AMD reference RX 480 explained

[Lawliet93]

So there was a giant controversy about the RX 480 PCI-e power delivery and many of you (including myself at that time) thought, that AMD screwed up big time, but there is more, and I would like to demystify some rumors.

 

1. The rx 480 needs an 8-pin PCI-e power connector.

No it does not, it´s because the 6-pin one in the reference card is a pretty bad-ass one. It uses 3 12V rails (a normal one only uses 2, it has a third one, but it doesn´t use that). This little fact makes it basically 8-pin grade and it can actually deliver 150W of power.

2. The VRMs are shitty.

No, they are apparently one of the best ones on the market, only bested by the XFX (HIS) and ASUS ones. They use a 6+1 phase design (6 phases are meant for the VCORE and one is for the VRAM). And I mean it, they are bad-ass and can serve you even for LN2 Overclocking. The high-side mosfets  are rated at 66A at a temperature of 25°C and 54A at 70°C and 40A @ 125°C. The low-side is rated at 100A @ 25°C. They are completely overkill for the card and AMD could save some money by reducing the amount of phases. They will not blow up even, they just won´t. 

3. It uses to much power through the PCI-e power connector. 

Yeah it did that, because AMD stupidly wired 3 of the VCORE phases to the PCI-e slot and the rest to the 6-pin connector, but the PCI-e 6-pin in the rx 480 can provide up to 150W of power so... that should not have happened. The rx 480´s VRMs can be tweaked using software and they did that. I believe that only two phases can use the PCI-e to provide power and the rest of them uses the 6-pin, which is fine for 99,5% of all users, except... if you don´t use a low-end eight year old motherboard like the guy in science studio did... you should have no problems. And... if you don´t use a crappy PSU with no 80%+ certification, shitty cooling and not enough current on the PCI-e power connectors.

4. It has a shitty cooler.

Yeah it does...moving on. Yeah it´s pretty bad... Like, they could have increased the surface area by like 30% (the cooler itself has plenty of space for that) and use a good thermal paste and we could have enjoyed a sub 80°C quiet card. I plan on doing that, by gluing in (using some quality thermal glue) copper fins to the heat-sink and using thermal Grizzly hydronaut as my thermal paste (that stuff is a beast... it delivers like 5°C better temps than my MX-4).

5. All RX 480´s are shitty overclockers.

Well... it depends on how you measure overclocking gains. I go by how much performance I get by overclocking my card. With all rx 480, you should start with the VRAM, get it 9GHz (you can even go higher in MSI aferburner I believe) this will give you 7-12% more performance. Then get your core-clock up. All of you should get 1350MHz easily (a 6,6% increase). This should give you an increase of 12-16% in raw FPS. Don´t forget to get your power limit higher. Don´t go straight for 50%, but go for the number your card is stable at, it might be only like 10%. AND try to lower your core voltage if possible to compensate for the higher power limit.

 

I hope, that I helped you

 

Sources: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Amd/comments/4r9lb6/the_6_pin_is_not_the_bottleneck_of_the_rx480_and/

 

[TheRandomness]

Also, you can short a thingy (shunt? Resistor? Idk) on the back of the PCB near the 6 pin power connector to combine the 6 pin power and PCIe slot power and draw roughly the same from both.

[Guest]

1. 6 pin. Who said 8 before?

 

2. You don't tell AMD o save money

3. They uses too much power so what? Are you one of those who using a Note 7 that fear it will blow up because pf excessive power?

4. Well does all reference card has shitty loud cooler?

5. Best value card. If you want power/oc go get 1060 or 1070

[Space Reptile]

5 minutes ago, Lawliet93 said:

5. All RX 480´s are shitty overclockers.

proven wrong by Jay , who watered his card and got it to almost 1500mhz on a tiiiiny overvolt (i think it was 1.16v , correct me if im wrong) 

[Lawliet93]

1 minute ago, dexxterlab97 said:

1. 6 pin. Who said 8 before?

 

2. You don't tell AMD o save money

3. They uses too much power so what? Are you one of those who using a Note 7 that fear it will blow up because pf excessive power?

4. Well does all reference card has shitty loud cooler?

5. Best value card. If you want power/oc go get 1060 or 1070

The card uses a 6-pin, but most people said, that it needs an 8-pin, but that is nonsensical, because, the 6-pin in the rx 480 can provide the same power as a normal 6-pin (150W)

[Space Reptile]

3 minutes ago, dexxterlab97 said:

1. 6 pin. Who said 8 before?

[Guest]

Just now, Space Reptile said:

But that's not a reference card

[Space Reptile]

Just now, dexxterlab97 said:

But that's not a reference card

true , but if you read what OP said you would know that an 8pin is overkill since the 6pin uses all 3 12v rails it can provide ,

giving it 150w over the 6pin alone (unless you use a shitty molex adapter wich only adapts 2 of the 3 rails ) 

[ThinkWithPortals]

2 minutes ago, dexxterlab97 said:

1. 6 pin. Who said 8 before? 

2. You don't tell AMD o save money

3. They uses too much power so what? Are you one of those who using a Note 7 that fear it will blow up because pf excessive power?

4. Well does all reference card has shitty loud cooler?

5. Best value card. If you want power/oc go get 1060 or 1070

1: OP knows that the reference 480 has a six pin but he's debunking the myth that it should have had an 8-pin.

