AMD in Trouble? RX 480 Powergate

Bowman15 said:
I have r****1 on ignore...just keep reporting them. Responding will only get both of you in trouble.
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SomeOne has to be a voice of reason here. This kind of stuff prevails if people don't put out the effort to stamp it down.
 
Sheppard said:
This thread is a perfect example of what length trolls are willing to go to.
Leldra and razor1 have absolutely no intention of buying the product. They are seizing an opportunity to nail AMD. They would never have been effected by any accused problem (which I absolutely don't believe exist) but choose to continue this which hunt solidly for two days straight now under the guise of "protecting other people from potentially damaged motherboards" which is ridiculous.
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Those guidelines are set by the very same companies that make the hardware and build the systems, you think they know what they are doing when they set up those guidelines wouldn't you?

We don't need to know if its pci-e compliant or not right off the bat, just like a passenger getting in on a plane that you did work on doesn't need to know what your guidelines are but hopefully they are followed so they can have a safe flight. The same can be said here, do you want a government controlling body to control the quality of electronic products such as these or would you still like them governing themselves and doing things by THEIR OWN GUIDELINES that everyone in the computer industry tries to adhere to so products are compatible and reliable with each other.

I say this because if they can't that is what will happen because computers are part of our daily lives now and no one can really do without one so those guidelines are made so people don't need to worry about them.

Just look at when USB first came out the incompatibility issues, it was a pain in the ass,

I've been taking apart computers and putting them back together since the 8088 days, and tell me about specs back then, I would say what the hell are those because there were none lol.
 
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pcgeekesq said:
A bigger differnce is that if the card is non-compliant with the PCI Express standard but is using the PCI Express logo and is marketed as a PCI Express card, NVidia may have standing and cause to ask the US International Trade Commission and the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to block the importation of the card, including potentially seizing and even destroying the cards when they arrive in the US.

If the card is non-compliant, AMD appears to have three months to get it fixed before this particular hammer can be brought down.

Telling the people they are getting 4GB when they are only getting 3.5GB, for example, doesn't create the possibility of this scenario arrising. Improper use of a trademark like PCI Express looks like it does.

Disclaimer: I am not a trademark attorney. Don't rely on this as legal advice - consult an attorney. This posting does not create an attorney-client relationship.
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it won't get that far because I think AMD will have to do something or they will lose the PCI-e endorsement. The card clearly would violate a MB motherboard warranty. The first time a board fails with a 480, and the MB maker rightly refuses to fix. there will be a lawsuit, the motherboard maker will include the PCI-E group and AMD as co-defendants. The group is never going to let that happen.

Second no OEM is going to use a AMD480 in any system since they themselves would also have liability attached.

The economic and liability forces at play dictate that by hook or by crook AMD has to find a solution, and it has to do so quickly, the longer it remains unresolved the more it leaves it self open to a suit. The last thing it needs or wants is to risk a Red Ring of Death situation
 
Bowman15 said:
I have r****1 on ignore...just keep reporting them. Responding will only get both of you in trouble.
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You can just leave your stuff out the door, another words go to another forum because you don't even understand what most of us are talking about in any of our conversations, so you just come in here and talk crap, which doesn't help anyone.
 
Sheppard said:
This thread is a perfect example of what length trolls are willing to go to.
Leldra and razor1 have absolutely no intention of buying the product. They are seizing an opportunity to nail AMD. They would never have been effected by any accused problem (which I absolutely don't believe exist) but choose to continue this which hunt solidly for two days straight now under the guise of "protecting other people from potentially damaged motherboards" which is ridiculous.
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LOL. Let's just ignore the issue then and pretend it never happened.
 
pcgeekesq said:
I suspect they cannot fix it without lowering the performance of the cards or redesigning the board to use an 8-pin aux power connector.
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What is the cost difference between a board with 6-pin vs. 8-pin connector?

It really begs the question on why this design decision even got approved/pushed through engineering in this manner.
 
Mav451 said:
What is the cost difference between a board with 6-pin vs. 8-pin connector?

It really begs the question on why this design decision even got approved/pushed through engineering in this manner.
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Well, it's hard to market your card as power efficient when it's clearly visible it has exact same power connectors as competitor's more powerful cards, for no apparent reason at that.

