As promised earlier this week, AMD has released a new driver for its brand new RX 480 graphics card which addresses the power concerns users were having with the card. The new driver comes just in time for the unveiling of NVIDIA’s GTX 1060, which is set to release on the 19th of July and go head-to-head with AMD’s value king.
Radeon Software Crimson Edition 16.7.1 Highlights
- The Radeon™ RX 480’s power distribution has been improved for AMD reference boards, lowering the current drawn from the PCIe bus.
- A new “compatibility mode” UI toggle has been made available in the Global Settings menu of Radeon Settings. This option is designed to reduce total power with minimal performance impact if end users experience any further issues. This toggle is “off” by default.
- Performance improvements for the Polaris architecture that yield performance uplifts in popular game titles of up to 3% [1]. These optimizations are designed to improve the performance of the Radeon™ RX 480, and should substantially offset the performance impact for users who choose to activate the “compatibility” toggle.
You can download the drivers here.
These fixes should solve any potential problems users are facing, and provide a breath of relief for anyone who purchased the card and is worried about long-term component damage. Although, I’m not sure if the driver update alone will sway any users who were on the fence about buying an RX 480 in light of the recent announcement of the GTX 1060, most will likely want to wait until the card releases and see how they compare.
