Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Hardware and Software => Topic started by: oboe on July 07, 2016, 05:30:40 PM
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Sounds like it can top the GTX970, for less $$. (All sold out on Newegg, but prices range around $199 - $249)
GPUBOSS.com doesn't have it benchmarked yet. I think I read its less power hungry than the R9 series. I have an R9 280X that's a couple years old and the RX is in my personal sweet spot price for video cards.
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See Dolby's thread on a PSU that is out of spec. The RX 480 is currently out of spec on the PCIe bus AND the six pin PSU connection. PSUs are usually tolerant of this to some degree, but probably (certainly) AMD can expect problems as power requirements change in actual use. I would wait on further refinements to the base card design.
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http://www.anandtech.com/show/10477/amd-posts-radeon-1671-drivers-fixes-power-consumption-issues
This AMD driver came out today (Crimson 16.7.1) w\ fixes for this power issue that has been tested to essentially make this issue a largely moot point for the early run of these vid cards.
I would hope that any later runs of the AMD RX 480 series reference vid cards are corrected at the hardware level.
Most AIB's are already rectifying this issue by either installing a single 8-pin external power connector or installing 2 6-pin power connectors to eliminate this.
If I were you and wanted a RX 480 now I would consider to get an AIB model (Sapphire, XFX, MSI, PowerColor, Asus, etc)....may be a few dollars more than the AMD reference model but will have better power and cooling performance.
Hope this helps.
:salute
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Glad to hear they could approach it at the driver level. I think that AMD is really helping to keep Nvidia on the ball and I did not want to see them take the hit I saw coming if they couldn't fix this.
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Thanks guys. Unfortunate news for AMD. I don't need anything yet, but same as Chalenge appreciate nVidia having some competition.
Will be following the RX 480 and interested to see its benchmark results.
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I was using the Beta Crimson driver against an HD 6850 card and the "new" driver update happened yesterday with my consent.
I can't say for sure if it fixed anything good or bad, but the Crimson (unsupported Beta) update dialog window-flash went away and they do support their chips if you enable the update notifications. I still declined their "game" enticements(?) until someone can tell me why I would benefit from including them.
I've had good experience with AMD and like Chalenge, I hope they succeed, and keep helping to push the technology.
Edit: Don't go with XFX if you can help it! Be VERY careful to check every spec on every card you consider. There is a reason some of the cards are a little cheaper then the norm. My 6850 card from XFX came DOWN clocked compared to other manufactures. My fault for not doing a search but I was in a hurry at the time and the price looked good. Other mfg's offered better cards for nearly the same price. Too late to help by the time I realized it.
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I was using the Beta Crimson driver against an HD 6850 card and the "new" driver update happened yesterday with my consent.
I can't say for sure if it fixed anything good or bad, but the Crimson (unsupported Beta) update dialog window-flash went away and they do support their chips if you enable the update notifications. I still declined their "game" enticements(?) until someone can tell me why I would benefit from including them.
I've had good experience with AMD and like Chalenge, I hope they succeed, and keep helping to push the technology.
Edit: Don't go with XFX if you can help it! Be VERY careful to check every spec on every card you consider. There is a reason some of the cards are a little cheaper then the norm. My 6850 card from XFX came DOWN clocked compared to other manufactures. My fault for not doing a search but I was in a hurry at the time and the price looked good. Other mfg's offered better cards for nearly the same price. Too late to help by the time I realized it.
Hi Easyscor,
Curious here as to what you're referring to when you typed concerning the "game enticements"?
I'm assuming you're referring to the software add-ons in the Crimson driver install or are you referring to the game choices in Radeon Settings................?
From what I've read of several reviews on the AMD RX 480 I like the review on the Sapphire AIB non-reference version......shows to outperform the R9 Nano when OC'd and the cooler looks good on it as well.
:salute
:salute
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I see Nvidia has announced the GTX 1060. From the little I have found it appears it may outperform the RX 480, GTX 970, and GTX 980 for a price of around $250. No SLI bridge connectors but I suspect many of us aren't interested in SLI. It probably won't handle 4K but I suspect most of us aren't going there either. I wonder if this may be the best answer for many of us for AH3 who want most of the eye candy but don't need it all. It may even let us run with shadows as well. In DX9 my Radeon 6950 gives me frame rates of over 60 with everything enabled but shadows and with the environmental slider at none. I'm happy with that. I realize with a lot of action those FPS will drop but any of the above mentioned cards are a lot faster than the 6950. It will be interesting to see how this comes out. I for one, am probably going to wait until AH3 goes live.
