AMD to Replace Overheating RX 7900 XTX Cards
In a recent interview with Scott Herkelman, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD Radeon, it was confirmed by AMD that the RX 7900 XTX graphics cards with reference coolers had “Temperature issues”.
This was caused by a faulty cooling system in a small percentage of the RX 7900 XTX reference cards. Herkelman promised that these overheating cards will be replaced by AMD or AMD authorised retailers. The cards designed and produced by AMD’s partners were not affected.
The Senior Vice President of AMD stated that the company knows how to identify affected units. He has advised that those affected by the overheating issue should call AMD if the card was purchased by the AMD online store. Alternatively, if the card was purchased by an AMD partner, one should ask for a replacement from the partner if it was a reference design purchased.
Herkelman stated: ‘We have the fix we are ready to send it to you. Just call our tech support line if you bought it from amd.com or if you bought it from one of our AIB partners, they have units. We know how to make sure and identify that they are good, and we will ship it to you right away because we want you to have a great product”
According to Herkelman, the Senior Vice President and General Manager of AMD’s Graphics Business Unit, “it all comes down to a small batch of vapour chamber actually have an issue, not enough water and it is a very small percentage. We said OK, that is the root cause”.
This confirms suspicions of the tech community doing teardowns and testing on the AMD reference RX 7900 XTX cards. These brave souls sacrificed their reference cards shortly after report of overheating issues surfaced in the second half of December 2022. Users experience performance issues as the reference cards lowered their performance to prevent damage to the unit during overheating (thermal throttling).
AMD stated that 110 degrees Celsius was nominal for the reference design. Obviously, this wasn’t the case, as the affected cards thermal throttled and with AMD now swapping affected units.
AMD stressed that the reference cards not affected by faulty coolers are safe to use. Bear in mind if your RX 7900 XTX isn’t a reference design it isn’t affected by this issue as it uses a different cooler design.
