AMD releases driver that tackles excessive PCI-e consumption RX 480

AMD releases a driver that fixes the power consumption issues of the RX 480. The company had already announced that the driver would be available this week. After the update, the card draws less power from the PCI-e slot, tests show.

AMD reports in the release notes that a change has been made to the power distribution of the RX 480. The change results in less consumption through the PCI-e slot. Tests by PC Perspective and Tom’s Hardware show that the video card can now draw more power from the six-pin power puller. Although the specification of 75W is also exceeded, this is not a problem in practice. The consumption via the PCI-e slot no longer exceeds the maximum of the specification.

There is also a Compatibility Mode in the update, which is turned off by default. When turned on, this feature reduces overall power consumption with minimal performance impact. The option is in the Global Settings menu of Radeon Settings and clocks the GPU back slightly if necessary to keep the power consumption around 150W.

PC Perspective posted benchmarks of the new driver in both its default configuration and with Compatibility Mode enabled. This shows that the driver provides slightly higher frame rates as standard, while those in Compatibility Mode are slightly lower in many games. The higher frame rates are due to an improvement in driver.

The messages about excessive power consumption came out at the same time as the release. AMD released an official response after a few days and promised the arrival of the driver update that is now available last Tuesday.

Consumption via pci-e and power supply, before and after the driver update. Test by Tom’s Hardware.