AMD confirms Power Issue for RX 480, blames memory bus, will patch

[crusty_juggler]

Have there been any reports of peoples computers catching on fire? Is that even possible with this kind of power draw through PCI slots? AMD could be facing serious lawsuits I would assume.

A teenager on the AMD forums with a mistreated and poorly maintained PC complained about his mobo burning, and of course the various Reddit tall tales that we're accustom to.

Clearly the GPU draws slightly more power from the PCIe slot than the spec allows, there's no denying this. But the claims of computer conflagrations need to be taken with a grain of salt. There's reality, and then there's fanciful Reddit claims and the conclusions of 16 year old gamers.

 

[NKD]

It seems likely they knew, but I'm still curious what their statement will be because it makes no sense why they would do this honestly. It's like they are trying to intentionally cripple their launch lol

yea me neither. It makes no sense. Why shoot yourself in the foot. I don't know may be the launch driver they sent out may have done this if and only if its a software issue.

I guess we will find out. Only thing I can think of at this point is the memory voltage, which will reduce the memory overclocks but will probably save wattage since its being powered by PCI-E. Since they are saying its memory bus related. I have been seeing this memory clocked at 9000 almost from everyone so it could probably run at lower wattage at 8000. That will keep the memory specs as advertised and pull less power.

 

[razor1]

This is what is crazy, they started marketing this card even before they knew what the end performance would be like, WTF, who does that? You market something you know 100% about, cause if any question arises, you can rebut or shift directions or change the tables on something.

That is like going into a negotiation and thinking you are the only party that matters......

 

[Ieldra]

yea me neither. It makes no sense. Why shoot yourself in the foot. I don't know may be the launch driver they sent out may have done this if and only if its a software issue.

I guess we will find out. Only thing I can think of at this point is the memory voltage, which will reduce the memory overclocks but will probably save wattage since its being powered by PCI-E. Since they are saying its memory bus related. I have been seeing this memory clocked at 9000 almost from everyone so it could probably run at lower wattage at 8000. That will keep the memory specs as advertised and pull less power.

Some of the gpu phases are also tied to pcie, and the six pin is out of spec anyway lol

 

[NKD]

Some of the gpu phases are also tied to pcie, and the six pin is out of spec anyway lol

Fuck where are all the parts when I need em. I have like half parts in and half not here due to neweggs biannual inventory crap arrggh. I would have been doing building my rig on this long weekend. Shit sucks lol..

 

[Ieldra]

Fuck where are all the parts when I need em. I have like half parts in and half not here due to neweggs biannual inventory crap arrggh. I would have been doing building my rig on this long weekend. Shit sucks lol..

In Feb I got all my parts in two days.... Except the case, which took 15

 

[bildad]

Why so much hate? So hard to understand a simple concept? let me correct you on some of it.

First it does not underperform for the price.

second it does not run hot, look at h reviews. Temp in 80s max.

third it is not any more louder than any other blower design. Read H review.

Now Yes it does take more power but it is still way more efficient than AMD last gen. Nvidia had a leg up for a while on this and its not surprising they improved a bunch on it from 28nm to 14nm.

Now this problem is real. Lets see how amd addresses it. It wouldn't have been an issue if it was drawing from 6 pin rather than pci-ex.

Now you can calm down and stop hating and wait until tuesday see how AMD responds. Nvidia has their fuck ups with 970 its not new. Give it a rest and enjoy the fourth.

It's called humor. Tongue in cheek. Sarcasm. Every AMD stereotype rolled into one. Some people got it. However, every good joke still has to have some basis in fact.

 

[NKD]

It's called humor. Tongue in cheek. Sarcasm. Every AMD stereotype rolled into one. Some people got it. However, every good joke still has to have some basis in fact.

lol my bad I guess text doesn't display emotions. We have all been deceived by it atleast once lol

 

[primetime]

In case anyone has not seen this yet. I like they way these guys present the information in a very professional maner

All things being equal......Someone needs to take responsibility. Maybe Raja Koduri needs to go?....Who's driving the buss over there?

 

[Deleted member 93354]

The RX480 isn't a bad card. My nephew is chomping at the bit for his first gaming system. I mean really chomping at it. I was going to buy him a RX480. And I almost bought the bullet till I saw that PEG power reading and total power reading. So I told him to hold off till they fix the RX480 power issues with an 8 pin and lower PEG power, or wait for the 1060. I'm not going to recommend last generation or a board that pulls too much power from a $100 motherboard and mediocre quality 550 watt supply.

