AMD Radeon Software 16.7.1 fixes PCI-e power draw issues

[HEXUS]

Driver will be released to the public within the next 48 hours.

Read more.

[jnutt]

There are a couple of vids on Youtube about undervolting at present. AdoredTV is one!

[sykobee]

The fix programs the VRMs to prioritise drawing power from the 6-pin over the PCIe slot. There should be no drop in performance, just increased draw from the 6-pin (which is perfectly fine).

It appears that in the reference design they were set to draw 50/50 from PCIe and the 6-pin.
The fix may change them to draw 30/70 or 40/60 (or thereabouts). There is a thread on overclock.net talking about how you can do this change yourself right now.

There will also be an optional checkbox for paranoid people to check that keeps all the power draw within specs, at the expense of maybe 3% performance. Nobody sane will check it. Luckily there are those performance increases in the driver (as is usual for an AMD driver release) if you do.

[kalniel]

Good this can be adjusted in software. Not good they're claiming 8Gbps for GDDR5 is unprecedented.

[scaryjim]

... There should be no drop in performance, just increased draw from the 6-pin (which is perfectly fine). ....

Whether this will be "fine" is questionable, and depends on the quality/over-engineering of your power supply. A single 6pin connector is only rated to provide 75W (6.25A @ 12v). If the set up is tweaked to draw, say, 2/3s of the power from the 6pin conector, you'll be pulling 100W+ (8A+) through that connector. That's only "fine" if your PSU is sufficiently over-engineered to cope with the out of spec power draw.

It looks like the vast majority of partner cards will use at least a single 8pin connector, which *will* be fine. I'm sure the vast majority of people who go for a reference card will also have PSUs that will cope with continuous over-current on the 12V line. But personally I'd be concerned about the long term impact of drawing that much extra current through the connector...

[sykobee]

A single 6pin connector is only rated to provide 75W (6.25A @ 12v).

Yeah, but you usually have more than one 6-pin connector, and they're all wired to the same place.

So if you have 4 RX 480s in your system you might have a problem. Otherwise you shouldn't have a problem supplying a lot more over the 6-pin connector. And many graphics cards do this.

[kalniel]

But personally I'd be concerned about the long term impact of drawing that much extra current through the connector...

It's only heat and they're not exactly complicated things It should be fine provided there's airflow around the connector. Now, when we had a 1950XT in an mATX powered through lots of molex adaptors... that got things, including the wires, more than a little toasty. It never batted an eyelid though.

[kryton666]

Still going to wait for the partner cards & reviews.
Any coming here soon?

[Xlucine]

PSU is cheap to replace, at least cheaper than motherboard - think of it as an expensive fuse