What just happened? After several weeks of complaints, AMD finally confirmed that the high temperatures and unexpected trottling in the Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference cards are caused by problems related to their thermal solution.
AMD’s reputation has been tarnished by reports that some Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference graphics cards are experiencing thermal issues related to the temperature of the GPU access point or the maximum temperature read by the sensor reaching 110°C.
AMD initially stated that 110°C is a normal transition temperature, so it rejected the RMA requests of some buyers and advised those users who experience unexpected thermal throttling to contact AMD support.
A recent investigation conducted by Roman “der8auer” Hartung led to the fact that the overclocker blamed the overheating problems on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX evaporation chamber; it is believed that there is not enough liquid in some batches of cards.
Igor Vallossek from Igor’slab received an email from a system integrator stating that the problem affects from 4 to 6 batches of Radeon RX 7900 XTX MBA cards (Made By AMD), which cover thousands of devices.
AMD has finally made an official statement that seems to confirm the investigation. “We are working to determine the root cause of the unexpected trottling that some people face when using AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards manufactured by AMD. Based on our current observations, we believe that the problem is related to the thermal solution used in AMD’s Reference Design and appears to be present in a limited number of cards sold,” the company said in a statement.
“We are committed to solving this problem for the affected cards. Customers facing this unexpected slowdown should contact AMD Support (https://www.amd.com/en/support/contact-call )”.
It seems that only the reference and AMD-made Radeon RX 7900 XTX GPUs sold by AMD and its partners are affected. Aftermarket cards with an individual cooler design seem safe. And not every one of these MBA cards overheats — the one we used in our review was fine.
However, a problem affecting thousands of units is not a minor problem. We will need to see if AMD issues a massive recall/RMA.
The contradiction is happening at the wrong time for AMD. Its Zen 4-based Ryzen 7000 processors are not selling as well as expected, especially in Germany, where Zen 3 chip sales are about five times ahead of their successors. The reports also diverted attention from the problem with a melting 16-pin 12VHPWR adapter from competitor Nvidia, which AMD happily mocked in a tweet before reports of eavesdropping on Radeon RX 7900 XTX cards appeared.
