Flashing the Radeon RX 480 turns the 4-gigabyte version into the 8-gigabyte version
The GPU frequency of the card can be overclocked up to 1,500 MHz.
At the beginning of last month, AMD introduced the AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card. This is the first graphics card from the company with a Polaris graphics processor. The performance of the device is 5.5 TFLOPS, which is not bad for a $ 199 card (for a minimal configuration). In addition, there is added support for virtual reality technology - now it is an important direction that many manufacturers are targeting. The Polaris 10 graphics processor is manufactured using 14-nm FinFET technology. It contains 2034 stream processors, and a 256-bit bus is used to exchange data with memory. The adapter is equipped with a six-pin power connector and four video outputs.
The characteristics of the card, as we see, are not bad, but, as it turned out, they can be improved. Overclockers were able to increase the frequency of the GPU, and thanks to a clever trick, the video memory can be increased from 4 GB to 8 GB.
Immediately after the card entered the market, enthusiasts became interested in its overclocking potential. Overclockers were able to increase the operating frequency of the graphics processor graphics card AMD Radeon RX 480 to 1425 MHz. The nominal GPU frequency of the card is 1120/1266 MHz in the standard / enhanced modes. When checking the overclocked card in 3DMark Firestrike, a result of 14,646 points was obtained. This is higher than the cards such as the Radeon R9 390X and Radeon R9 Nano, which were dispersed in the factory.
After completing these experiments, enthusiasts decided to test the operation of the card with a liquid cooling system. In this case, an additional fan was also used, which cooled the memory chips and the power supply system. In addition, I had to install an additional external power controller. Using the controller, the voltage on the GPU was increased to 1.35 V. The overclocking result is impressive: the video chip frequency was increased to 1500 MHz, and the memory chips to 9000 MHz. The result in 3DMark Firestrike increased to 15363 points. True, the batteries warmed to 105 degrees Celsius, and the card began to consume 260 watts.
Due to the fact that the card uses 6 + 1 phase power system, it is capable of providing 58% more current when compared to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founder's Edition (5 + 1 phase power system is installed here). If the manufacturer equipped it with 8-pin power connectors, it would be possible to talk about an even greater overclocking potential of the device. AMD reported that the improved Sapphire RX 480 Nitro, Sapphire RX 480 Gaming, Powercolor RX 480 Devil and ASUS RX 480 Strix Gaming cards will receive an 8-pin additional power connector. And ASUS RX 480 Strix Gaming will receive a second connector - either an 8-pin or 6-pin one. Such cards should go on sale already this month.
In June, it became knownabout problems with exceeding the power consumption parameters specified in the specifications of the Radeon RX 480 card. The 150-watt adapter consumed 168 watts at full load. Being installed in the PCI-E slot, this adapter consumed 90 watts. This is more than the standard for the slot 75 watts. After the problem became known, the company fixed it by releasing a software update - Radeon Software 16.7.1.
The manufacturer produces two versions of the AMD Radeon RX 480 card: with 4 and 8 GB of video memory. As it turned out, the younger model AMD Radeon RX 480 4G video memory is actually 8 GB. A direct inspection of the version with 4 GB turned out that the board contains 8 Samsung memory chips with a total capacity of 8 GB.
But half of the memory is disabled by the manufacturer, the “extra” memory is locked at the BIOS level. Reducing the amount of device memory in this way is not the most rational decision, but in the first AMD Radeon RX 480 cards that entered the market, the disconnection was made that way.
As it turned out, the unit can be removed. This requires the program ATIFlash 2.74 . With its help, TechPowerUp representatives removed the BIOS image of the card with 8 GB of memory. Image availableon this link. After that, the resulting image was transferred to the younger model. Immediately after this, the younger model showed an increase in video memory up to 8 GB. The operation of the modified card was verified during the game of Call of Duty: Black Ops III. The toy consumes more than 4 GB of video memory in 4K Ultra HD mode (3840 x 2160). A test run of the game was made on the 8 GB version of the card. Both cards showed almost the same result. The original 8 GB map provided 24.6 fps, the modified 4 GB map showed 24.7 fps, and the original 4 GB map showed 23.3 fps.
The price difference between the 4 GB and 8 GB versions of the AMD Radeon RX 480 is $ 30.
Before flashing a lower card, make sure that there are 8 Samsung memory chips on the board. It may well happen that the manufacturer reduces the amount of video memory physically, and then when you try to upgrade the younger version of the card with the BIOS model of the older model, you will get a “brick”.
In a similar way, in 2011, they learned how to turn the ATI Radeon HD 6950 into HD 6970. The younger model's BIOS was changed by the craftsmen to the older model BIOS, getting the full HD 6970 functionality and saving about $ 100 (at that time). The first about the possibility of such firmware was reported by journalists of the already mentioned TechPowerUp site.
