Discussion: Polaris, AMD's 4th Gen GCN Architecture

[Sakkura]

You don't think their engineers ae in the USA? Are they?

I think they still have their facility in Canada (from the ATI days).

 

[Mousemonkey]

You don't think their engineers ae in the USA? Are they?

I'm pretty sure they are.

 

[Martell1977]

But the question for me is whether AMD's fix for the power draw issue will have a negative effect on performance, and if so whether non-reference cards can avoid that negative effect.

If it's just a matter of redirecting the power draw and can be done via software, I don't see why that would reduce performance. Plus, there are several people saying they have under-volted their 480s and either lost no performance or seemed to gain a little.

 

[Math Geek]

Anyone wants to flash their 4GB card to a 8GB one, here you go....

AMD Retail Radeon RX 480 4GB to 8GB Memory Unlock Mod Works, We Benchmarked
https://www.techpowerup.com/223913/amd-retail-radeon-rx-480-4gb-to-8gb-memory-unlock-mod-works-we-benchmarked

nice of them to post the bios file. stock file from a card so you no have to worry about some frankenstein bios someone hacked together

just need rogue to do the honors and test it for us 😀 hint hint nudge nudge wink wink

 

[Rogue Leader]

Debating whether to do it or not. I don't want to take my card apart to check for the memory chips, however the likelyhood I have them is extremely high (the card they bought in the store is an XFX RX 480 like mine and my serial number is very low). We will see how brave I feel tonight.

 

[jimmysmitty]

And I think the fact that multiple people have had their boards die after switching to this GPU along with multiple other sites getting similar results is enough evidence to bring the issue to light.

Or so they've claimed. I would tend to believe them when they're like that bitcoin miner running three cards in one board, but that's as much an issue on the motherboard manufacturer and the end user's side as on AMD; if three 85W PCIe cards can overload the 24-pin ATX connector, then surely four compliant 75W PCIe cards could do the same (since 4x75 is more than 3x85). Or similar if we look at current on the 12V rail instead.

And in general, it might be prudent to refer back to the articles Tom's has published. In the launch article, this is what they said:

To be clear, your motherboard isn't going to catch fire. But standards exist for a reason.

After which they cut short the overclocking tests because that was ramping power consumption considerably higher (they didn't explicitly say so, but the "mobo isn't going to catch fire" statement would possibly cease to apply when overclocking).

And indeed, the second article reaffirms that:

We never implied in our launch article that a system made up of solid components might be directly damaged by an AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card running at stock clock frequencies.

Ie. running stock clocks and with everything else obeying the spec, there should be no damage.

But if AMD starts exceeding the spec, what's to stop someone else from doing the same? Then eventually we might not be able to rely on the specification for assured safe interoperability. This is at least my view on the "standards exist for a reason" argument advanced in the launch article.

As I said with the Bitcoin miner it was a design fault with the GPU. It is obvious since he was previously using R9 280Xs which are 250W GPUs. Main difference is they have dual 8pin PCIe connectors which more than makes up for the extra 100W of power draw.

As well bitcoin miners normally run at stock or even lower the clock speed or VRAM speed depending on what kind of coin they are mining, some benefit from higher TFLOPS while others benefit from faster VRAM.

And I am pretty sure AMD did not want to go out of spec, it is a dangerous game. No company wants to as it would limit their ability to advertise things such as "PCIe" or "80Plus" etc.

No one is accusing them of doing this on purpose, although it seems like something that would have been caught in QC but rather that they should have an answer for it with a fix.

You don't think their engineers ae in the USA? Are they?

Yes? They are an American company. Headquarters is in Sunnyvale, CA with another big office in Austin, TX and then another in Colorado. Then they have the ATI office in Canada.

 

[-Fran-]

Debating whether to do it or not. I don't want to take my card apart to check for the memory chips, however the likelyhood I have them is extremely high (the card they bought in the store is an XFX RX 480 like mine and my serial number is very low). We will see how brave I feel tonight.

*looks at 480 as if it were a beer bong*

DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT.

What is the worst that can happen? Brick your card? I bet you've always wanted to have an AMD paper weight.

As I said with the Bitcoin miner it was a design fault with the GPU.