Like I said, it was a boneheaded marketing decision to limit this thing to a 6 pin power connector and leave ZERO room for more power.

 

[Ieldra]

The RX480 isn't a bad card. My nephew is chomping at the bit for his first gaming system. I mean really chomping at it. And I told him to hold off till they fix the RX480 power issues with an 8 pin and lower PEG power, or wait for the 1060. I'm not going to recommend last generation or a board that pulls too much from a $100 motherboard and mediocre quality 550 watt supply.

Not a bad card at all, it's a value proposition and it's a good one, just needs power issues sorted, even if it means just waiting for AIB solutions. Isn't sapphire doing a Q&A ? I'm sure someone will ask if the power delivery is designed the same way as on the 480

 

[razor1]

In case anyone has not seen this yet. I like they way these guys present the information in a very professional maner

All things being equal......Someone needs to take responsibility. Maybe Raja Koduri needs to go?....Who's driving the buss over there?

This problem was there even before Raja took over *came back to AMD, they do need to sort things out though.

 

[primetime]

The RX480 isn't a bad card. My nephew is chomping at the bit for his first gaming system. I mean really chomping at it. I was going to buy him a RX480. And I almost bought the bullet till I saw that PEG power reading and total power reading. So I told him to hold off till they fix the RX480 power issues with an 8 pin and lower PEG power, or wait for the 1060. I'm not going to recommend last generation or a board that pulls too much from a $100 motherboard and mediocre quality 550 watt supply.

Oh i agree with that......iIll probably get one eventually as well once they get everything sorted out. Just like EVERYONE is saying this Shouldn't of happened is all

 

[razor1]

Oh i agree with that......iIll probably get one eventually as well once they get everything sorted out. Just like EVERYONE is saying this Shouldn't of happened is all

Its really is just f''ed up. They had the best launch in years with no competition decent performance for the price, and now because of this, now the 1060 can be marketed up on purpose and will come out right around the time the problem is fixed or at least announced......

 

[Trimlock]

Oh i agree with that......iIll probably get one eventually as well once they get everything sorted out. Just like EVERYONE is saying this Shouldn't of happened is all

Unless the 1060 absolutely demolishes the RX480 in price/perf I'm still getting the RX480 as long as its competitive (10%'ish maybe?) even if it requires a few more watts.

 

[variant]

People are undervolting the 480 as low as 1.025V at stock speeds with a board power draw of 120W.

 

[Yoda4561]

There is only one logical explanation, performance....... They needed to at least get it to what they stated for VR lol. Anything less than a 970 performance its not going to be VR ready, and their marketing department being marketing, put their foot in their mouth by pushing it as VR for TAM.

I think their Perf/w vs last gen is right about where you'd expect from a node shrink + minor tweaks to GCN. The issue is that it's drawing more than spec from the PCI-e slot instead of using the 6 pin connector to properly balance the load. Assuming there is a real problem here and not just some oddball measurement issues, my theory is AMD/RTG had a deadline they promised to meet, and a few thousand boards all assembled and out of spec, and it was either ship on time or scrub the launch till a new board revision, and they chose to meet their deadline.

 

[variant]

There is only one logical explanation, performance....... They needed to at least get it to what they stated for VR lol. Anything less than a 970 performance its not going to be VR ready, and their marketing department being marketing, put their foot in their mouth by pushing it as VR for TAM.

That would make sense if people weren't getting performance gains from undervolting.

 

[razor1]

That would make sense if people weren't getting performance gains from undervolting.

Yes it does, look at the amps on rails..... The GPU is getting most of its power off the rails on the pci-e slot and the PCB was made to do that.

 

[NKD]

AMD had the best launch, set the best price and had nice cooler kept the card quiet and kept the card in the 80c range. But they went bananas on the PCB design.

I really think they designed this board from bottom up. Like same damn pcb design for 460 for just pci-e and then add more vrm and put a fuckin 6 pin for the 470/480, may be the reason why the power is split evenly between pci-e and 6 pin. We are looking at it as top down design but I think they made it bottom up. It just blows my mind how they just simply messed it up.

I am hoping after market cards fixed it, I am sure they did though because sapphire has listed their tdp of 175 so don't think they are expecting to take 90 from PCI-e since they have an 8pin.

 

[razor1]

They always do top down design easier to scale down then to scale up or reuse portions of design.