Hell, there's not even a trace for possible 8-pin on the PCB, it's actually possible it was designed before it became clear P10 was hot power hungry mess above it's comfort zone and it was too late to make changes to it when it became clear (or they were not made because of marketing, rofl).
 
Y'all, please stop bitching about each other. No one will be able to find my awesome posts if the forum gets swamped with killing the messengers rather than the message.

And some of y'all might get banned. Kyle's a right [H]ardASS about keeping these forums from becoming a reddit.
 
Mav451 said:
What is the cost difference between a board with 6-pin vs. 8-pin connector?

It really begs the question on why this design decision even got approved/pushed through engineering in this manner.
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at the rate of mass production none probably, but of course it would look bad on AMD's new card though..... cause it will be drawing more power than a performance tier card from their competition
 
I do wonder how this will affect
Mav451 said:
What is the cost difference between a board with 6-pin vs. 8-pin connector?

It really begs the question on why this design decision even got approved/pushed through engineering in this manner.
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Well, I do like to know the extent of the issue, whether it is an islolated batch during production or a wide issue. A company like AMD whose fighting for its survival may not have a choice but to release, if they don't, it will certainly push them closer to bankruptcy since you are not generating any revenue nor recouping R and D cost.
 
Ieldra said:
If the power distribution can be controlled from bios like on Maxwell they can simply offload the extra load onto the 6pin, which is still out of spec, but not dangerous
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Moving a current overdraw from one area of the card to another isn't likely to save face, even if it would be the safer of the power delivery systems.
 
lolfail9001 said:
Well, it's hard to market your card as power efficient when it's clearly visible it has exact same power connectors as competitor's more powerful cards, for no apparent reason at that.
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Not really, you just trumpet the overclocking potential that having the 8-pin connector provides. "Craftsmanship" FTW!
 
pcgeekesq said:
Not really, you just trumpet the overclocking potential that having the 8-pin connector provides. "Craftsmanship" FTW!
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I think after "Overclocker's dream" AMD will stray away from ever mentioning overclocks on their cards in public.
Ocellaris said:
Moving a current overdraw from one area of the card to another isn't likely to save face, even if it would be the safer of the power delivery systems.
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Well, as it is, Rx480 overdraws from both slot and 6-pin. In fact, it draws suspiciously similar amounts of power from both. Would be almost okay, if card actually worked at advertised power consumption or slightly below it, as it should have.
 
-Strelok- said:
LOL. Let's just ignore the issue then and pretend it never happened.
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Considering the 960 was much more out of spec and nothing ever came of it.....Because of this many don't believe its a serious issue. A minor bios/driver tweak and its done. I think AMD has the Message/report of the issue by now lol
 
Sheppard said:
This thread is a perfect example of what length trolls are willing to go to.
Leldra and razor1 have absolutely no intention of buying the product. They are seizing an opportunity to nail AMD. They would never have been effected by any accused problem (which I absolutely don't believe exist) but choose to continue this which hunt solidly for two days straight now under the guise of "protecting other people from potentially damaged motherboards" which is ridiculous.
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common boy, go and read, Power Consumption Concerns on the Radeon RX 480 | PC Perspective let me make easy for you:

This graph shows that result, running Metro: Last Light at 4K with the Radeon RX 480 at stock settings. The green line is the amperage being used by the +12V on the motherboard PCI Express connection and the blue represents the same over the 6-pin power connection. The motherboard is pulling more than 6.5A through the slot continuously during gaming and spikes over 7A a few times as well. That is a 27% delta in peak current draw from the PCI Express specification. The blue line for the 6-pin connection is just slightly lower.

At the top, you have a red and white line representing the voltage signal of the +12V rails from the motherboard PCIe slot and the 6-pin connection. Notice the drop on the white line of the motherboard +12V rail – during game play it is actually running at 11.5V while the PCIe 6-pin cable is a much safer 11.9V. When we exit the game at the 18:25:27 timestamp, power draw drops, current drops and the voltage returns to the same 11.9V we would expect to find. Looking back at the red line, the differences in power handling capability of the two sources become clear, as the 6-pin voltage barely flinches at the same current swings that caused 0.4V droop from the motherboard-supplied +12V source.