Speaking of graphics graphics memory is worth remembering the problemwith NVIDIA cards. Namely - with the model GTX 970. Manufacturer in the specifications for the card indicated the amount of video memory 4 GB. This is true, but the eighth part of this volume did not work normally. When accessing the latest 500-700 megabytes of GTX 970 memory, performance drops significantly. The fall is very noticeable - from 150 GB / s to 19.88 GB / s.
The memory card was divided into two segments. This is the main fast memory segment of 3.5 GB and the remaining 0.5 GB. The problem with the last 500 MB was manifested mainly by owners of 4K monitors or systems with multiple displays.
The system requirements of virtual reality helmets such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift indicate a powerful video card in the price range of $ 300. AMD offers its card for $ 199. Thus, the lower threshold cost of VR systems is gradually reduced.
Especially for VR mode, a set of libraries and SDKs have been released under the name LiquidVR (API DirectX 12 and Vulkan are supported).
In addition, the Variable Rate Shading (VRS) technology has been added, which is designed to save pixel fillrate resources in a VR environment. This feature allows the driver to reduce the load from the GPU to fill the pixels of excess space, compensating for distortion of the proportions of the helmet lenses.
NVIDIA GTX 1080 and 1070 cards also support virtual reality mode, but they belong to the higher and middle price segment. For example, the cost of NVIDIA GTX 1070 is $ 380. And the price of the flagship model NVIDIA GTX 1080 is $ 600.
Now the company promises to release new versions of drivers for their products more often than in previous years. For example, in 2015, only three versions of Radeon Software were released with WHQL certification, plus nine side versions with optimization of certain games.
AMD plans to launch six major driver updates with WHQL certification and intermediate versions for gamers that will be optimized for specific games.
NVIDIA has released a competitor AMD Radeon RX 480 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card with a price of $ 249. GP106 GPU contains 1280 CUDA cores. The number of texture units here is 80. The bus is 192-bit, the GDDR5 memory is 6 GB. The GPU operates at a base frequency of 1056 MHz, the maximum frequency is 1708 MHz. The effective memory frequency is 8000 MHz. GPU performance - 4,4 TFLOPS.
The card consumes about 120 W, the developer has provided one six-pin connector for additional power. There are five video outputs on the mounting plate of the card. DVI, HDMI, plus three DisplayPort.
At the beginning of last month, AMD introduced the AMD Radeon RX 480 graphics card. This is the first graphics card from the company with a Polaris graphics processor. The performance of the device is 5.5 TFLOPS, which is not bad for a $ 199 card (for a minimal configuration). In addition, there is added support for virtual reality technology - now it is an important direction that many manufacturers are targeting. The Polaris 10 graphics processor is manufactured using 14-nm FinFET technology. It contains 2034 stream processors, and a 256-bit bus is used to exchange data with memory. The adapter is equipped with a six-pin power connector and four video outputs.
The characteristics of the card, as we see, are not bad, but, as it turned out, they can be improved. Overclockers were able to increase the frequency of the GPU, and thanks to a clever trick, the video memory can be increased from 4 GB to 8 GB.
Overclock the graphics processor
Immediately after the card entered the market, enthusiasts became interested in its overclocking potential. Overclockers were able to increase the operating frequency of the graphics processor graphics card AMD Radeon RX 480 to 1425 MHz. The nominal GPU frequency of the card is 1120/1266 MHz in the standard / enhanced modes. When checking the overclocked card in 3DMark Firestrike, a result of 14,646 points was obtained. This is higher than the cards such as the Radeon R9 390X and Radeon R9 Nano, which were dispersed in the factory.
After completing these experiments, enthusiasts decided to test the operation of the card with a liquid cooling system. In this case, an additional fan was also used, which cooled the memory chips and the power supply system. In addition, I had to install an additional external power controller. Using the controller, the voltage on the GPU was increased to 1.35 V. The overclocking result is impressive: the video chip frequency was increased to 1500 MHz, and the memory chips to 9000 MHz. The result in 3DMark Firestrike increased to 15363 points. True, the batteries warmed to 105 degrees Celsius, and the card began to consume 260 watts.
Due to the fact that the card uses 6 + 1 phase power system, it is capable of providing 58% more current when compared to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founder's Edition (5 + 1 phase power system is installed here). If the manufacturer equipped it with 8-pin power connectors, it would be possible to talk about an even greater overclocking potential of the device. AMD reported that the improved Sapphire RX 480 Nitro, Sapphire RX 480 Gaming, Powercolor RX 480 Devil and ASUS RX 480 Strix Gaming cards will receive an 8-pin additional power connector. And ASUS RX 480 Strix Gaming will receive a second connector - either an 8-pin or 6-pin one. Such cards should go on sale already this month.