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Max resolution for the 1060 is listed at 7680x4320@60Hz, so yes 4k is possible. It may not perform superbly in AH3 at that resolution, but I suspect it would do so very, very well. The 6GB memory limitation would hold it back somewhat, but the 980 is already limited to 4GB so it is better there, too.
The 1060 sounds great to me, especially considering the price.
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We have a 980Ti with 6GB of video RAM. Just saying.
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I see Nvidia has announced the GTX 1060.
wantwantwantwantwant
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See Dolby's thread on a PSU that is out of spec. The RX 480 is currently out of spec on the PCIe bus AND the six pin PSU connection. PSUs are usually tolerant of this to some degree, but probably (certainly) AMD can expect problems as power requirements change in actual use. I would wait on further refinements to the base card design.
1060 is also PCIe AND has a 6 pin connection. It also appears to require less power than the RX 480. So is this a problem and why? What spec are you referring to? Not challenging your statement. Just trying to understand. :salute
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We have a 980Ti with 6GB of video RAM. Just saying.
Oops, forgot. Sorry about that mistake. My thought was upon the GTX 980s that I typically use.
1060 is also PCIe AND has a 6 pin connection. It also appears to require less power than the RX 480. So is this a problem and why? What spec are you referring to? Not challenging your statement. Just trying to understand. :salute
The RX 480 as released will draw more power from the PCIe than the PCIe standard specified as a maximum. The same for the six pin connector. AMD released a driver update yesterday that corrects the situation. A power supply's ability to provide clean power relies on devices remaining within a limited specification, outside of that spec the power supply could quickly develop issues that are harmful to your device(s). I can foresee situations in which a pc with such a device might appear to 'randomly' crash/reboot/bluescreen as the power draw exceeds the limits of the spec, but very real damage might occur also. Not a good scenario. A great PSU might more-or-less gracefully handle the situation and allow the OS to correct, but most of the plug-and-play systems out there would be the furthest thing from graceful.
With all of the problems I have already seen out of W10 I would not depend on it to handle anything like this, if it is even designed to do so.
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I did some reading so let's see if I got this right. A 16pin PCIe card can draw a max of 75W and a 6 pin connector supplies a max of 75W for a total of 150W. Correct? Testing of the RX 480, which is rated at 150W actually draws more (I read 168W) and may draw 90W or more from the motherboard and could damage some systems. I understand there is a software fix.
The 1060 is rated at 120W so this should not be an issue but I guess we need to wait for testing. Seems like an 8 pin connector for insurance would make sense but I guess that would cost more.
Thanks for the explanation. :salute
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Hi Easyscor,
Curious here as to what you're referring to when you typed concerning the "game enticements"?
I'm assuming you're referring to the software add-ons in the Crimson driver install or are you referring to the game choices in Radeon Settings................?
From what I've read of several reviews on the AMD RX 480 I like the review on the Sapphire AIB non-reference version......shows to outperform the R9 Nano when OC'd and the cooler looks good on it as well.
:salute
:salute
(http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=379951.0;attach=24808)
The discussion is here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,379951.msg5061095.html#msg5061095
Bizman echoed my thoughts. Probably advertising for 3rd party games and likely resource hogs. I didn't install the "Gaming Evolved" App yet still ended up with Raptor applications running on my machine. I uninstalled them first thing. Raptor was games advertising iirc.
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I did some reading so let's see if I got this right. A 16pin PCIe card can draw a max of 75W and a 6 pin connector supplies a max of 75W for a total of 150W. Correct? Testing of the RX 480, which is rated at 150W actually draws more (I read 168W) and may draw 90W or more from the motherboard and could damage some systems. I understand there is a software fix.
The 1060 is rated at 120W so this should not be an issue but I guess we need to wait for testing. Seems like an 8 pin connector for insurance would make sense but I guess that would cost more.
Thanks for the explanation. :salute
The 680 I use in my recording system uses two 6-pin plugs. I think if the RX 480 needs more power they could just change the card to accept two power plugs. There would be more heat, of course, but I think gamers are used to that.
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(http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=379951.0;attach=24808)
The discussion is here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,379951.msg5061095.html#msg5061095
Bizman echoed my thoughts. Probably advertising for 3rd party games and likely resource hogs. I didn't install the "Gaming Evolved" App yet still ended up with Raptor applications running on my machine. I uninstalled them first thing. Raptor was games advertising iirc.
Ok I see what you're getting at now.......................
Yep, I have from the start only installed the Crimson driver, Radeon Settings and since the Vulkan API was added later, Vulkan. The rest of the stuff I've never installed as I'm not into all the usage these add-ons were designed for.
