rx 480 [Review] Is this worst RX 480 4GB ever? It is not... sadly

[ShampooCA]

I was hoping someone would have posted by now with a raised power limit bios.  Alas...:'(

[Guest]

Hi guys, to all who are still following this abandoned thread, I got bored and spent my night overclocking it

+90 on the core clock and +50 on the memory. I have not increased memory any further but  for core it was the max I could go

 

Temps were around 84 ish on load (disregard the 92 reported, I accidentally benchmark it while having my fan speed set manual at 25%)

 

[Guest]

@ShampooCA I wanna see how far your card can go

[Guest]

 

[ShampooCA]

@deXxterlab97 I'm basically at my highest stable overclock.  I played with it quite a bit.  Anything over 1350 and it starts to crash in games.  1350/2250 is stable, nearly zero fluctuation in Doom playing for 30mins or so.

OH!  New discovery, for me at least, a little off-topic.  Remember how I was bitching about Borderlands 2 and Skyrim being choppy as hell, unoptimized blah blah crying, well I've been reading up on the Ryzen release and all this talk about HPET - high precision event timer in windows.  Well I turned it ON for my HTPC (Q9650 P45 platform) and holy hell night and day difference.

Even when framerates drop to the 30-45fps range it doesn't stutter like a mother trucker!  It's like the computer's gotten a massive upgrade.  Now I can play and it's enjoyable on this HTPC on my big screen (48").  Doom is also smooth as butter.

So I tried it on my main rig (i7-3770 non-k, GTX1070), and there were some other windows updates at the same time, kinda screwed up my computer, gotta go home and fix it after work today.  Ugh. These kinds of improvements are so much more rewarding than getting a new hardware upgrade. 

I'm really happy about it.  Windows 10, Q9650 @3.6GHz, 8GB DDR3 800MHz RAM, RX480.  FUN!

Maybe I'll try for 1400MHz just to complete Valley tonight, I'll keep you posted.

Also, still no one with a BIOS update with MORE power eh?

[ShampooCA]

This was really stable.

I got it going at 1400MHz with voltage maxed out in Afterburner, but it was so erratic, clockspeed was jumping all over got a lesser score.

I'm going to settle on this.  Actually weird, I've never seen it this stable for Valley.  Nice.

 

Firestrike was 9700 final score, GPU score over 15000, b/c I turned off tessellation. 

[Energycore]

On 3/16/2017 at 11:33 PM, ShampooCA said:

I got it going at 1400MHz with voltage maxed out in Afterburner, but it was so erratic, clockspeed was jumping all over got a lesser score.

Sounds like a power issue, do you have the power target at max?

 

Also are you using the voltage unlocked BIOS?

[Mr.Meerkat]

On 17/03/2017 at 5:33 AM, ShampooCA said:

got it going at 1400MHz with voltage maxed out in Afterburner, but it was so erratic, clockspeed was jumping all over got a lesser score.

@Energycore Kinda sound like the same issue I'm getting...  

 

Whenever I get past 1300MHz with +100Mv and +50% power and issues...

 

[Energycore]

3 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

@Energycore Kinda sound like the same issue I'm getting...  

 

Whenever I get past 1300MHz with +100Mv and +50% power and issues...

 

Out of curiosity, what voltage do you hit with +100mV in AB?

 

Honestly I could hit 1360 on the stock BIOS at 1.1V. So you probably should actually dial the voltage back.

[Mr.Meerkat]

42 minutes ago, Energycore said:

Out of curiosity, what voltage do you hit with +100mV in AB?

 

Honestly I could hit 1360 on the stock BIOS at 1.1V. So you probably should actually dial the voltage back.

Probably like 1.25V if I were to look at wattman and add 0.1V  

 

And yes, I've tried everything from stock voltage to undervolting...

 

[Energycore]

7 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Probably like 1.25V if I were to look at wattman and add 0.1V  

 

And yes, I've tried everything from stock voltage to undervolting...

 

So you're able to do 1.25V, without the unlocked BIOS, in WattMan / MSI Afterburner?

What card and what driver?

[Mr.Meerkat]

2 minutes ago, Energycore said:

So you're able to do 1.25V, without the unlocked BIOS, in WattMan / MSI Afterburner?

What card and what driver?

Never mind, just realised how 1.15V is the maximum  

Don't like using wattman as it likes throwing errors at meh...

 

Asus RX470 strix (with a sole 6 pin), 16.11.3 (it's stable so why would I change?)

Also a protector in PSU likes kicking in when I'm overclocking...

[Mr.Meerkat]

@Energycore

Just came across this

Quote

The Strix RX 470 and its almost 145W just barely fit into the PCI-SIG’s specifications. After all, there are really just 66W + 75W available using one six-pin power connector. 

Do I smell a protector tripping on my motherboard actually? I mean I have tripped both it's power surge and short circuit protectors before...  

(both caused by the motherboard contacting the case) 

[Energycore]

3 minutes ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

Never mind, just realised how 1.15V is the maximum  

Don't like using wattman as it likes throwing errors at meh...

 

Asus RX470 strix (with a sole 6 pin), 16.11.3 (it's stable so why would I change?)

Also a protector in PSU likes kicking in when I'm overclocking...

I heard of your PSU protector. Weird fucking issue. Try connecting the 6-pin cable to other sockets in your modular PSU.

 

And yeah you have to flash the unlocked BIOS to do more than 1.15V and if I do that I can't push memory clocks. Sad times

1 minute ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

@Energycore

Just came across this

Do I smell a protector tripping on my motherboard actually? I mean I have tripped both it's power surge and short circuit protectors before...  

