After acknowledging power issues with its new RX 480 card, AMD has now announced an official patch to address the issue.
We promised an update today (July 5, 2016) following concerns around the Radeon™ RX 480 drawing excess current from the PCIe bus.
Although we are confident that the levels of reported power draws by the Radeon RX 480 do not pose a risk of damage to motherboards or other PC components based on expected usage, we are serious about addressing this topic and allaying outstanding concerns.
Towards that end, we assembled a worldwide team this past weekend to investigate and develop a driver update to improve the power draw. We’re pleased to report that this driver—Radeon Software 16.7.1—is now undergoing final testing and will be released to the public in the next 48 hours.
That means we should expect a driver to be released for the card late Thursday (7 July) or early Friday (8 July) at the latest.
The new patch will offer two options for those wanting to fix the power issues, reports Anandtech:
The default solution: shift some of the power load off of the PCIe Graphics (PEG) slot connector, presumably in order to bring power consumption within PCIe spec
The optional solution: a toggle that reduces the total power consumption of the card, presumably ensuring both the PEG slot and 6-pin power connector stay below their respective limits.
Do you own an RX 480? Do you plan on picking one up now that the power issues have been addressed? Let us know in the comments below and in our forums.
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