As far as the games I play Vulkan isn't really needed, but I see this API becoming a norm so I load it anyway......doesn't interfere w\ anything.
Since I'm only using 1 monitor so Eyefinity isn't made available in Radeon Settings on my box I haven't had to deal w\ that.
So the short answer was both..............
:D
Thanks for the response!
:salute
PS--I currently have Crimson 16.7.1 drivers loaded on my box and all is showing to work very well w\ my Fury X. Very stable driver pack. Only issue noted is the same one that I have found since Crimson 16.4.1 concerning using the Power Efficiency control w\ Beta 22 thru current Dx11 vers in which the driver will down clock the GPU clocks approx. 45%-50% and cause the double loping graphics motion at reduced FPS. Didn't have this happening w\ Beta 21 Dx11 vers and never had this happen w\ any Beta Dx9 vers.
I thought about pulling my Fury X and installing my R9 290X to see if the issue was just related to the AMD Fiji GPU or if the AMD Hawaii GPU was affected as well but have been too lazy to do it.
:salute
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To stop highjacking that other thread, I moved my reply over here where the discussion includes the PCIe bus and the Crimson driver.
No problem.
PCI-E 2.0 lane thruput spec is 500Mb\s. At 16 lanes (16x) the total thruput is 8Gb\s which is more than enough for most games even today as more games are making more use of the GPU vs CPU to draw, render & display graphics so as long as a modern vid card has enough dedicated onboard mem and mem bus bandwidth to keep the vid card GPU from having to use the swap file created in system mem for frame buffers (which will increase the amount of data sent back and forth across the PCI-E lanes between the vid card and system mem thru DMA controller which is much slower than GDDR5 mem\vid card mem bus) and using DDR3 1066 mem (8.5Gb\s transfer rate) or higher there shouldn't be any "bottlenecking", ie, slowdowns. Due to this, IMO a modern vid card w\ a min of 4Gb GDDR5 mem is the min spec for PCI-E 2.0 16x to prevent frame buffer swapping. More onboard mem obviously is better.
At 8 lanes (8x) the thruput is cut in half to 4Gb\s and this is where most modern vid cards will be hampered in a PCI-E 2.0 spec mobo (equal to PCI-E 1.0 16x thruput).
Hope this helps.
:salute
That sent me looking for Bandwidth info in my Crimson 16.2.1 driver. It reports 128GBytes/s leaving me wondering how that can be. It also says the current setting is PCIe 2.0 x16. This was one of the first MBs to come out for the i7-2600k LGA 1155.
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To stop highjacking that other thread, I moved my reply over here where the discussion includes the PCIe bus and the Crimson driver.
That sent me looking for Bandwidth info in my Crimson 16.2.1 driver. It reports 128GBytes/s leaving me wondering how that can be. It also says the current setting is PCIe 2.0 x16. This was one of the first MBs to come out for the i7-2600k LGA 1155.
Hi Easyscor,
The bandwidth numbers you saw being reported in the Crimson driver is the total bandwidth capability of the vid card bus\dedicated GDDR mem speed on the H6850 vid card itself. As you can see, the total PCI-E 2.0 x 16x lanes bandwidth is much slower than the onboard vid card bandwidth.
This is why the amount of onboard vid card GDDR mem is important (as well as the number of shader cores\Cuda cores to handle the post-GPU graphics processing work to offload the GPU) to prevent the GPU from swapping frame buffers to system memory before the graphics frames are called to be flipped to display. As long as there is enough onboard vid card GDDR mem capacity for graphics frame buffers to hold ALL completed graphics frames by the GPU before they're flipped to display (in addition to the necessary buffer for the GPU operational instructions as sent by the driver) w\o having to send any of these across the PCI-E lanes to system memory to be stored in swap file then send them back to be flipped to display when called for, your vid card's performance will only then be mostly affected by the actual GPU's performance alone (other than sound processing which, unless you have a dedicated sound card to offload the CPU, will be the biggest hit--along w\ Internet packet transmission buffer capacity--to the CPU's performance as this will have to span across from the CPU to system mem across the DMA controller then sent to sound output in synch w\ the flipped graphics frames to display), which is the best performance scenario for a vid card. Now if you're using the GPU to process sound as well then that's even more of a load on the GPU and onboard vid card GDDR mem\vid card mem bus bandwidth in addition to graphics processing alone.
This goes for mobos w\ PCI-E 3.0 lanes as well.....just not quite as critical as it would be for PCI-E 2.0 lanes but still needs to be addressed for peak graphics performance (PCI-E 3.0 x 16X = 16Gb\s transfer rate vs the same 128Gb\s of your H6850).
Hope this helps.
:salute
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Thanks