By now, most PC gamers and enthusiasts would’ve probably heard of the Radeon RX 480 graphics card PCIe power draw issue (read about it here). Well, AMD has officially released a statement regarding the matter, which it hopes would ease the concerns of some RX 480 owners (or would-be owners) about the possibility of a damaged motherboard caused by the graphics card.
Here’s what AMD had to say:
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).
Based on that statement, consumers can expect AMD to release a driver update that should address the excessive power draw issue by the 5th of July – if AMD manages to find a stable fix, of course. Interestingly, almost a week after its release, reports of Radeon RX 480s frying end-users’ motherboards are almost nonexistent.
Hopefully, with the upcoming fix for the RX 480s power draw issue, consumers would feel “safe” to buy and use the graphics card once again. Regardless, we’ll keep you informed should there be any update from AMD.
