PC Perspective Advanced Power Testing
Update (6/30/16): I have posted another story that looks at concerns surrounding the Radeon RX 480 drawing more power than the PCI Express specification allows. There are very interesting and important details to see, so I would encourage you to check it out.
For our power consumption tests on new GPUs, we previewed a new measurement method last year that we are finally taking advantage of. This isn’t an “at the wall” measurement with a Watts Up or something similar to that; instead we are measuring power directly from the graphics card itself.
How do we do it? Simple in theory but surprisingly difficult in practice, we are intercepting the power being sent through the PCI Express bus as well as the ATX power connectors before they go to the graphics card and are directly measuring power draw with a 10 kHz DAQ (data acquisition) device. A huge thanks goes to Allyn for getting the setup up and running. We built a PCI Express bridge that is tapped to measure both 12v and 3.3v power and built some Corsair power cables that measure the 12v coming through those as well.
Click for a larger version
Click for a larger version
Things are a bit cluttered at the center of our graph with the new Radeon RX 480, Radeon R9 380 and the GeForce GTX 970 all consuming around 150 watts in Rise of the Tomb Raider. The GTX 960 is definitely a class below, using less than 100 watts in our measurements, with the aging Hawaii design pulling 260 watts or more. Considering the performance results we just witnessed on the preceding pages, this is impressive efficiency on the part of Polaris.
Under The Witcher 3 we see a similar story – the R9 390 is using the full 275 watts of juice that its TDP allows while new Radeon RX 480 is hitting the 155 watt mark or so, 5 watts lower than the GTX 970.
Now that we are have direct power measurement numbers to use, rather than power from the wall results that could be tainted by increased CPU usage at any of these points, we can do some interesting performance per watt measurements for all parties involved.
Comparing the RX 480 to the R9 390 and the GTX 970, it's most direct performance competitors, its clear that Polaris is a more efficient architecture than Hawaii and Maxwell. Based on these results, the RX 480 is 1.7x more power efficient than its last generation products and as much as 50% more efficient than the GTX 970.
Overclocked Power Consumption
Another quick data point that I took that I thought was worth sharing: direct measurements of power consumption while overclocked. How much did our power numbers go up with that pretty basic 3.5% overclock?
Click for a larger version
Click for a larger version
Ouch! In Rise of the Tomb Raider, the Radeon RX 480 was using about 200 watts of power when overclocked, a 33% increase over stock settings. In The Witcher 3 that number falls to about 180 watts while overclocked, but you can clearly see we are hitting a power limit on the card and it is throttling back.
This leaves us with an interesting question: will partner cards with better coolers allow us to better utilize the additional power this card can draw? My hunch is not really; we may be seeing some early limits of Polaris 10 silicon. We'll be waiting for some custom coolers to make their way into our offices to find out quickly!
A couple of points about the
A couple of points about the 970 OC vs 480 OC arguement.
The AIB cards coming , and this is coming from Kyle Bennett at H , will comfortably clock between 1490-1600mhz range on the core. 1600 been a golden sample. 1500mhz+ been very common.
That’s 970/980 level max oc. So the $$ are yet to be seen for the better coolers etc but AIB 480s are going be a lot better than a 970 is , aib vs aib even, as the 970 loses now in dx11 and badly in dx12.
Even in this review it shows the boost clock is throttled and under the max boost set by quite a margin. Its mainly due to the cooler and power limits on the bios i would think.
TDP is reduced with better cooling, so it will help a little. I don’t expect better than 970 power consumption after OC however , which is way higher than pascal which is a bummer. So what you are basically getting here with an AIB card is 8gb ram vs 4 (3.5), much better performance (particularly in dx12) and reportedly very good overclocking.
480 AIBs will be out before 1060 is also.
>480 AIBs will be out before
>480 AIBs will be out before 1060 is also.
Lmao.
There will be no stock of ref 480 before 1060.
For a perfect launch amd needed 100k cards, not 10k.
Aib cards – did you mean aib cards with custom coolers? There are only 2 tease atm, msi/asus and 0 info about specs and availability.
No stock , lol i can buy them
No stock , lol i can buy them now even in NZ. Not any cheaper than a 970 mind you here, but the value is better on the 480 still.
You missed one, leaks on Saphire Nitro as well.
