How to use AMD’s WattMan, the powerful new overclocking tool for Radeon graphics cards - dickersonlegiring1976

Forget about fancy third-party overclocking tools. For the first time e'er, AMD's untested Radeon Software Crimson driver packs everything enthusiasts need to tweak, fine-melody, and crank their artwork cards—though lonesome if you buy a new card sporting AMD's next-gen Polaris GPU.

One of the $200 Radeon RX 480's biggest headlining features is actually a new Radeon Crimson overclocking joyride dubbed Radeon WattMan. The ability to overclock your Radeon card with AMD-supplied software International Relations and Security Network't completely new: Prior to WattMan, AMD offered its less robust OverDrive tool since about 2007. (Experienced Radeon graphics cards still default to OverDrive, even if you install the latest Radeon Crimson software.)

But patc OverDrive offered manipulate over clock speeds, the PowerTune limit, target temperatures, and fan speeds, it used a rather limited skidder-settled interface. Additionally, OverDrive's controls weren't identical granular and lacked important features like nub and memory voltage keep in line, individual clock state control, and real-time graphing of all of these operation variables. These issues forced most overclockers to turn to robust third-party software like MSI's Afterburner and EVGA's Precision X instead.

But AMD's Radeon WattMan remedies all of these shortcomings. Here's how to role it.

Getting around WattMan

Impermanent with WattMan is bloodless simple. Open up AMD's Radeon Settings app and click the Gaming tab, and then Global Settings, and ultimately the Global WattMan tab. You'll make up greeted by the interface shown below.

amd wattman overview — Click along any image in this clause to enlarge it.

WattMan's most striking feature revolves approximately its real-time graphing, dubbed "Histogram," which maps out your RX 480's activeness spirit level, on-going core clock fastness, memory frequency, temperature, and rooter speed. In other words, all crucial measure you need to monitor while overclocking your graphics card.

Best of all, if you see something weird on the chart—the likes of a big clock speed pretermit—hovering your mouse all over the issue will institute leading the stats for that particularized point. If you're trying to troubleshoot a cooling or functioning problem, WattMan's graphing feature is a godsend.

A thoughtful twist on this public presentation-tracking feature is the ability to usance it globally or with only specific applications. AMD's per-app Profile settings allow you to use WattMan to visibility performance while a specific game is running for up to 20 transactions at once. Take the game you want to visibility, enable the Histogram option for information technology, and WattMan testament set out recording when you launch the game.

A histogram tracking the Radeon RX 480's behavior inRight Cry Primeval's unique Profile WattMan settings.

This application-specific profiling ties in nicely with the rest of WattMan's overclocking capabilities, which rump besides be practical on a per-game basis. With the Visibility WattMan tools located inside each game's circumstantial settings in Radeon Redden, you can overclock your RX 480 in the games that postulate more horsepower and bump the poin temperature down in less strenuous titles.

Acting with power

WattMan's strong granularity is the application's biggest strength, and that strength is most apparent in its clock speed and voltage controls.

Like the power management technology constitute on modern CPUs, AMD's PowerTune management engine switches betwixt seven functioning states, which are defined by unique clock speeds and voltages. Using the WattMan tool you can configure each of these seven states to your have personal preference.

For most people, that means overclocking the top clock province into the highest possible static speed, raised from the RX 480's regular 1,266Mhz boost province. But in front you do that, you'll lack to increase the poster's power limit as overmuch every bit possible.

The power limit slipper dictates the number of power that your graphics card volition admit itself to draw. If you increase it, you can reduce force consumption-related throttling—which can lead to higher stable overclocks—and if you diminution it you can reduce overall king consumption. During our testing, we plant that the RX 480 performed slenderly better if you coiffur the PowerTune limit to +10 percent.

Theoretically the RX 480's PowerTune limit stern be raised all the way up to +50 percent (or lowered to -50 percent). But AMD engineers say that +20 to +25 percent wish belik more achievable for most cards. Ah, the silicon lottery.

With that done, overclocking a nontextual matter card involves firing off leading a looping benchmark like Unigine Heaven and and then increasing the core clock speed of your realistic card until the benchmark crashes. Then you shrink clocks speed a minute and hunt it for a few hours to affirm stability, continuing to reduce clock speeds if necessary. (Adjust the carte's power limit using the same technique.) We were able to push our RX 480's clock speeds functioning to 1,330MHz, or about a 5 percent increase, before we ran into constancy issues.

