Radeon crimson 16.7.1: fix the excessive consumption of rx 480

As soon as the AMD Radeon RX 480 was launched on the market on June 29, some media in the sector quickly identified a problem with the consumption of this graphics card. The new RX 480 uses a single 6-pin connector that supplies 75W of power, added to another 75W that the PCI-Express slot provides, the total is placed at 150W that matches the official TDP.

RX 480 consumes more power than AMD says

Sites like Tom's Hardware or PC Perspective noted that the graphics card can consume above the theoretical TDP (150W), reaching from 164W to 180W in some cases, this can cause computer restarts or in extreme cases to damage to the motherboard.

Comparison of consumption playing Metro: Last Light

To solve this problem, AMD has just released some new Radeon Crimson 16.7.1 drivers, which what it does is limit the power consumption and a Compatibility Mode is also added that manages to lower the power consumption even more, although this also involves damage Collateral and that is that it leaves the RX 480 with little margin for overclocking.

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AMD has thought of those people who overclock their graphics cards and to compensate they have increased performance with these new drivers, with a gain of around 3% and in DX12 titles (such as Total War: Warhammer) the gain amounts to 5.5 %. The Radeon Crimson 16.7.1 drivers also fixes some graphic flaws that were present in games like Grand Theft Auto V, DOOM, Hitman and fixed issues with Freesync monitors .

Although the software solution seems to work, it is somewhat difficult to believe that AMD did not know in advance that their graphics card consumed more than they said, they have simply encountered a problem that they did not know how to fix before launch.