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
@sith'ari You start from 74W, don't forget it. The GTX 950 with the 6 pin power connector will hover higher than that at defaults, yes. GTX 950 with no power connector will have lower power consumption yes. But don't forget that you start from 74W. The higher you push your frequencies, even with stable voltage, the higher power consumption you will have. So the card will start moving over 74W.
If the card is power limited, then you will not see but only minor changes in benchmarks. If it is not power limited, you will see an almost linear increase in benchmarks scores the higher you push the frequencies.
Manufacturers will choose not to power limit the card. Will let the user push the card even if that means pulling over 75W from the pcie bus. Why? Because it is bad publicity for them to limit the card and they will also lose the customer, if the customer sees that the card is power limited and doesn't overclocks, or doesn't perform better after overclocking it because of throttling.
That's how AMD thought here. Users already push the power limits with overclocking, so why not push the power limits with the reference RX480, beat GTX 970 and at the same time use only a 6pin power connector. Well that was a stupid way of thinking, a stupid decision and AMD is paying the price now with all this negativity.
Overclocks, peaks, averages.
The other part is the killing motherboard part slowly over time. Its the same principle as overclocking slowly killing the chip over time. At these levels your not going to kill a motherboard fast enough. You might if you do 3-4 of these on a cheap motherboard that supports it and does not have an extra power input, but in the majority of cases that is not going to be the case. The most likely scenario would be two of these on a cheap motherboard that supports two way but even then most boards in this day and age are pretty tough for just this amount of extra power.
Either way, we just have to wait and see what the fix is.
Please tell me how dos is capable of handling my GTX970 cooling successfully with the Nvidia driver.
Until the power limit is manually raised by the user, it will NEVER exceed 75W
www.infineon.com/dgdl/pb-ir3567b.pdf?fileId=5546d462533600a4015356803a7228ef
They are also completely configurable which should in theory mean it could be setup to draw more from whatever phases it chooses.
What I am saying is that there are plenty of cards out there sucking 85-90W from the PCIe bus, with no drama and 13 pages of discussions about that, all those years, no motherboards exploding killing their owners. In W1zzard's review he gets 20% performance, so he either increases the power limit, with the card giving him that capability doing it manually, or the card is already set to use extra power if necessary.
So, I believe it wouldn't have been a bad idea, because of RX480, sites to investigate it and try to educate users. If we stay at just pointing a finger to AMD, from tomorrow it will be forgotten. Users will go back overclocking cards and sucking 85-90W from the pcie bus thinking this was something limited to the reference RX480. "Temps are normal, 3DMark finishes, so no problem here". Isn't it the typical routine when overclocking? Was anyone thinking about power draw until today? Does anyone think about pcie power draw even today?
I have seen the damage drawing too much from the slot can do (from bitcoin mining). It's not pretty. But I was running 4 heavily overclocked GPUs. The specs do indeed have some wiggle room, I will grant you. But I do believe at least at stock, they should be adhered to.
I will grant you I think the main point you are getting at: This is way blown out of proportion.
We overclock stuff as much as they can remain stable and we only look at temps and if the benchmark finishes without errors. We usually, if not always, ignore power load. The only time in my life that I took really really in consideration what power was consuming the overclocked part of my system, was when overclocking my 1055T on the MSI 790FX-GD70. A really great motherboard, but that period, MSI's boards for the AMD platform where dying one after the other, if I am not mistaken, because their mosfets or the designs of their AMD motherboards, weren't exactly top quality. So in that board I did a combination of overclocking and undervolting, trying to stay below 140W.
RX 480 is the best excuse tech sites will even have, to investigate how much power graphics cards get from the PCIe bus or the 6pin, after we overclock them. That could end up as a very interesting and eye opening article. And that's what I try to say all these days. AMD is not going to be found innocent, if other graphics cards overload the pcie bus under overclocking, because they did it with a reference design and at default speeds. But people who overclock their cards could be interested in the results, if they care about their motherboard more than they care about 100 extra MHz, or if the 600W PSU they are using, cost them $20.
In fact, I just took a look at the GTX 950's BIOS, and sure enough the power limit is set to 75w. The user has the option to up the power limit to 90w, but that is the users choice, not something set by the manufacturer. If the user wants to risk their board, they can. The manufacturer of the graphics card should be making the decision to risk my motherboard and power supply.Show me one other card that consistently pulls over 75w from the PCI-E bus.
I am really thinking putting thisin my signature with your name on it.
AMD's 2900XT was popping motherboards at the 24-pin.
NVidia's GTX570 did as well.
If you pay attention, sure, there are a few cards that cause motherboard damage fairly consistently. For the most part, that's the whole reason why motherboard makers NOW include additional power for the PCIe slots, but not all boards do. There are MANY 3-x16 slot boards that support Crossfire that do not.People that overclock should be aware of these sorts of issues in the first place, but the general "overclocker" isn't. There is much more that they aren't aware of. That's why I dropped OC, posting on HWBot, and put little focus on OC in my reviews. To me, OC is deep hardware analysis and testing, not a point-based skill competition like it has become. I don't call chasing numbers without a care at what dies OC'ing... and so I focused on GAMING as the main selling point. THe idea "Stuff dies when you OC" isn't true... stuff dies when you BLINDLY OC.
To me overclocking is an art. In order to make great art, you needs to understand the media you use, whether it be the paint, the pencil, music, or the hardware. However, mass marketing has hidden of all that as people have used OC as a selling feature.
Do a google on "burnt 24-pins". It's a hoot. Nearly every thread will blame the PSU. The real cause? Likely a VGA or a USB controller stuffed it. Not a single mention about that. Well, that's not entirely true. There are a couple, but still... when the blind lead the blind...
Results were the same.