AMD's Linux Driver Will Likely See A Power Change For The Radeon RX 480 Too

By now you may have heard that there is the potential for the Radeon RX 480 to draw more power from the PCI-E bus than it's rated to provide. In rare situations, this could potentially cause problems for the system. AMD/RTG is preparing to release a Windows driver fix while I checked in with AMD about addressing this situation under Linux.

With regards to the Windows Radeon Software for Polaris, AMD's formal statement emailed over mentioned, "...we are confident that the levels of reported power draws by the Radeon RX 480 do not pose a risk of damage to motherboards or other PC components based on expected usage, we are serious about addressing this topic and allaying outstanding concerns...We’re pleased to report that this driver—Radeon Software 16.7.1—is now undergoing final testing and will be released to the public in the next 48 hours. In this driver we’ve implemented a change to address power distribution on the Radeon RX 480 – this change will lower current drawn from the PCIe bus. Separately, we’ve also included an option to reduce total power with minimal performance impact. Users will find this as the 'compatibility' UI toggle in the Global Settings menu of Radeon Settings. This toggle is 'off' by default."

From contacting the AMD Linux team, they are still investigating but likely will see the AMDGPU DRM driver getting a similar change to the Windows 16.7.1 driver for the RX 480 power distribution handling. But for now basically stay tuned until more information becomes available. (For what it's worth, my Radeon RX 480 reference card continues running fine with its AMDGPU Linux 4.7 polaris-test kernel.)