A faulty steam chamber is the cause of the problem and big trouble for AMD.
The launch of the first cards based on the RDNA 3 microarchitecture was supposed to be a celebration for AMD. Of course, it is the culmination of a very long work, but it was also for the American company to return to the level of NVIDIA who launched a few weeks earlier its new generation, Ada Lovelace. With a slightly more aggressive pricing than NVIDIA and peformances that have little to envy to GeForce, the Radeon RX 7900 seemed able to score a lot of points ... before a problem of overheating interfered.
Indeed, shortly after the first cards were released, some users complained that their Radeon RX 7900XTX reached extreme temperatures. Indeed, we talk about exceeding 100°C and going up to 110°C. At this level, the card is more or less "on alert" and the graphics performance is clearly affected. Even more annoyingly, such temperatures can simply damage the hardware and make the card unusable. Several independent experts set out to find out why this was the case, and it wasn't long before the steam chamber used by AMD and some of its partners was singled out: it wouldn't contain enough liquid for optimal operation.
Initially silent, AMD then confirmed the problem and asked affected users to contact its customer service to launch a return procedure. Affected by the problem, the Igor's Lab site led by Igor Wallossek logically contacted AMD's customer service and was told: " We understand that you want a replacement for your RX 7900 XTX. It is important to know that at this time we are not able to replace your card as we do not have any stock available in our warehouse. AMD asks for patience, but without a date to provide for restocking, and states that it is still possible to request a refund.
Where things take a scale hardly believable is that Igor Wallossek indicates that the problem would affect 9 to 11% of Radeon RX 7900XTX cards distributed by AMD and its partners. Worse, the problem would be even more important among integrators. In fact, we are very far from the " small number of cards affected " mentioned by Scott Herkelman of AMD. Obviously, for the American company, this is a very bad publicity. Let's hope for it, but especially for the users concerned, that these problems will soon be a thing of the past.