Nitpicking: Not a GPU design issue, but a PCB "crappy call" issue (now semi-confirmed by Toms'). I don't want to escalate (or help to) a potential "Polaris has power issues" when it was just the PCB.

Cheers!

EDIT: Added quote.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Debating whether to do it or not. I don't want to take my card apart to check for the memory chips, however the likelyhood I have them is extremely high (the card they bought in the store is an XFX RX 480 like mine and my serial number is very low). We will see how brave I feel tonight.

You have to. For science and stuff. 😛

 

[jimmysmitty]

Debating whether to do it or not. I don't want to take my card apart to check for the memory chips, however the likelyhood I have them is extremely high (the card they bought in the store is an XFX RX 480 like mine and my serial number is very low). We will see how brave I feel tonight.

*looks at 480 as if it were a beer bong*

DO IT, DO IT, DO IT, DO IT.

What is the worst that can happen? Brick your card? I bet you've always wanted to have an AMD paper weight.

As I said with the Bitcoin miner it was a design fault with the GPU.

Nitpicking: Not a GPU design issue, but a PCB "crappy call" issue (now semi-confirmed by Toms'). I don't want to escalate (or help to) a potential "Polaris has power issues" when it was just the PCB.

Cheers!

EDIT: Added quote.

To clarify when I say GPU I mean the whole thing not just the core.

Although we have yet to see if it might have power issues as it does use quite a bit more power for the performance compared to Pascal but that might be a process issue although I think GCN is just more power hungry than nVidias designs.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

I hope you all read the follow-up article http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/id-3111602/amd-radeon-480-power-measurements-repeated-clarified.html

 

[Rogue Leader]

HA IT WORKED!!!!

 

[Deleted member 217926]

Excellent.

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

This confirms what I originally thought. And is the reason why I thought they jumped to a conclusion, because I did read other threads and there are A LOT of people that think that specifications means everything. However, I never once said that anyone was incompetent, that's just making stuff up.

"4. Current hardware should be able to handle this amount of current without taking any damage, as long as the motherboard’s slots are clean and not corroded."

"There shouldn’t be any problems unless cheap, dirty or outdated components are used, the card isn’t installed correctly, or the amount of power drawn is increased by overclocking the card."

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-rx-480-power-measurements,4622-2.html

Very glad there's in depth testing, and I'm glad I'm apart of this community.

If anyone watched the live stream where Ed announced the Sapphire Nitro card. He said that the card doesn't need an 8 pin, but they included one anyways???

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Yep, the issue seems to have been blown out of proportion, at least in the mind of the author of that article. And I trust him more than random babblers on the Internet.

 

[Math Geek]

HA IT WORKED!!!!

very nice. as soon as the fix comes in for the power draw, you're in GREAT shape. saves $40 on the 8gb card.

thanks for giving it a shot. must have been a bit nerve racking to pull the trigger on the bios change.

 

[BurgerandChips66]

Was it worth expanding to 8GB? Quite possibly.... https://youtu.be/HYb7FYfIc2g

Gamers Nexus has a comparison. The gains aren't huge but they're there.

 

[Math Geek]

especially for free, any gain is worth that price 😀

 

[Suzuki@1473780084@1473780163]

What happens if they pull an Intel?

I wonder if this works on all cards? Nobody seems to know other than what they had available.

 

[Math Geek]

no idea. all the reports say this was done by amd to keep 4gb supplies up for launch day. some type of memory chip shortage for the 4gb cards. so they just used what they had and sold 8gb cards as 4gb with a bios tweak.

the memory chips are supposed to be better available now so there is no reason to keep making 4gb cards with the extra memory on them. but for the lucky ones who bought one, they get a freebie upgrade. would be silly to just keep throwing free memory onto a card and losing that money with every sale.

the intel disabled cores is a bit of a different thing since the cpu's are done this way anyway. there is no extra stuff being added that costs anymore that already spent. a chip is made and tested. if all good, then it's an i7. if not then disable the hyper threading and see if it works as an i5. it's ability to handle voltage and such nets the various clock speeds on the locked chips. keep downgrading as needed until you have a chip working in spec. maybe an i3 with 2 cores and HT enabled. there is evidence to support them using better capable chips as lower end models when supply needs arose as well. such as the old school chips referred to above. you could literally pencil in a connection on the cpu and re-enable cores that had been cut out of the loop but were still physically there on the die.

not exactly the same thing as adding cores after the fact and just giving them away at lower prices.

