We promised an update today (July 5, 2016) following concerns around the Radeon RX 480 drawing excess current from the PCIe bus. Last night, AMD sent over the following statement: Nonetheless, not all motherboards are well made, and some users could attempt to overclock their hardware, exacerbating the situation further. THG's view, which we agree with, is that while this issue is definitely something AMD should address, it is not a threat to the vast majority of properly-built motherboards and systems. Third-party companies may use an eight-pin adapter for retail cards. The RX 480 relies on a single 6-pin connector.
THG goes on to note, however, that while this issue has gotten a fair bit of play in the media and kicked off a great deal of speculation, "we don't think this is such a big deal." They go on to note that at some point, the latest graphics cards began dedicating additional pins on the card to provide 12V power, though the amount of allowed current did not change. While the card's average current draw conforms to spec, it can spike as high as 6.74 amps, which is well outside the limit set by the PCI-SIG (that's the Peripheral Component Interconnect Special Interest Group). Testing from multiple sites has demonstrated that the RX 480 draws too much of its current across the PCI Express slot. The issue at hand is how much current is being drawn. As THG's follow-up article notes, however, this is fundamentally inaccurate. Most of the time, when we talk about GPU power requirements, we talk about them in terms of wattage. These auxiliary connectors typically provide the bulk of a high-end GPUs power, since the PCI Express slot itself can only provide a limited amount of current. Modern GPUs draw power from two sources - the PCI Express slot itself, and one or more PCI Express connectors attached to the back of the card. As far as we're aware, this issue affects both the 4GB and 8GB variants of the RX 480. We're going to dive into that response, but let's first take a look at what the problem is. Over the weekend, AMD contacted reviewers to inform them that it would have a response ready by Tuesday evening.
Tom's Hardware broke the initial story and has since conducted an exhaustive retest (Opens in a new window) and characterization of the problem. Specifically, the RX 480's 8GB configuration with 8Gbps GDDR5 exceeds the maximum amount of power it should draw from the PCI Express slot according to the PCI Express specification. While AMD's RX 480 GPU has been generally well-received, reviewers from several sites picked up a power consumption issue after the card debuted last week.
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