I have a gigabyte gaming g1 8GB rx480 card. :)

[William Gaatjes]

Well, after some recent upgrading of my psu and my system case fans, i today received the gaming g1 card.
After installing i installed all drivers through the autodetection tool of AMD.

The graphics card has nice esd protection enclosures on the pci-e connector and all the monitor outputs.
Of course these need to be removed before inserting the card.

The dvi-d port and the hdmi port do work in parallel. I have my full hd tv connected to the hdmi port and the fullhd monitor to the dvi-d port. Both are 1920x1080p
That works, but i have the image duplicated. My monitor is the primary viewscreen and my tv the secondary view screen. When i requested windows for two extended screens, it also works.
The hdmi connector and the dvi-i connector work independently of each other, i question i had in my mind.

As expected, the card draws more power than the igpu does of the A10-6700 i have. I have the igpu disabled in the MB bios, windows device manager only shows a rx480 graphic card. I flashed the latest gigabyte F8 GPU bios immediately. That is taken care off. When the card is 50C or lower, the fans turn off.

I did some basic measurements :
Fiddled around with wattman. I will still have to play around with it a lot.
Right now, according to the reviews, the piledriver CPU i have is not capable of feeding the rx480 with enough data. Thus i lowered everything a bit until the (hopefully) next upgrade cycle over about 6 to 9 months.

This is without the rx480 card and devastator igpu only :

As expected, the rx480 draws a bit more current, but it is also a lot more potent when it comes to eye candy in games. I just started a game called prey , it sure is fun turn everything to the max.
I still have to buy the latest Doom.

the RX480 : Asic quality = 77,2%.

I had to move my hdd upwards and had to remove the hdd bracket from the case.
Luckily, the Sharkoon 5.25" BayExtension, bracket i bought for my ssd is also designed to hold a hdd on top of it. I have the ssd mounted below and the hdd mounted on top on the rubbers.

It looks like a mess. But i cleaned all cables up after inserting the card. I was so eager to test the system, i forgot to take a picture with the gpucard in it.

My silent ARCTIC F12 TC each with its own temperature sensor :

My case is set up in such a way that i always have positive air pressure inside.
Two fans blow in and one blows out. This way, the dustguards in front of the arctic fans can do their work of filtering the air.


Specs of my system :

6 fans : 1 CPU fan, 1 PSU fan, 2 case fans (+2 fans on the gigabyte gpu card).
PSU : Seasonic S12II-520W.
OS : Windows 10 Home Build 1607
SSD : Crucial_CT256M550SSD1 : 256,0 GB
HDD : WDC WD5000AAKX-00ERMA0 : 500,1 GB.
DVD writer : Optiarc.
RAM : 8GB 1600MHz ddr3 dram.
MB : GA-F2A75M-HD2
APU : A10-6700 with igpu disabled.
APU cooler : Scythe Shuriken Rev. B.
GPU : Gaming G1 RX480 8GB.

Now i can have fun running 3d mark time spy and everything.
And start optimizing with wattman.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I should note, i have a nice wooden audio video cabinet with a tinted glass door. My case may not look like much, but behind the glass door it looks amazing.
Cabinet, similar like this :

 

[William Gaatjes]

Here is the 3dmark timespy result :
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/17142029

 

[William Gaatjes]

I am watching netflix through the firefox browser and i have the wattman logging tool active and i notice that the gpu core jumps up to about max (1030MHz i have set it) and the memory spikes up to 2000MHz once every second and down again to 300MHz . Average consumption on the 230V side of about 105W.

 

[William Gaatjes]

That is odd. The spikes are gone. The memory frequency is now since my last post at a constant 300MHz with only one spike to 2000MHz.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Aha, when i have the watmman logging tool enabled, the power consumption goes up. Without using the wattman logging tool power consumption during playback at netflix is about average of ~92W. When i press pause, power consumption at 230V drops down to about an average of ~54W.
The big question is, runs the firefox decoder on the cpu or on the gpu ?
I have hardware acceleration enabled in firefox. By typing about:support in the address bar, all troubleshooting information is given.
And it says : Hardware H264 Decoding Yes; Using D3D11 API .
The decoder runs on the gpu. But i have no idea if the dedicated hardware decoder is used or that it is a shader program that runs on the gpu.

I have to start buying games now.
I always wanted to play games like Crysis.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I always used netflix in the browser and it is better to use the netflix app.
I just noticed the power consumption at 1080p HD and it is on average 77W now while using the netflix app in comparison to using firefox (on average ~92W) and the netflix website.

 

[guskline]

Congrats on the new gpu.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Thank you.

 

[William Gaatjes]

Well, i got the dual screen issue solved. To be honest, there was nothing to be solved.

My Tv is set to dynamic movie mode or something. That means when there is a black screen, the tv will lower the backlight to reduce the bleeding effect and give the impression of a higher dynamic range.
I prefer a black background because that is easier on my eyes. When i created two screens, there was nothing much to show on my television except the transparent taskbar and my tv reduced the backlight to minimum.
I just noticed it that when i move my mouse onto that the tv screen, the backlight is turned up and i have an image. When i open an explorer windows, there is an image.

Thus the hdmi and dvi outputs of the rx480 are independent of each other. A question that got me worried and i had in my mind while purchasing the card.
Played a game, tried 3dmark time spy and furmark. Everything works for as far as i can tell.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I thought it would be weird not to have a picture of the videocard in action. Here it is.

My case inside my cabinet. I made a hole in the back of the cabinet with an electrical saw. My pc sticks out a bit on the back. But that is handy, to get easy access to all cable connections and ports.
And it allows for cold air to enter the cabinet.
I exchanged all original colored leds for white leds on the front side of my system. Makes it look nice.

The temperature sensors of the arctic fans are located on the side panel but very close to the gpu when the sidepanel is mounted.

 

[William Gaatjes]

I am always curious how much the system consumes, and i measured it with my voltcraft energy check 3000.

I am playing doom (vulkan API) and with 60Hz Vsync on (capped at 60fps) @1920x1080.
Every graphic option set to the maximum settings.
Measured for some time and averaged the numbers.
Vsync on: @60fps :The power consumption at the 230V inlet is about ~205W.
Vsync off: @~110fps : The power consumption is about ~262W with peaks to 267W.

I have the frequency of the gpu reduced with 15%.
And maximum voltage is 1050mV (state p7).

RX480 is not a power hog with these settings at all while playing doom.