AMD has commented on recently identified Radeon RX 7900 XTX thermal issues, and its words may comfort anyone who’s invested in the next-gen graphics card. The design flaw in question is reportedly causing throttling and 110°C hotspots, but team red says it affects a small percentage of GPUs.
The best graphics card contenders of this generation can’t seem to avoid launch woes of the toasty variety, as the Nvidia RTX 4090 arrived with its own melty power adapter concerns. While AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 XTX thermal throttling predicament probably isn’t a fire hazard, findings shared by Igor’s Lab prompted performance concerns within the community.
In a new video published by PCWorld, AMD Senior Vice President Scott Herkleman is quizzed on the Radeon RX 7900 XTX reports. In response, Scott Herkleman says the root cause is linked to there not being enough water in a “small percentage” of graphics card vapour chambers, which somewhat quashes the notion that thousands of units will be impacted.
The SVP says while the issue is small, the company is taking the situation very seriously. If you are unfortunate enough to be affected by the flaw, Herkleman promises that customer support will “take care of you no matter what,” which implies the return process will be relatively painless.
Again, the problems specifically affect AMD’s reference XTX cards, so if you’re rocking a custom variant or the Radeon RX 7900 XT, you won’t have to worry about vapour chamber shenanigans. While time will tell how many GPUs are actually affected, Herkleman’s comments suggest the situation is somewhat under control.