That voltage droop is caused by the current draw over the PCI Express connection, pins, and traces through the motherboard. Doing some quick math (0.5V drop at nearly 7A) tells us that the pins and traces are directly dissipating 3 watts of power in this state! What might be even worse for this voltage droop is that it affects all other PCI Express slots on our Rampage V Extreme motherboard when the primary slot was loaded to this degree. Any other add-in card that you run in the system with an RX 480 drawing this much power will be forced to run at the lower voltage. PCI Express does build in a tolerance level of +/- 8% for this value, so the rest of the system should remain stable, but one question would be what happens to that voltage when someone attempts quad-crossfire with overclocked RX 480s?
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Does any of this matter?

It seems clear at this point that the new AMD Radeon RX 480 does in fact draw more power through both the motherboard PCI Express connection and the 6-pin power connection than specifications state it should even when running at stock settings in certain gaming scenarios. The overdraw on the 6-pin cable is likely a non-issue; with power coming directly from the power supply and not passing through your motherboard and the fact that most cabling is built to handle higher power draw than we are seeing here, it’s very low on my list of concerns. The motherboard power draw is definitely something to keep an eye on though, especially given the voltage droop seen when motherboard traces are loaded to that degree.

The highest power draw I measured with the RX 480 at stock settings showed 80-85 watts of power draw at over 7A on the +12V line and 4.5-5.0 watts of power draw on the 3.3V line. These were consistent power draw numbers, not intermittent spikes, and users have a right to know how it works. When overclocked, we witnessed motherboard PCIe slot +12V power draw at 95+ watts!
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I asked around our friends in the motherboard business for some feedback on this issue - is it something that users should be concerned about or are modern day motherboards built to handle this type of variance? One vendor told me directly that while spikes as high as 95 watts of power draw through the PCIE connection are tolerated without issue, sustained power draw at that kind of level would likely cause damage. The pins and connectors are the most likely failure points - he didn’t seem concerned about the traces on the board as they had enough copper in the power plane to withstand the current.
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Average load is still lower than the RX480. The average for the 960 was still less than 60. Also, only that specific AIB design does it, not the reference.
 
KazeoHin said:
* citation needed.
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ok the info is in this exact thread a few pages back...let me look for it

here it is:

image.png


per
Final8ty a few pages back
 
primetime said:
Considering the 960 was much more out of spec and nothing ever came of it.....Because of this many don't believe its a serious issue. A minor bios/driver tweak and its done. I think AMD has the Message/report of the issue by now lol
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I'm not sure how to take your posts anymore. are you a troll? you can't understand the difference between peaks and sustain, the difference between, an issue in a single AIB card and one that appears to be a systematic issue in the reference design? the fact that one could legally argue that in any MB that fails and has a 480, that it was the fault of the 480 and get past a motion to dismiss.

That as it stands, no OEM can use a reference card in their system without opening themselves up to liability?

Further is there any proof that a simple bios change can fix the problem? It could require a redesign. no one knows. telling people to ignore something like this is crazy to me.
 
primetime said:
A minor bios/driver tweak and its done.
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What if performance or instability arises from the tweak? You can't just lower power an expect to hold the same boost clock speed.
If you OC'd before, any little shift in power delivery can knock off 25MHz-50Mhz+ or more depending on how much they have to lower it by.
 
primetime said:
ok the info is in this exact thread a few pages back...let me look for it

here it is:

image.png


per
Final8ty a few pages back
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First of all

STRIX 960 is just one out of many. REFERENCE RX480 is the whole damn line of reference cards. WAY BIGGER SCALE.

Second, look at the averages; sustained loads.

A power spike and a sustained load are radically different.

Sustained loads of 95W+ are dangerous, and this card reaches that with a measly 5%OC.

If you buy those XFX black editions @ 1328mhz, you are risking your board. No matter whether its asus, sapphire, gigabyte, powercolor...
 
I don't see what the big deal is. It probably won't cause any problems - have any of the review systems shut down/caught on fire because of it? No? If there's a rash of mobo failures reported by 480 users, then it's a problem (for those guys). If you don't own/don't plan on ever owning a 480, then don't sweat it.
 
