In the past week, users have reported serious issues with AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX’s MBA public design graphics cards, which can lead to overheating and hitting a temperature wall and downscaling.
While AMD’s initial response was that “everything is fine,” according to the latest official statement, AMD acknowledged the issue and asked affected users to contact support for after-sales service.
AMD says it is still determining the root cause of the graphics card overheating issue, and the official statement more or less confirms that the problem may be related to the thermal design, as previously pointed out by hardware experts such as Der8auer and Igor’s Lab.
"We are working to determine the root cause of the unexpected slowdown some people are experiencing with AMD-made AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards. Based on our observations to date, we believe the issue is related to the cooling solution used in AMD's reference design and appears to be present in a limited number of sold graphics cards. We are committed to resolving this issue for the affected cards. Customers experiencing this unexpected limitation should contact AMD support."
AMD has stated that the issue is only present in a limited number of Radeon RX 7900 XTX cards, but the actual number of cards affected may be higher, according to Igor’s Lab, which has spoken with a number of system builders/distributors who have indicated that these issues have been present for several weeks and that not just one, but several batches (4-6 batches) are affected. Here is the quote from Igors Lab.
"The issue has been known for over two weeks and AMD and the distributors (internally) have communicated about it. The final decision on how the issue will be communicated to the end customer has not yet been finalized. AMD's statement was originally scheduled for January 3, 2023, but was delayed. Presumably, the cause was a heat pipe issue that affected several batches. It is currently assumed that there are 4-6 batches of thousands of cards and only the MBA public design cards are affected. Internal emails say that they had to return over 300 ASUS MBA, Sapphire MBA, Xeon MBA, and XFX MBA graphics cards to retailers/warehouses/wholesalers."
