Recently, a Reddit user posted that his reference AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card was reaching temperatures of 110C Junction while playing the new Modern Warfare II. However when contact AMD with an RMA request, was denied, with the company stating that “temperatures are normal. If there are any problems, please contact us again.” Another user made a successful request, but was denied a refund for the previously opened box. Since then, the company has received quite a bit of backlash over the issue, especially with the increasing number of cases cropping up.
Cases of high temperatures on AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards continue to rise, with companies like PowerColor stepping up their efforts to help consumers.
Prior to this new development from AMD, NVIDIA received backlash for overheating and melting of 12VHPWR connectors on the flagship NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 GPU, which exceeded thirty people and reported cases of problems after the launch of the graphics card.
What is unique about AMD’s situation is that it is currently affecting reference Radeon RX 7900 series GPUs and manufactured by AMD. Covers all cards sold by AMD partners or the company, but not custom built GPUs using the same graphics architecture. It is speculated that a fault could be with some coolers or mounting designs, as De8auer points out in the following video:
Three years ago, AMD posted on the company blog an article titled “AMD Radeon Community Update: More Control Over GPU Power and Performance, Improved Thermal Monitoring, Maximized Performance.” When discussing the junction temperatures in AMD Radeon VII GPU Enhanced Thermal Monitoring, they released this statement:
…Instead of setting a conservative “worst case” throttling temperature for the entire die, the RadeonTM RX 5700 series GPUs will continue to opportunistically and aggressively throttle clocks until any of the many available sensors reach the “access point” or “junction”. ‘ temperature of 110 degrees Celsius. It is expected to operate at a junction temperature of up to 110°C during typical gaming use and within specifications. This enables the RadeonTM RX 5700 series GPUs to deliver much higher clocks and performance right out of the box, while maintaining reliability and acoustic goals.
one of the technical engineering leads the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX“Kevin” states that as of yesterday, the company is aware of the hotspot issue and is actively investigating and developing an action plan “to reproduce and collect serial numbers.” He further explains that the current COVID situation abroad is slowing down the process, but he agrees that a mechanical issue would fall into the creation and fulfillment of an RMA for consumers. Still, they are also looking for firmware updates to fix isolated incidents where a software fix rather than a hardware replacement would be necessary. “Kevin” also discusses edge heating, the temperature near the edge of silicon in a GPU, stating that 90° edge temperatures are abnormal, but 70° edge temperatures are nominal.
Reddit user and power color Platform representative “PowerColorSteven” is doing his part to help consumers with this current issue regarding AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards. For those who don’t remember Steven, we mentioned in This article that the company had a previous issue where AMD RX 6700 XT series GPUs were shipped with the thermal pad covers still on, which, at the time, would cause high graphics card temperatures. The sales rep has been closely monitoring this issue for the past few days and recently posted it as a pinned thread on Reddit:
uh… just adding this here in case anyone hasn’t seen my other posts.
if you are dealing with 110c problem and no one else is helping you. It doesn’t matter what (AIB you bought this from) you bought it from. send me an email or direct message (since my emails don’t work right today) (also please don’t use chat, that shit doesn’t work right). I’m putting together a list for my AMD contacts of how many problems we’re seeing. they asked if they were just a few users. I said it’s definitely more than a handful so now I need to show some kind of endorsement for my fat mouth. send me the serial numbers. I’m emailing the AMD guys how many drives are affected. power colour. Sapphire. gigabyte. and direct. what. send me the serial numbers. Hopefully AMD will get some news for all of us, but regardless, when I hear anything substantial I’ll make a post to provide some level of guidance on how to fix this.
— User “PowerColorSteven”, aka “salesman or something” on Reddit
However, it is difficult to know which companies accept RMAs and comply with them, since the number of registered cases has indicated that some are allowed and others are denied, even when it comes from the same manufacturer. Various other theories about the problem are emerging as well, from uneven cold plates to using a graphite heating pad to fix the problem. Since the number of cases increased during the initial reports, it is not recommended to alleviate the issue, but to wait until AMD allows an official statement or acceptance of an RMA for the entire series.
news sources: Tom’s Hardware, Reddit(AMD), AMD blog, Reddit (Power Color)
