blahsaysblah wrote:ronch wrote:BTW, why didn't TR catch this issue? Did they simply get a better sample? But even so, they obviously didn't test power draw as extensively as other sites have.
You need special hardware to analyze power draw like pcper and tomshardware did.
Power Consumption Concerns on the Radeon RX 480
The Math Behind GPU Power Consumption And PSUs
AMD Radeon RX 480 8GB Review - Power Consumption Results
Yeah, TR only reports system power draw. It shows in their power draw graph, but the importance was missed. ...the GTX 1080 in the TR labs [also] need 265W of total system power to do their thing. Unfortunately that was the "story of the century" for this launch.... A red flag should go up when a "150W TDP" GPU with a 6-pin aux power (75W from aux + 75W from slot) is pulling the same system power draw as a 180W TDP GPU with 8-pin aux power. Especially when both products are reference designs not designed to do crazy overclocking like board partners do.
AMD acknowledged the findings and said they were looking into it, but were also dismissive in saying that for the couple reviews that had the issue, there were hundreds that didn't. Yeah, well, when those hundreds (like TR) didn't notice the issue and didn't dig deeper to test, then yeah... duh.