I’m 100% sure we will see AIB 480s before 1060 .. its a paper launch 1060 on the 7th for sure, wait till end of month at least before you see ref 1060 at the earliest. Most reports on the AIBs is 2 wks, so mid July , maybe sooner. And if they have anything like the 1070/1080 shortages then yeah its an utter fail for NV.
So you will have AIBs 480s up against the ref 1060 on launch day for the 1060 is my pick, so could be quite a battle for that performance level.
Still good to see the RX480s are selling in large numbers even ref models.
I still hear AMD’s vice
I still hear AMD’s vice president and product CTO Joe Macri words:
“You’ll be able to overclock this thing like no tomorrow,” “This is an overclocker’s dream.”…
Some might stay up half the
Some might stay up half the night fiddling with the WattManager trying to optimize power use, then have nightmares… on either company’s card. Hopefully someone will share good tips as they get better at it.
The reference boards that you
The reference boards that you can buy now, are optimised for one thing: low price.
When the AIB partners start to ship their kit with better power delivery and better coolers, we will see 😀
“AMD is only able to run the
“AMD is only able to run the Polaris GPUs at 1266 MHz while the GTX 1080 hits a 1733 MHz Boost clock, and difference of 36%.”
This “review” needs a complete rewrite…;) Comparing the $600-$700 GTX 1080 with the $239 RX 480 is idiotic–but I see that doesn’t stop you from doing it…;) AMD hasn’t released its competitor to the 1080 yet…it’s called Vega and should be released around Christmas.
But, you could of course buy *two* 8GB RX 480’s for X-fire if you were of a mind to, and have comparable performance, 2x the Vram for d3d12 games, and still be ~$200 less than a single 1080, etc. But if that’s the kind of power you want you do better to wait for Vega, imo.
I think the comment was just
I think the comment was just comparing the clocks, not the performance. I think there is an expectation that with the same or similar process nodes, AMD should have been able to match Nvidia on clocks but they can’t.
This can either mean Global foundries 14nm sucks, their engineers couldn’t make an efficient architecture, or to keep costs low they are allowing low grade chips through to get volume.
Considering clocks are the way consumers get a boost from their cards for free, it’s pretty disappointing how little you can clock these to and how much heat they produce in the process.
The comment makes perfect
The comment makes perfect sense. They simply questioned what the deal was with the frequency being much lower than NVidia’s. Pretty simple to me…
AMD has already explained this at PCPER. They started the GPU almost three years ago and were targeting mobile first so the design was optimized for lower frequencies. They switched to get a VR READY product available so were forced to raise the frequencies which is why it barely beats the GTX970 (which is the minimum VR READY GPU).
Buy two RX-480’s for Crossfire and have comparable performance? Multi-GPU is not really the way to go yet. It’s going to improve though it will take about two years or so to get proper support into game engines.
And considering the GTX1080 averages 85% faster than the RX-480 Crossfire makes even less sense->
https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/RX_480/24.html
If we use $650 for the GTX1080, and $275 for the RX-480 8GB which I think will be realistic once prices stabilize, then there is a $100 difference in favor of a solution that may barely bet the GTX1080 at times and other times have the GTX1080 up to 2X as fast in some titles.
In fact, we don’t even know if AMD has the single-pass optimization for VR that can increase FPS by 1.6X. If not, and we use 85% then the GTX1080 will be 3X faster in some titles (or have much better visuals as both should have the same 90Hz).
Hi guys, can u please explain
Hi guys, can u please explain how is RX 480 is win for AMD?
Cause, GTX 1070 consume less Watts as compared to RX 480 (150W vs 150W), but gives significantly more performance even though 1070 is expensive…..
And if you look at another way GTX 970 also consume less or about the same Watts as compared to RX 480 and performs about the same…..
So, now my question is ” did AMD didn’t improve there architecture at all (like what NVIDIA did with MAXWELL), and only tool advantage of 14nm node OR I’m missing something??? ”
And please this is not fanboy or flame war questions, this is genuine concern of mine!!!
And thanks for the reply 🙂 🙂 🙂
It’s not an architecture win
It’s not an architecture win that’s for sure. Nvidia has that without question.
It is a market win since it’s a cheap card with good performance. The question for AMD is whether these are really profitable cards.
I came to the same conclusion
I came to the same conclusion 🙂
They improved their own power
They improved their own power metrics vs 28nm generation hugely – not so much against NV. You would think by the way some people go on here about power consumption that it matters more than features / gaming performance and value.
