AMD Responds to PCI-e Overcurrent Issue

AMD is finally speaking up after some sites have stated that the newly released Radeon RX 480 is drawing more power than the PCIe standard. While there is no recorded issue stemming from this discovery, it is still a reason for concern as excessive current can lead to damage if it becomes exceedingly high. Rated for only 150w, the AMD RX 480 has been noted to draw more than that drawing the disappointment of many as AMD has dubbed this card as an efficient improvement over its past products.

Next week, AMD is aiming to release a fix for this excessive power draw via a driver release with the scheduled date of July 5, 2016. AMD says the following in their email:

As you know, we continuously tune our GPUs in order to maximize their performance within their given power envelopes and the speed of the memory interface, which in this case is an unprecedented 8Gbps for GDDR5. Recently, we identified select scenarios where the tuning of some RX 480 boards was not optimal. Fortunately, we can adjust the GPU’s tuning via software in order to resolve this issue. We are already testing a driver that implements a fix, and we will provide an update to the community on our progress on Tuesday (July 5, 2016).