AMD says that temperatures of up to 110°C with its RX 5700-series graphics cards are “expected and within spec” for typical gaming usage. The company’s latest GPUs, utilising the RDNA architecture, are known to crank out some heat, but according to AMD’s latest community update that’s within the safe operating range of the graphics card and nothing to worry about.
In the post the company explains the new approach to temperature measurement with the RX 5700-series graphics cards, and first introduced with the Radeon VII. Crucially, where there used to be a single sensor measure GPU core temperature and reporting that temperature for power/performance management, there’s now an array of sensors able to identify thermal hotspots and adjust performance accordingly.
“With the AMD Radeon VII GPU we introduced enhanced thermal monitoring to further optimize GPU performance,” the blog post by Mithun Chandrasekhar says. “We built upon that foundation with the Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs, and now utilize an extensive network of thermal sensors distributed across the entire GPU die to intelligently monitor and tune performance in response to granular GPU activity in real time.
“Paired with this array of sensors is the ability to identify the ‘hotspot’ across the GPU die. Instead of setting a conservative ‘worst case’ throttling temperature for the entire die, the Radeon RX 5700 series GPUs will continue to opportunistically and aggressively ramp clocks until any one of the many available sensors hits the ‘hotspot’ or ‘Junction’ temperature of 110°C. Operating at up to 110°C Junction Temperature during typical gaming usage is expected and within spec.”
Max Junction Temperature of 110°C is likely only being recorded close to the hottest area on the GPU, the bit working the hardest at any given time, and your average GPU temperate may be lower.
In our RX 5700 XT testing, across a moderately short benchmark run, the overall card reported a maximum temperature of 87°C, while the RX 5700 cut that down to 77°C. Comparatively, the Nvidia RTX 2070 Super came in much lower at 68°C.
The high Junction Temperature during “typical gaming usage”, while perhaps not an issue according to AMD, can be resolved somewhat with third-party coolers. These are now entering the market, and will prove a chillier alternative to the reference blower shroud.
Either way, the message from AMD here is: don’t worry, be happy. Got that?
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