I wish they would link to the original review so there are some relevancy we can point from.....
 
Dullard said:
I don't see what the big deal is. It probably won't cause any problems - have any of the review systems shut down/caught on fire because of it? No? If there's a rash of mobo failures reported by 480 users, then it's a problem (for those guys). If you don't own/don't plan on ever owning a 480, then don't sweat it.
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Kyle bought two 480s, maybe he will be the first lol
 
Dullard said:
I don't see what the big deal is. It probably won't cause any problems - have any of the review systems shut down/caught on fire because of it? No? If there's a rash of mobo failures reported by 480 users, then it's a problem (for those guys). If you don't own/don't plan on ever owning a 480, then don't sweat it.
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Read the article please before giving an opinion. It clearly says this can be an issue that can wear out components over time to failure, not create a dumpster fire.
 
Dullard said:
I don't see what the big deal is. It probably won't cause any problems - have any of the review systems shut down/caught on fire because of it? No? If there's a rash of mobo failures reported by 480 users, then it's a problem (for those guys). If you don't own/don't plan on ever owning a 480, then don't sweat it.
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Have any of reviews been done on low quality motherboard? I mean, someone at B3D forums actually suggested someone should buy cheapest mobo available and slap rx480 in it to see whether the former dies.
 
lolfail9001 said:
Have any of reviews been done on low quality motherboard? I mean, someone at B3D forums actually suggested someone should buy cheapest mobo available and slap rx480 in it to see whether the former dies.
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Good point, especially those overclocked models. Tom's HW reported 100W average from just 1310mhz

The factory OC are @ 1330
 
The worst thing about this whole fiasco for AMD is that it draws attention to the power consumption imo.
 
Ieldra said:
The worst thing about this whole fiasco for AMD is that it draws attention to the power consumption imo.
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No the worst part is that you have a system builder card, that right now, no system builder can use.
you have a card that will void your MB warranty the moment you place in your motherboard.
 
shinotenshi said:
That as it stands, no OEM can use a reference card in their system without opening themselves up to liability?
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I don't know how liable an OEM would be, but I would be interested to hear from AMD whether any Tier 1 PC OEMs (such as Dell, HP, Lenovo) are offering or plan to offer PCs with an RX 480 inside. I haven't found any, or any announcements of such.

When the big PC OEMs don't use your new "wundercard," what does that say about it? That it's really an "undercard?"
 
shinotenshi said:
No the worst part is that you have a system builder card, that right now, no system builder can use.
you have a card that will void your MB warranty the moment you place in your motherboard.
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Its worse then that its voids all the warranties on every single component that goes to your motherboard.

Well not void, but what ever part fails they can say "sorry" not our problem.

Those warranties are set up by the system builder to the IHV's so it will come back to them eventual too.
 
pcgeekesq said:
I don't know how liable an OEM would be, but I would be interested to hear from AMD whether any Tier 1 PC OEMs (such as Dell, HP, Lenovo) are offering or plan to offer PCs with an RX 480 inside. I haven't found any, or any announcements that of such.

When the big PC OEMs don't use your new "wundercard," what does that say about it? That it's really an "undercard?"
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of course they are liable, they sold you part that runs beyond the spec of MB. Unless they tell you very specifically that this card goes beyond the spec of the MB and it voids your MB warranty, and any damage incurred is on you, and they make sure you sign it, so it's not boiler plate, I suppose they could escape liability, under consent from the buyer. But which OEM is going to do that?
 
pcgeekesq said:
I don't know how liable an OEM would be, but I would be interested to hear from AMD whether any Tier 1 PC OEMs (such as Dell, HP, Lenovo) are offering or plan to offer PCs with an RX 480 inside. I haven't found any, or any announcements of such.

When the big PC OEMs don't use your new "wundercard," what does that say about it? That it's really an "undercard?"
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Anyone associated with the problem can be sued lol, then the fall out will commence after,
 
WorldExclusive said:
Read the article please before giving an opinion. It clearly says this can be an issue that can wear out components over time to failure, not create a dumpster fire.
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My point is, it's not going to wear out my mobo. Or the mobo of a whole lot of the people here complaining about it. If 480 users start having problems, let them complain - they will have an actual reason to complain.
 
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