In June, it became knownabout problems with exceeding the power consumption parameters specified in the specifications of the Radeon RX 480 card. The 150-watt adapter consumed 168 watts at full load. Being installed in the PCI-E slot, this adapter consumed 90 watts. This is more than the standard for the slot 75 watts. After the problem became known, the company fixed it by releasing a software update - Radeon Software 16.7.1.
We increase the amount of memory
The manufacturer produces two versions of the AMD Radeon RX 480 card: with 4 and 8 GB of video memory. As it turned out, the younger model AMD Radeon RX 480 4G video memory is actually 8 GB. A direct inspection of the version with 4 GB turned out that the board contains 8 Samsung memory chips with a total capacity of 8 GB.
But half of the memory is disabled by the manufacturer, the “extra” memory is locked at the BIOS level. Reducing the amount of device memory in this way is not the most rational decision, but in the first AMD Radeon RX 480 cards that entered the market, the disconnection was made that way.
As it turned out, the unit can be removed. This requires the program ATIFlash 2.74 . With its help, TechPowerUp representatives removed the BIOS image of the card with 8 GB of memory. Image availableon this link. After that, the resulting image was transferred to the younger model. Immediately after this, the younger model showed an increase in video memory up to 8 GB. The operation of the modified card was verified during the game of Call of Duty: Black Ops III. The toy consumes more than 4 GB of video memory in 4K Ultra HD mode (3840 x 2160). A test run of the game was made on the 8 GB version of the card. Both cards showed almost the same result. The original 8 GB map provided 24.6 fps, the modified 4 GB map showed 24.7 fps, and the original 4 GB map showed 23.3 fps.
The price difference between the 4 GB and 8 GB versions of the AMD Radeon RX 480 is $ 30.
Before flashing a lower card, make sure that there are 8 Samsung memory chips on the board. It may well happen that the manufacturer reduces the amount of video memory physically, and then when you try to upgrade the younger version of the card with the BIOS model of the older model, you will get a “brick”.
In a similar way, in 2011, they learned how to turn the ATI Radeon HD 6950 into HD 6970. The younger model's BIOS was changed by the craftsmen to the older model BIOS, getting the full HD 6970 functionality and saving about $ 100 (at that time). The first about the possibility of such firmware was reported by journalists of the already mentioned TechPowerUp site.
Speaking of graphics graphics memory is worth remembering the problemwith NVIDIA cards. Namely - with the model GTX 970. Manufacturer in the specifications for the card indicated the amount of video memory 4 GB. This is true, but the eighth part of this volume did not work normally. When accessing the latest 500-700 megabytes of GTX 970 memory, performance drops significantly. The fall is very noticeable - from 150 GB / s to 19.88 GB / s.
The memory card was divided into two segments. This is the main fast memory segment of 3.5 GB and the remaining 0.5 GB. The problem with the last 500 MB was manifested mainly by owners of 4K monitors or systems with multiple displays.
The virtual reality
The system requirements of virtual reality helmets such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift indicate a powerful video card in the price range of $ 300. AMD offers its card for $ 199. Thus, the lower threshold cost of VR systems is gradually reduced.
Especially for VR mode, a set of libraries and SDKs have been released under the name LiquidVR (API DirectX 12 and Vulkan are supported).
In addition, the Variable Rate Shading (VRS) technology has been added, which is designed to save pixel fillrate resources in a VR environment. This feature allows the driver to reduce the load from the GPU to fill the pixels of excess space, compensating for distortion of the proportions of the helmet lenses.
NVIDIA GTX 1080 and 1070 cards also support virtual reality mode, but they belong to the higher and middle price segment. For example, the cost of NVIDIA GTX 1070 is $ 380. And the price of the flagship model NVIDIA GTX 1080 is $ 600.
Software
Now the company promises to release new versions of drivers for their products more often than in previous years. For example, in 2015, only three versions of Radeon Software were released with WHQL certification, plus nine side versions with optimization of certain games.
AMD plans to launch six major driver updates with WHQL certification and intermediate versions for gamers that will be optimized for specific games.
Competitors
NVIDIA has released a competitor AMD Radeon RX 480 - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 graphics card with a price of $ 249. GP106 GPU contains 1280 CUDA cores. The number of texture units here is 80. The bus is 192-bit, the GDDR5 memory is 6 GB. The GPU operates at a base frequency of 1056 MHz, the maximum frequency is 1708 MHz. The effective memory frequency is 8000 MHz. GPU performance - 4,4 TFLOPS.
The card consumes about 120 W, the developer has provided one six-pin connector for additional power. There are five video outputs on the mounting plate of the card. DVI, HDMI, plus three DisplayPort.