AMD Addresses RX 480 PCIe Power Draw Issues

Earlier this week, we reported that the AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card was exceeding the 75W power draw limit through the PCIe slot and 150W TDP for some users, which risks causing system instability or even hardware damage.

Initially, Robert Hallock, Head of Global Technical Marketing for AMD, informed customers that the RX 480 had passed external PCIe compliance testing, and thus was confused as to why this problem was occurring. Following an investigation, AMD has released an official statement (via TechPowerUp), revealing that it has discovered the scenarios in which the problem occurs and is currently testing a new driver designed to cap the power draw .

The official statement reads:

“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).”