Its of very low importance on my own scale of important metrics. Still i guess when you can’t win Perf/$$ or best in segment points , that’s all you have to make a negative point about.
I guess some will pay more for the 1060 to have better perf/watt then spend years catching that value difference up in their power bill lol.
Waiting for the arguements in the next gen over 10 watts differences .. every generation that goes by this will matter and less and less than it already does now.
folks are tools and do not
folks are tools and do not see the whole story. RX 480 has ALOT more under the hood then comparable Radeons or Geforce cards, they are using very top of the line very new power circuitry on every CU which they have not had a chance to optimize for EVERY scenario, drivers for them are NOT optimized etc etc.
Why are “supposedly” GTX970 drawing less power but performing faster in Nvidia biased titles, I WONDER WHY, maybe cause it is Nvidia biased, maybe because the 970 is a much older card they have had time to optimize for, maybe the power circuitry that Nvidia used/uses is older so more “known” etc
RX 480 is a terrific design, I was looking at Radeon R9 380-380x about a year ago give or take and knew this was around the corner, so waited, I currently use a 7870 having owned 2 of them and kept the “better” one, this is costing ~$100+ less then my 7870s did, is using ~40w less not counting overclocking etc and also ~2-2.5x faster with double to quadruple the amount of memory, IMO that is a massive nice jump.
Keep in mind ALL electrical anything can have spikes unless you put a limiter on them, and in the case of high tech, these limiters can cause instant crashes if you are to severe with their limitations via cutin and cutout of power, obviously we do not want this, so there will be “play” in when the chip decides to regulate or not.
Anyways point is, to just base information on one or 2 points is BS when these things are amazingly complex, and while the GTX 1070/1080 are “faster” then 900 series they also chopped away some more and ramped up clock speeds to “make them fast” not as much parts to power, not as much power required, run them with lower clock speeds see how much performance they lose, give them multi-gpu capability via DX12 oh wait they chopped that away as well.
Long story short, I know myself and many others are quite happy with the results we see here from RX 480 considering the performance/power/price they have delivered and we know they WILL get better in time, not held back by proprietary BS Nvidia does and not suffer driver performance castration like Nv has done for decades now, it takes time to fine tune things like this, especially when your development team is MUCH smaller then direct competition, and if we were to go by what all Nv fanboys act, Radeon would not be competitive at all for decades, and that is simply far from truth its just disgusting
I know of one thing, Radeons have not used underspec components, massive raw amperage intentionally shortening component life, and did not chope things away and put limiters in place to hold back performance on purpose and still overcharge, can you say that about Nv, nope.
Anyways, to one above me, they didnt improve architecture like Nv did with maxwell ROFL, go do some reading instead of trollbaiting, and you will see Radeon did a great deal of optimization/improving with Polaris compared to what Nvidia did with Pascal which by all intents and purposes is just a highly overclocked Maxwell(which itself was more or less an overclocked/optimized Kepler)
Your comment about frequency
Your comment about frequency is meaningless to most people. BENCHMARKS are what matter most. AMD could not get higher frequencies because the GPU was intended for mobile so couldn’t overclock well (their words, not mine).
Who cares WHY NVidia is faster? They are, so I’ll buy their product.
I am recommending an after-market RX-480 to those people in that budget however. I’ll rethink that when NVidia has competition with a Polaris GPU.
Above $200 I only recommend the RX-480, GTX1070, or GTX1080 and none until prices drop.
edit: pascal, not polaris.
edit: pascal, not polaris.
Welcome to September 2014
Welcome to September 2014 AMD. Glad you finally caught up with an almost two year old nVidia product on a 28nm process.
This Card isn’t a
This Card isn’t a revolutionary rainbowpoopin Wondercard, but a step up for AMD. It feels a bit like AMD is still one step behind nVidia,
but at least they are still chasing it in some areas.
The only concern i have is that the market is already grassed up by nVidia’s 970. I mean look at the Steam Presence of this card.
But also they may enough folks who haven’t upgraded to this performance level yet and for them the 480 really is a no brainer in my opinion.
I have a feeling with the 8GB and DX12 capabilities it will age much better then the 970 and that it don’t had shown it’s full potential yet.
(There are still major Driver issues with GTA V and with the Powerstates in Idle, leading to about 7 Watt more powerdraw than it should.)
Some nVidia biased guys on youtube benchmarked it against an overclocked custom 970 while the stock 480 wasn’t overclocked at all.
