Radeon RX 480 Compatibility Mode Benchmarks in Crimson 16.7.1
3DMark & Final Thoughts
3Dmark Fire Strike Benchmark Results – For high performance gaming PCs
3DMark is the world’s most popular gaming benchmark and graphics card test is used by millions of gamers and overclockers. Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for today’s high-performance gaming PCs. It is Futuremarks most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today. Fire Strike uses a multi-threaded DirectX 11 engine to test DirectX 11 hardware. 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme is an enhanced version of Fire Strike designed for high-end systems. In addition to raising the rendering resolution, additional visual quality improvements increase the rendering load to ensure accurate performance measurements for truly extreme hardware setups.
Fire Strike Extreme Benchmark Results:
Benchmark Results: In 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme we were unable to match the scores we were seeing with Crimson 16.6.2, but they are pretty close. You can see 3-4% performance decrease when turning compatibility mode on.
Final Thoughts:
AMD Crimson Edition 16.7.1 drivers change the way power is routed to the AMD Radeon RX 480 and they are confident that this solution solves all the power compliance issues that people were concerned about. The compatibility mode button is a bit strange to have as it comes set to ‘off’ by default. We asked AMD when should a user turn ‘on’ compatiblity mode and we were told that gamers should leave it off if he has no issues with their Radeon RX 480. We then asked what ‘issues’ would one experience that justifies turning on compatibility mode and we were told none since the lowering the current drawn from the PCIe bus and increasing the power drawn by the 6-pin PCIe connector to the systems power supply should fix everything and that is done automatically by this driver and all going forward.
At the end of the day the AMD Radeon RX 480 appears to have been ‘fixed’ depending on your interpretation of the power matter. Performance looks pretty damn close to what it was when we reviewed the card at launch, so we are confident in our performance numbers that we’ve been showing you since the card was released. We don’t advise turning on compatibility mode though as it does lower performance and as long as you have a good power supply putting more of the load on the 6-pin power connector shouldn’t be a big deal. The power matter only applied to the AMD Radeon RX 480 reference card, so once AIB cards hit the market this will be slightly less relevant.
We are glad that the Radeon Technologies Group was able to solve the Radeon RX 480 issues so quickly, but too bad they couldn’t have caught it and implemented this fix before releasing the card!