Any case ohms law

Keep ohm's law in your mind when you are talking about this, the card as whole is asking for certain amount of wattage but the card VRM are taking the memory and GPU current from two different sources, in this case the GPU is getting more of its current from the slot and because it needs certain amount of voltage to sustain a certain frequency based on wattage, they need a certain amount of current. So lets say they do drop 30 watts or so, by dropping voltage, you won't be dropping amps necessarily, because voltage is less, you might still need to up your amps.

 

[Tyns]

Least AMD is working on and looking into asap, and they did say that they passed both internal as well as external PCI-SIG testing, I tend to believe them over the user market

Maybe you shouldn't - Toms reported today that they told AMD "several days before we released the review", yet they came out with that initial denial when confronted after the board was released.

 

[NKD]

Maybe you shouldn't - Toms reported today that they told AMD "several days before we released the review", yet they came out with that initial denial when confronted after the board was released.

Dude seriously, keep these conspiracy theory out of here. AMD on the first day said the reviewers did bring it to their attention and they have already started looking in to it. So you want they to not look and speak before them checking? Go read AMDs first response on reddit. They did say it has already been brought to their attention and they are already working to identify the issue.

 

[Chimpee]

Dude seriously, keep these conspiracy theory out of here. AMD on the first day said the reviewers did bring it to their attention and they have already started looking in to it. So you want they to not look and speak before them checking? Go read AMDs first response on reddit. They did say it has already been brought to their attention and they are already working to identify the issue.

I think the bigger question to me is why didn't caught this during validation?

 

[Tyns]

Dude seriously, keep these conspiracy theory out of here. AMD on the first day said the reviewers did bring it to their attention and they have already started looking in to it. So you want they to not look and speak before them checking? Go read AMDs first response on reddit. They did say it has already been brought to their attention and they are already working to identify the issue.

What conspiracy theory? When confronted after release, AMD stated they do robust internal testing and it passed external PCI-SIG testing, but they're looking into it. Toms claims to have informed them several days prior. AMD's initial statement does not jive with Toms' statement; do you mean to tell me that AMD was unable to reproduce the issue over "several days" when many reputable reviewers with the appropriate capability was able to within 2 days of release?

 

[razor1]

Dude seriously, keep these conspiracy theory out of here. AMD on the first day said the reviewers did bring it to their attention and they have already started looking in to it. So you want they to not look and speak before them checking? Go read AMDs first response on reddit. They did say it has already been brought to their attention and they are already working to identify the issue.

This is why I hate reddit, you can't tell who said what when lol. I'm pretty sure when Raja stated his statement after Hallock stated his lol. And I'm not about to read through all of that huge ass reddit thread to figure it out...... hmmm

 

[primetime]

AMD had the best launch, set the best price and had nice cooler kept the card quiet and kept the card in the 80c range. But they went bananas on the PCB design.

I really think they designed this board from bottom up. Like same damn pcb design for 460 for just pci-e and then add more vrm and put a fuckin 6 pin for the 470/480, may be the reason why the power is split evenly between pci-e and 6 pin. We are looking at it as top down design but I think they made it bottom up. It just blows my mind how they just simply messed it up.

I am hoping after market cards fixed it, I am sure they did though because sapphire has listed their tdp of 175 so don't think they are expecting to take 90 from PCI-e since they have an 8pin.

Look at the bright side...lots of AMD partners make pretty nice Non_reference pcb's her and there...like Asus did with their Fury? lol Usual we just have to wait

 

[razor1]

I would still be weary of the first ones out the door, will have to see if people will do rail testing on them too.

Because as the one overclocker explained in his video how the power distribution was set up, if the board partners didn't have leeway, before this incident, to make major modifications on the PCB, the problem might still be there.

 

[primetime]

I would still be weary of the first ones out the door, will have to see if people will do rail testing on them too.

Because as the one overclocker explained in his video how the power distribution was set up, if the board partners didn't have leeway, before this incident, to make major modifications on the PCB, the problem might still be there.

lol with all the attention to power gate.....well i be shocked if they were not allowed to "fix" it. What i have noticed is AMD does listen and learn.....the next card will have perfect power draw thru and thru but will have some other dumb mistake know one saw coming. You remember the fan/cooler issue with the 290's? when fury came it was water cooled lol

 

[razor1]

Yeah I agree, but its all about the time that the AIB's have and the flexibility prior to the problem becoming front page.

 

[JustReason]

What conspiracy theory? When confronted after release, AMD stated they do robust internal testing and it passed external PCI-SIG testing, but they're looking into it. Toms claims to have informed them several days prior. AMD's initial statement does not jive with Toms' statement; do you mean to tell me that AMD was unable to reproduce the issue over "several days" when many reputable reviewers with the appropriate capability was able to within 2 days of release?