Im sure some “Greenhorns” already have seen those Benchmarks as the proof of superiority of nVidia over AMD. 8)
But anybody who argued about the 970 have the same or similar pricepoint now most likely forgot that the new 970 price only came to existence because the upcoming release of the RX 480.
(Also an GTX 1060 might very surely influenced by it, price AND Performance wise.)
Also it will be more future proof with it’s 8GB, DX12 and modern Display Adapter Support.
I for myself was a bit disappointed by the benchmarks after all the hype, but if you rethink it, it still is a very good card overall.
So i decided to upgrade from my R9 280 that is with OC about 25% less powerful then the 480.
Mainly because of the newer tech inside, because i need freesnyc and a bit more performance now for my new 34″ UWQHD Curved Monitor.
And i rather play with less details till Vega than buy a more expensive Card from nVidia that refuse to support freesync.
Otherwise i may had even bought the 1070 for a about 65% higher price.
With seeing what other sites
With seeing what other sites are showign of the power draw for this card. I would be very hesitant to get one. AMD seems to be really pushing the limits by only having one connector.
Really like this detailed
Really like this detailed reviews
Question coming from older
Question coming from older hardware still running HD7970 Ghz edition, will it run good with I3-3220 so i can carry it around for another few months-year till i can save up for upgrades? my game collection mostly consist of DX9-11 titles so dx12 is not any of my concern atm.
Not sure if it will run well
Not sure if it will run well with your i3 processor as most sites only bench with latest Skylakes or extreme Intel processor. Nvidia seem to get more frames when game is CPU limited or directx 11 in general as well as 1080 resolution as processor power is more relevant. The power draw over PCI express spec for RX 480 might be a concern for your older hardware. If you can wait a month or so prices will be coming down because of saturation of new cards by AMD and Nvidia. If you want a stop gap card a Maxwell or even Fury or 300 series AMD cards should start being discounted soon. Don’t buy this at full retail as resale value may be poor later and if you’re getting by now keep saving.
I think its a good strategy
I think its a good strategy from AMD to capture the 85% GPU market in that price bracket to win some dGPU market share from Nvidia. If not overclocked it keeps the powerdraw down and people can play all their games at 1080p at full settings fine on budget to mid end pc’s.
Lets be honest here that is where MOST PC Gamers are at with pc specs and 1080p displays so good move by AMD!
Why does GTA V show total
Why does GTA V show total vram as 6gb? Any explanation for that?
I honestly haven’t been this
I honestly haven’t been this excited for the future of computer graphics in a while. Already ordered a 480!
480 mem spec is wrong its
480 mem spec is wrong its 256GB/s and whats up with 5.1tflops? most other sites report 5.8tflops or something
256 for 8gb, 224 for 4gb
Does Wattman support older
Does Wattman support older radeon series like r9 295×2?
How absolutely ridiculous is
How absolutely ridiculous is our society where we purposely disable stuff that works perfectly to achieve lower value..
Capitalism is absurd.
Small correction on the first
Small correction on the first page. R9 Nano is 175W. Almost as close as the Rx480.
To be honest if Nano droped in price it would be more interesitng product then the rx480 by a nice margin…
Do wonder when they will adjust the prices as currently R9 390(x) and R9 Fury/Nano/FuryX make no sence in terms of price performance against Nvidia.. 🙁
Come on AMD drop the prices.. I want the Nano 🙂
I would return the card
I would return the card before it passes retailer warranty period. This power issue is turning serious. You can wait until either AMD rectifies the problem or partner fixes with 8pin connector and power delivery.
Quality control may have been overlooked to meet demand on a seemingly rushed card. Gotta love AMD Robert’s response. It only effects a few out of the hundreds of reviews but failing to mention they didn’t test the same way as those that found the issue. I’d call that trivializing and spinning at it’s finest.
Maybe the bad cards have poor ASIC quality and shouldn’t have been released in the first place.
Poor AMD. Maybe it was part of their master plan to fry your motherboard so that you can just upgrade to the shortly coming Zen with shiny new motherboard required.
PS I’m just kidding about the master plan. Lighten up
This website is very good
This website is very good site.
@Ryan: if I grab the 480 8 GB
@Ryan: if I grab the 480 8 GB . is there a way to force my w1064 bits to use the vram as its main . Ms as an annoying tendency to favor ram(at all cost)128 MB of ram ddr3 ? Would this force OS to use go 480 vram instead or gamer got to beg till we re omln our death bed