(both caused by the motherboard contacting the case) 

The power draw from the 470 and 480 got patched in a driver though, pretty sure.

 

And you should look at power numbers while stress testing. My 480 needs 1.2V  and 1400MHz to hit 150W for instance. I did get a pretty low power chip I think

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Energycore said:

 

And yeah you have to flash the unlocked BIOS to do more than 1.15V and if I do that I can't push memory clocks. Sad times

 

Hmm mine doesn't need to flash, it already maxed out. Should have increased some voltage but it goes up to 89 sometime and in heavy games like Tomb Raider you can tell the fan speed is at 70-80% and you can hear it. 

 

Not because I live next to the airport...

[Mr.Meerkat]

8 minutes ago, Energycore said:

And you should look at power numbers while stress testing. My 480 needs 1.2V  and 1400MHz to hit 150W for instance. I did get a pretty low power chip I think

Hold on, I just realised something crucial, I forgot to change target temps after I reset wattman...

So it was targeting 60C for the whole time while when OCed, it would jump to 75C due to my curve...FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU  

 

On a side note, 1.15V, 1350 1300MHz, 150Watts indicated by GPU-z

 

8 minutes ago, Energycore said:

I heard of your PSU protector. Weird fucking issue. Try connecting the 6-pin cable to other sockets in your modular PSU.

Already have, there are 3 6+2 lying around as ya know, originally cabled managed for dual 290Xs...

 

edit: @Energycore I feel like an idiot, 1.25V is indeed the max, 1.15V is the max for Wattman but it's 1.25V in AB...

Also when I said 150W for 1350, I meant 1300MHz

[ShampooCA]

Power target is at max, these el-cheapo cards have a max of 5%, yes 5%.

 

Is there an unlocked BIOS you can provide a link to?  I've been wondering about it for these 4GB cards from PowerColor for a little while now.

 

Completely stable at 1350MHz, but can't go much higher without it throttling like a mothertrucker, not due to temps, I can keep her nice and under 75, because it's cold as fuck here in Toronto, and I have her in an aluminum case by a terribly sealed window.

[Guest]

Just now, ShampooCA said:

Power target is at max, these el-cheapo cards have a max of 5%, yes 5%.

 

Is there an unlocked BIOS you can provide a link to?  I've been wondering about it for these 4GB cards from PowerColor for a little while now.

 

Completely stable at 1350MHz, but can't go much higher without it throttling like a mothertrucker, not due to temps, I can keep her nice and under 75, because it's cold as fuck here in Toronto, and I have her in an aluminum case by a terribly sealed window.

I can't keep it under 83 even..

Anyway no, I don't want to push my GPU anywhere further. 

So look around maybe you'll find someone who knows how to get that BIOS thing

[Energycore]

44 minutes ago, ShampooCA said:

Power target is at max, these el-cheapo cards have a max of 5%, yes 5%.

 

Is there an unlocked BIOS you can provide a link to?  I've been wondering about it for these 4GB cards from PowerColor for a little while now.

 

Completely stable at 1350MHz, but can't go much higher without it throttling like a mothertrucker, not due to temps, I can keep her nice and under 75, because it's cold as fuck here in Toronto, and I have her in an aluminum case by a terribly sealed window.

Well the RX 480 Unlocked BIOS is made for 8GB cards, so you'd have to modify it with Polaris BIOS editor to make it 4GB.

 

Alternatively you can modify your stock BIOS to do a higher power target without having to use the unlocked BIOS which might do weird things.

[ShampooCA]

I don't think I'd get much more performance out of this thing overclocking it to 1400MHz in games, so I'm pretty happy with where it is now.  It doesn't run hot, and it's stable.

It's loud, but not a nasty whiny loud, so I'm good, don't wanna mess with this too much, I bought it as a budget card $220 CAD, so can't beat that kinda performance for that kinda money.

 

I see other 4GB RX480 cards going on sale now for $250+, and 8GB RX480 cards on sale for $280+, which is insane considering they perform the same.

 

Like dexter said, don't wanna tinker too much with this.

 

Thanks for the pointers Energycore.

 

This card should last a while in my HTPC, as there was a major announcement today that Star Citizen is going Vulkan.  That's huge, no more DX12 for that game, and we all know how Doom Vulkan runs on these AMD cards.  Looking forward to it.

[Guest]

6 hours ago, ShampooCA said:

Like dexter said,

deXxter

 

 

[stealth80]

I know what's wrong, it's red, certainly not BLUE

[Guest]

2 hours ago, stealth80 said:

I know what's wrong, it's red, certainly not BLUE

the name only 

[Guest]

Worse minimum frame rate but higher fps overall

 

[ShampooCA]

@deXxterlab97 So I was playing around with my card again, b/c I upgraded my main rig with some AMD Ryzen 1700 goodness, so my HTPC and RX480 got the Z77 ASRock board with an i7-3770.

I was playing around with voltages, and came to discover this card does NOT respond to raised voltages, rather it loves lower voltages.  Try decreasing voltages from stock by 5-10 mV at a time.  I have mine set to -6mV in Afterburner, and man the thing is much more stable at 1350MHz now.  This card doesn't stop giving and surprising!  What was supposed to be a cheap toss out card ended up being a "performer" in the RX480 world.

 

Not bad, not bad at all.

 

Edit:  By stable I mean it was holding its clockspeed at or near 1350MHz without much fluctuation, and this was done with Firestrike, which doesn't like to stay keep stable clocks, and the other usuals.

 

Edit2: Also I could see the changes by raising the voltage, then running a benchmark seeing the performance drop before my eyes, then as I reduced the voltage the performance results were going up before my eyes.  I  thought I was tripping out until I got off the couch.  LOL