Sorry but he is right. Seriously AMD doesn't need to prove it is happening, that has been done for them to death. What they are likely doing is finding out why it passed cert and how it is not meeting spec now, then how to fix it. Takes a bit longer than 5 min.

 

[razor1]

Sorry but he is right. Seriously AMD doesn't need to prove it is happening, that has been done for them to death. What they are likely doing is finding out why it passed cert and how it is not meeting spec now, then how to fix it. Takes a bit longer than 5 min.

AMD doesn't need to that is true, but its better if they come clean with it.

What is many people stated about AMD before?: when I said "AMD is just like any other corporation in the world, for them its all about money"


I think the exact words were they are like prostitutes they will show you the good parts and not show you the diseased parts lol

 

[thesmokingman]

AMD doesn't need to that is true, but its better if they come clean with it.

Why is it that you are trying to spin a narrative here? What's your agenda? What makes you think they being deceptive? I think I'm losing fucking braincells here. What is AMD to gain by blowing up their customers machines????

 

[NKD]

What conspiracy theory? When confronted after release, AMD stated they do robust internal testing and it passed external PCI-SIG testing, but they're looking into it. Toms claims to have informed them several days prior. AMD's initial statement does not jive with Toms' statement; do you mean to tell me that AMD was unable to reproduce the issue over "several days" when many reputable reviewers with the appropriate capability was able to within 2 days of release?

They said the first day! We have been informed by some reviewers. Ofcourse they are not going to call out names and they are already working on it. You can't go out and blow up your own product without looking in to it yourself. Quit beating a dead horse. We are over these he said and she said. We are on to tuesday and we have been debating what could be the reason behind other than worry about who said what and when.

 

[-Dragon-]

nVIdia releases a new card and nVidia fans bitch about how overvolting is limited potentially limiting the OC headroom on their cards.
AMD releases a new card and AMD fans are all like "just lower the volts it will still run stock just fine and not be out of spec any more".

I don't know what new bizarro world this is but I don't think I like it.

 

[razor1]

Why is it that you are trying to spin a narrative here? What's your agenda? What makes you think they being deceptive? I think I'm losing fucking braincells here. What is AMD to gain by blowing up their customers machines????

We will know on Tuesday if they release a fix.

The problem with AMD right now they are screwed, literally, they took a product that could have made them money and now are looking at a potential loss!

This is what investors, stock market , the companies or people bank rolling AMD are seeing.

Do you think they feel comfortable with this right now, they will want answers!

 

[thesmokingman]

We will know on Tuesday if they release a fix.

The problem with AMD right now they are screwed, literally, they took a product that could have made them money and now are looking at a potential loss!

This is what investors, stock market , the companies or people bank rolling AMD are seeing.

Why do you spinsters never answer a question?

 

[razor1]

Why do you spinsters never answer a question?

Because AMD has no answer right now lol.

You want me to answer for them?

I will say this It looks like they are f'ed. And their is very little they can do it get out of this hole.

Do you remember Raja talking about Brand, Brand loyalty, guess what they just lost all that by the hand fulls.

Words mean nothing when the actual actions do the opposite of those words.

 

[thesmokingman]

Because AMD has no answer right now lol.

You want me to answer for them?

I will say this It looks like they are f'ed.

I asked you, what yer angle is because you're trying to spin this into some deceptive action. Why the fuck would they blow up their customers computers??????? AMD is already hurting so bad as it is and so few customers for them and you think they are hiding some shit? Yes, their secret master plan is to blow all your pcs up?

 

[razor1]

I asked you, what yer angle is because you're trying to spin this into some deceptive action. Why the fuck would they blow up their customers computers??????? AMD is already hurting so bad as it is and so few customers for them and you think they are hiding some shit?

Oh yeah they are hiding the fact they had a overly hot product and it missed its target by miles, just like Kyle stated.

Yeah look at the people that blasted him for saying that, and now everything is real.

You try to downplay this as much as you want, but when it comes down to what the hell happened and how it played out there is only one explanation that works, its what Kyle stated well before the launch.

There is no way AMD would admit to it at least not now, maybe in the future, but they don't need to, they need to fix what is going wrong right now and hope that OEM's will still pick them up, cause right now, as it is, all those OEM contracts they have had or would have had were based on a product that now the specs are going to change. If they change too much, those contracts can be renegotiated or go else where.