When it comes to the per-state potential difference controls, it's outflank to focus your efforts on the highest three clock states, where the RX 480 spends most of its time during intense play Sessions. State 7 is the boost state of the RX 480, where the clock speed in WattMan is set to 1,265 and the voltage is set to 1,131. The maximum electromotive force that WattMan can set for any given state is 1,150. If you require to overclock the RX 480, setting State 7's voltage to 1,150 will improve stability while you raise clock speeds.

Settle down

So now you know how to overclock the Radeon RX 480, and what to expect when using the tools. But WattMan tinkering with the destination of up great power efficiency shouldn't exist overlooked, especially given the unorthodox power consumption of RX 480 reference cards.

Merely setting the PowerTune limit to -20 percent transforms the RX 480 into a significantly more efficient graphics carte du jour, with lone a tiny hit to performance, as I detailed in an examination of the RX 480's world power usage at SemiAccurate.

If you want to go farther, "low-level-volting" is performed using a very similar process to overclocking, simply instead of playing with time speeds to increase performance, you decrease the voltages needful to keep out stability at banal clock speeds. AMD's WattMan makes this easy. Just before we dig in, cook sure that you have the Voltage Control on/off switch for some the GPU and the Computer storage in the Blue-collar verify berth. If these aren't both in Manual mode, your voltage adjustments won't let any gist, in a bizarre WattMan quirk.

The procedure for under-volting once again involves opening up a iteration bench mark and lease it incline while you incrementally cut back voltages. Eventually you'll lower voltages too far and the benchmark bequeath crash. Increase your RX 480's voltages slightly from that point so run for the benchmark a couple of hours to verify stableness. In our testing we were able to lower voltages for the top 3 states down to 1050 millivolts (Md) while maintaining blood clock speeds, which is an 81 mV savings finished the nonremittal settings.

Radeon Crimson's Underframe Grade Target Control (FRTC) feature posterior also serve you to save yet more power by capping the maximum framerate of you GPU, so your graphics card won't pump out more frames than your monitor can expose. Why let your GPU deliver frames you'll never see? Take the power savings instead.

Memory boost

With a power-sipping under-V or mayhap smooth a bit of an overclock practical, we can now turn to tuning the RX 480's card's memory. Cranking up remembering clocks can facilitate increase performance.

AMD's WattMan again provides gritty control over the RX 480's onboard RAM, with the ability to over-volt the RX 480's GDDR5 by up to 150 mVs and raise clock speeds from 2,000MHz up to 2,250MHz. We were able to hit a unfluctuating memory overclock of 2,200MHz, Beaver State a 10 percent overclock, after manually raising the voltage to 1,150 mV.

Fine-tuning

Finally, AMD's WattMan lets you define the RX 480's most noticeable characteristics. You can manually lot minimum and maximum rooter speeds, a minimum physical science limit, and maximum and target temperatures.

AMD's stock settings for all of these are actually pretty saving, but you pot pick off them to your bosom's self-satisfied. If you're overclocking, you'll plausibly want to increase the RX 480's target temperature by three to five degrees to reduce potential thermal throttling while the card cranks away at higher clocks.

Likewise, you'll deprivation raise the target fan speed from the nonremittal 2,200 rpm (RPM) upper limit to control your RX 480 stays cold under the increased heat. But don't take this too far, because the RX 480's blower-style cooler sounds like a ferocious hair dryer when it's spinning at 100 per centum devotee speed. Our good word: Set the target area fan speed to 4,000rpm—information technology'll exist loud—and ferment down to an acceptable-to-you noise level from there. We found 3,000rpm to provide the best blend of acoustics and temperature reduction.

Buttocks line

AMD's WattMan is a major come to the fore for Radeon overclocking, and a stellar in-driver tool for gamers looking at to find the most out of their new RX 480 graphic card game. If you've picked up AMD's new mainstream champion and haven't played around with WattMan up to now, the exclusive thing I ingest to say to you is, "U Watt Man?"

Because I sporty had to make a jape about that horrendous nominate.