor connector. More current and more resistance means more heat at the connector. It is just a snowballing affect until failure.
I'm not saying this is something that is going to happen all the time. But even something like dirty contacts cause cause more resistance and a higher potential for failure. So it is definitely a possibility. And there really isn't any reason to pull that much power from the PCI-E slot. The 6-pin/8-pin connectors are way overbuilt. The extra power should be pulled from that connector.
And obviously custom designed cards aren't likely to have this problem anyway.
But again OMG few days later and the card looked like this Sheesh.
EDIT, yes my bad :P.
And for the record, most of TPU's membership is well over 30, with alot of us in our 40's and 50's.
maybe tomshardware+others should have not get it out so quickly and talked to other sites before making it big.
i think this is blown out of proportion.
rbuass is a well known and respected overclocker:
with subtitles
But tell someone about an overclocked GTX 950 without a 6 pin connector and ignores you, changes the subject, or wants you to believe that you can have 20% extra performance without consuming a single extra watt. Free performance.
Instead of people start asking if there are other graphics cards out there depending too much on the pcie bus, or sites starting tests to see if under overclocking specific graphics cards could push the pcie bus over it's specs(the GTX 950 I mentioned, the R9 270X with only one pcie connector could be another example, GTX Titan Z, R9 295X2), this ends up again becoming the favorite subject for many people. How to attack a new product from AMD.
One more opportunity to attack AMD, a lost chance to investigate on something important and probably learn something we seemed to ignored until today and probably we will ignore it in the future, starting after tomorrow.Yeap. A fact that many try to hide behind their little finger.
A power overload wouldn't crash a computer unless it's so grossly overloaded that it'll trip PSU OPP/OCP, or drop the PSU rail significantly under ATX spec. The PCI-E power delivery is just straight connected into power and ground plane on PCB, almost no other component inbetween to be directly affected other than the connectrors itself. There's no power limiter, power sharing controller or whatever on the motherboard itself. Just direct connection!
If anything, the problem wouldn't show itself so quick. A newly inserted power connector and PCI card is literally the best case scenario for power delivery. The contacts are still shiny new, no oxidation, no dirt, and the scratch created during card insertion would help with removing the already existent oxide layer. Wait some month/years till the contacts oxidated, increasing the contact resistance. By Ohm's law, heat generated by the current flowing in the contacts will increase and depends on the material, maybe it'll melt the plastics on the contacts.
A bad motherboard that skimp on using proper power plane and ground plane, using skinny traces instead, is another story. It could literally burn.