Be Careful With AMD Graphics Cards: Many Radeons Have a Manufacturing Defect

In the last few days we learned that AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX cards with reference cooling system reach far too high temperatures, which leads to a drop in performance through throttling.

Turns out that there may be thousands of such faulty models, and, as Igor’sLAB reports, the issue is supposed to have been known to the reds virtually since the latest Radeons were launched.

Thousands of AMD cards have a manufacturing defect

The excessive hot spot temperature, reaching up to 110 degrees Celsius, is supposed to be due to problems with the vapor chamber.

Presumably, too little coolant was injected into it, though there is also the option that the chamber’s design is not very efficient.

According to an email received by Igor’sLAB from one of AMD’s system integrators, the error affects at least several batches of hardware, translating into thousands of graphics cards.

This has also been confirmed by representatives of some stores, which have been asked to return the devices.

Also, it is known that the flaw is only present in models with a reference cooling system, thus if you have bought or intend to buy a variant with proprietary cooling, there should theoretically be no problem.

Thousands of AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX reference cards could be affected by 110°C GPU hotspot issue https://t.co/BJ4oPU5YNh
— VideoCardz.com (@VideoCardz) January 4, 2023

AMD has issued a statement in connection with the identified defect. Curiously, it was initially supposed to be published on January 3 at 18:00, but publication was postponed.

It’s possible that the reds didn’t want to release such material shortly after Nvidia’s show at CES 2023 and the announcement of the GeForce RTX 4070 Ti.

We are working to determine the cause of the unexpected performance reduction of AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards. Based on our observations to date, we believe that the problem is related to the thermal solution used in AMD’s reference design and is occurring in a limited number of cards sold. We are working to resolve this issue for the affected cards. Customers experiencing this unexpected limitation should contact AMD technical support.