Different brands Reference Rx 480. Vastly different power consumption/VDDC

[kykc221]

With the lowering profitability of mining, I'm taking a second look at power efficiency and notice my XFX reference cards uses way more power than my MSI/Asus reference Rx 480 8gb.


Here's a screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/H0eQt
4 Rx 480 8gb reference cards, one MSI, one Asus, 2 XFX. Msi and Asus were bought in August, XFX last month.

Settings: 1625 straps
Core clock: 1015mhz
Core voltage: 800mv
Mem clock: 2000mhz
Mem voltage: 860mv
1625 mem strap copied to 1750 and 2000.

About 26.8Mh/s on ETH each.
Taken from GPU-Z,
65 - 70W power consumption on MSI and Asus reference Rx 480 8gb.
83 - 88W power consumption on Xfx reference Rx 480 8gb.


The cards are running the same settings, however the XFX cards uses way more power and has 0.05V higher VDDC than msi and asus cards.

When set to -30% power limit, the XFX cards throttle while the Asus and MSI cards do not. Does anyone know why the XFX cards uses more power, and if there's a way lower VDDC/power usage to be in line with the MSI card?

Alternatively, can I flash my MSI bios to the XFX cards since they are all reference Rx 480 8GB cards?

Any advice is appreciated, thanks guys.

[Jasmint]

With the lowering profitability of mining, I'm taking a second look at power efficiency and notice my XFX reference cards uses way more power than my MSI/Asus reference Rx 480 8gb.


Here's a screenshot: http://imgur.com/a/H0eQt
4 Rx 480 8gb reference cards, one MSI, one Asus, 2 XFX. Msi and Asus were bought in August, XFX last month.

Settings: 1625 straps
Core clock: 1015mhz
Core voltage: 800mv
Mem clock: 2000mhz
Mem voltage: 860mv
1625 mem strap copied to 1750 and 2000.

About 26.8Mh/s on ETH each.
Taken from GPU-Z,
65 - 70W power consumption on MSI and Asus reference Rx 480 8gb.
83 - 88W power consumption on Xfx reference Rx 480 8gb.


The cards are running the same settings, however the XFX cards uses way more power and has 0.05V higher VDDC than msi and asus cards.

When set to -30% power limit, the XFX cards throttle while the Asus and MSI cards do not. Does anyone know why the XFX cards uses more power, and if there's a way lower VDDC/power usage to be in line with the MSI card?

Alternatively, can I flash my MSI bios to the XFX cards since they are all reference Rx 480 8GB cards?

Any advice is appreciated, thanks guys.

That just because the XFX cards use higher default voltage. You can reduce that and the power consumption is the same.

[kykc221]

That just because the XFX cards use higher default voltage. You can reduce that and the power consumption is the same.

In wattman it's lowered to the minimum 0.8V and I'm not sure how to edit voltages safely in polaris bios editor. How would you lower voltages further?

[padrino]

You have a fundamental problem with the testing, GPU-Z doesn't provide the overall power usage of the card, you might want to check both the bus and pixie with a meter..

With that said if the XFX is like Sapphire, as others have mentioned, it will draw more with a VDDC offset in the bios

[suggsy89]

Have you ripped the bios from both cards and compared them?

You can flash any RX480 reference bios to the reference cards.

Keep in mind not all GPU cores are created equal and some may draw more power to sustain a certain clock speed.

[kykc221]

Yes I did. The only difference in polaris bios editor was core clock speeds and idle mem clocks. Even core voltage is exactly the same.

[LoneRangir]

Yes I did. The only difference in polaris bios editor was core clock speeds and idle mem clocks. Even core voltage is exactly the same.

Polaris BIOS Editor is a piece of shit. It's not going to tell you the ACTUAL voltages, including offsets.

What program is capable of this?

[Jasmint]

Yes I did. The only difference in polaris bios editor was core clock speeds and idle mem clocks. Even core voltage is exactly the same.

Polaris BIOS Editor is a piece of shit. It's not going to tell you the ACTUAL voltages, including offsets.

What program is capable of this?

A hex editor - along with knowledge of how the VBIOS is laid out.

Not many people have that kind of knowledge.