AMD has confirmed that it’s certainly defective vapour chambers inflicting the hotspot overheating points with its new $1,000 Radeon RX 7900 XTX (opens in new tab) boards.
Talking to PC World’s Gordon Mah Ung (opens in new tab), AMD’s Scott Herkelman defined that the issue completely impacts 7900 XTX boards and “Made by AMD” playing cards solely, somewhat than any AIB-designed merchandise, though these “Made by” playing cards had been bought each on AMD.com and by their board companions.
Herkelman says AMD responded as quickly because it first heard of some playing cards reportedly working at larger than anticipated temps.
“We instantly sprung into motion,” Herkelman says. “First, is there a security concern? There’s not a security concern. Subsequent, is there a possible efficiency difficulty? And we discovered that in the event you hit 110 levels in sure workloads you’d see a small efficiency delta.”
AMD then set about “root inflicting” the problem, a course of that Herkelman says took two weeks, explaining that they needed to ensure that they had recognized the right trigger.
“All of it comes right down to a small batch of vapour chambers that do not have sufficient water. It is a very small proportion,” he claims.
From right here, AMD says its precedence is ensuring clients get absolutely functioning alternative playing cards as quickly as doable. “You spent some huge cash in the event you purchased this XTX board. We wish to repair it for you. Simply name our tech assist line in the event you purchased it from AMD.com. We have now models which are recognized nearly as good that we are going to ship to you instantly.”
Which is nice, besides as we reported just a few days in the past (opens in new tab), AMD seemingly dragged its ft when clients initially obtained in touch about hotspot points. Granted, it should be tough to filter out the same old web squawking from precise, real-world points. However our general sense is that AMD might have been extra responsive earlier. In spite of everything, we’re speaking about individuals who have simply spent $1,000 on a model new GPU.
It isn’t simply AMD that has suffered points with this new spherical of excessive finish GPUs, after all. Nvidia’s RTX 40 collection has its personal story of melting energy connector woe. It is a somewhat unedifying pattern.