2: He's not telling AMD to save money.

3: The whole PCI-E thing meant that the cards didn't conform to PCI-E standard spec (ie. they drew more then 75W through the slot), which was a problem because there were reports of motherboards dying because of too much power being pushed through the PCI-E slot.

4: Yes, but OP is saying that there was a lot of room for improvement (better heatsink, better paste)

5: The RX 480 isn't a bad OCer, but not as good as the 1060.

[Space Reptile]

Just now, ThinkWithPortals said:

3: The whole PCI-E thing meant that the cards didn't conform to PCI-E standard spec (ie. they drew more then 75W through the slot), which was a problem because there were reports of motherboards dying because of too much power being pushed through the PCI-E slot.

cards like the 750 and 950 and pretty much every card that uses PCie alone can overdraw it ( the 950 had spikes of 200w at times , only for milliseconds , but stil there ) 

[samcool55]

The VRM isn't crap but whatever, it's objectively better than a couple of rx 480 AIB versions. (rx 480 red devil is really bad and the gigabyte one is also worse).

Also if you say that's a crappy VRM, then all nvidia FE VRM's are crap too because they are equal or worse depending which FE you look at. Maybe titan XP has a better one but that's not called a FE card soo

 

 

[MadyTehWolfie]

Meh AMD is meh right not wake me when they release something worth while to compete with nvidias high end cards.

[ThinkWithPortals]

12 minutes ago, Space Reptile said:

only for milliseconds

There you are then. Bursts that short don't really matter, what matters is sustained and consistent overdraw.

[Lawliet93]

10 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

There you are then. Bursts that short don't really matter, what matters is sustained and consistent overdraw.

There was an overdraw of about 85W, when they reviewed the asus strix gtx 960... but, they didn´t mention it.

[Prysin]

@Lawliet93

All these things were explained, analyzed and debunked in great detail months ago. Not to be rude, but your post is likely to just spark a flame war or further confusion on the matter by now.

[Lawliet93]

1 minute ago, Prysin said:

@Lawliet93

All these things were explained, analyzed and debunked in great detail months ago. Not to be rude, but your post is likely to just spark a flame war or further confusion on the matter by now.

In all honesty, I am not trying to do that, why would I do that? I just wanted to tell all of you the stuff I have learned and experienced. Nobody seamed to know about the high quality PCB the rx 480 (and almost all AMD cards for that matter) is using. Most guys seem to overlook the overclocking potential of the VRAM  and how much real-world performance  you can gain by overclocking the card. Most people did not even know about the 6-pin connector. If my post looks like, that it is to no use... than I am really sorry for that, but people seem to forget all of the things I have mentioned and they look at the reference Rx 480 (and at all AIB RX 480´s for that matter) as being terrible. 

[Prysin]

6 minutes ago, Lawliet93 said:

In all honesty, I am not trying to do that, why would I do that? I just wanted to tell all of you the stuff I have learned and experienced. Nobody seamed to know about the high quality PCB the rx 480 (and almost all AMD cards for that matter) is using. Most guys seem to overlook the overclocking potential of the VRAM  and how much real-world performance  you can gain by overclocking the card. Most people did not even know about the 6-pin connector. If my post looks like, that it is to no use... than I am really sorry for that, but people seem to forget all of the things I have mentioned and they look at the reference Rx 480 (and at all AIB RX 480´s for that matter) as being terrible. 

people dont care, they didnt care before your post and wont care after your post. Why?

Because it's become a sport to slander AMD whenever they make even the smallest of misstakes. Any positives is thoroughly ignored until the end of time.

[Lawliet93]

7 minutes ago, Prysin said:

people dont care, they didnt care before your post and wont care after your post. Why?

Because it's become a sport to slander AMD whenever they make even the smallest of misstakes. Any positives is thoroughly ignored until the end of time.

That is so true...

[Devin92]

Thank you for the post. Clear a lot of thing, even if maybe these info are out there as mentioned long time ago.

 

So for OCing, how is the performance you mentioned compare to 1060? will 1060 gain more with not extreme OC as mentioned in ur OP?

 

Also, I remember AMD fixed the PCIe issue with a hotfix but with a 3% performance sacrifice. but its made up by a driver update or sth. Can you explain more about this hotfix and what they did? If as you said, the reference card should be able to use the special 6pin and 75W from pcie to draw enough power then why the hotfix have a 3% performance down? or maybe its just my mistake about the hotfix.

[Lawliet93]

10 minutes ago, Devin92 said:

Thank you for the post. Clear a lot of thing, even if maybe these info are out there as mentioned long time ago.

 

So for OCing, how is the performance you mentioned compare to 1060? will 1060 gain more with not extreme OC as mentioned in ur OP?

 

Also, I remember AMD fixed the PCIe issue with a hotfix but with a 3% performance sacrifice. but its made up by a driver update or sth. Can you explain more about this hotfix and what they did? If as you said, the reference card should be able to use the special 6pin and 75W from pcie to draw enough power then why the hotfix have a 3% performance down? or maybe its just my mistake about the hotfix.

AMD did not reduce the performance of the card, they increased it for that matter. The changed the distribution of the VRMs. Now four of the VCORE VRMs are using the 6-pin for the power delivery and only two of them use the PCI-e slot. They actually increased the performance of the core by like 5-10% from the release via driver updates.