 

[-Fran-]

What happens if they pull an Intel?

I wonder if this works on all cards? Nobody seems to know other than what they had available.

Then we better get them before they run out 😛

I will try the same, just for kicks. If it works, nice; if it doesn't it wasn't so expensive to begin with anyway xD

Cheers!

 

[Sakkura]

And I think the fact that multiple people have had their boards die after switching to this GPU along with multiple other sites getting similar results is enough evidence to bring the issue to light.

Or so they've claimed. I would tend to believe them when they're like that bitcoin miner running three cards in one board, but that's as much an issue on the motherboard manufacturer and the end user's side as on AMD; if three 85W PCIe cards can overload the 24-pin ATX connector, then surely four compliant 75W PCIe cards could do the same (since 4x75 is more than 3x85). Or similar if we look at current on the 12V rail instead.

And in general, it might be prudent to refer back to the articles Tom's has published. In the launch article, this is what they said:

To be clear, your motherboard isn't going to catch fire. But standards exist for a reason.

After which they cut short the overclocking tests because that was ramping power consumption considerably higher (they didn't explicitly say so, but the "mobo isn't going to catch fire" statement would possibly cease to apply when overclocking).

And indeed, the second article reaffirms that:

We never implied in our launch article that a system made up of solid components might be directly damaged by an AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card running at stock clock frequencies.

Ie. running stock clocks and with everything else obeying the spec, there should be no damage.

But if AMD starts exceeding the spec, what's to stop someone else from doing the same? Then eventually we might not be able to rely on the specification for assured safe interoperability. This is at least my view on the "standards exist for a reason" argument advanced in the launch article.

As I said with the Bitcoin miner it was a design fault with the GPU. It is obvious since he was previously using R9 280Xs which are 250W GPUs. Main difference is they have dual 8pin PCIe connectors which more than makes up for the extra 100W of power draw.

As well bitcoin miners normally run at stock or even lower the clock speed or VRAM speed depending on what kind of coin they are mining, some benefit from higher TFLOPS while others benefit from faster VRAM.

And I am pretty sure AMD did not want to go out of spec, it is a dangerous game. No company wants to as it would limit their ability to advertise things such as "PCIe" or "80Plus" etc.

No one is accusing them of doing this on purpose, although it seems like something that would have been caught in QC but rather that they should have an answer for it with a fix.

As I explained, the problem would not have happened without a significant issue in the motherboard. So yeah there was an issue with the cards, but it exposed a more critical issue with the motherboard. And flawed motherboards can die just fine without any 480s plugged in.

 

[Rogue Leader]

After running some tests I saw no advantage in Firestrike, I am getting around the same scores as before. 8gb definitely shows up everywhere. I even tried reinstalling the drivers it was no help.

Power useage is the same, whole system hits about 400w very occasionally mostly though between 310 and 370w.

 

[Deleted member 217926]

I would suspect that the card is pulling at least a bit more power for the extra 4GB of VRAM. Also I don't believe the GPU is powerful enough for the extra memory to make much of a difference anywhere but Crossfire. Still a free upgrade is a free upgrade. I would have done it too.

The last time I remember unlocking hardware on a graphics card was an AGP GeForce 6800GS that unlocked into a 6800GT by turning on shaders with RivaTuner. Easily 10 years ago.

 

[Turb0Yoda]

I would suspect that the card is pulling at least a bit more power for the extra 4GB of VRAM. Also I don't believe the GPU is powerful enough for the extra memory to make much of a difference anywhere but Crossfire. Still a free upgrade is a free upgrade. I would have done it too.

The last time I remember unlocking hardware on a graphics card was an AGP GeForce 6800GS that unlocked into a 6800GT by turning on shaders with RivaTuner. Easily 10 years ago.

*turns gt 740 into a gtx 750*

 

[Rogue Leader]

Tried out DOOM, was able to turn on the Nightmare settings that were previously disabled due to only 4gb of VRAM. No hit to FPS that I noticed, still ran just as smooth at 70-100+ fps.

Very happy with my free upgrade hehe