Since the release of AMD's RX 7000 series, which includes the RX 7900 XTX and RX 7900 XT, several reports have suggested that AMD designed cards may be heating up to uncomfortable levels. As such, AMD now acknowledges that there may be issues affecting a limited number of reference design cards. [We are working to identify the root cause of the unexpected performance limitations of the AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card," AMD said in a statement (via Hardwareluxx (opens in new tab)). Based on our observations to date, we believe the issue is related to the thermal solution used in AMD's reference designs and is caused by the limited number of cards being sold. We are working to resolve this issue for the affected cards.

"Customers experiencing this unexpected limitation should contact AMD Support (opens in new tab)."

This statement follows reports from Igor's Lab (opens in new tab) and Computerbase (opens in new tab) that batches of cards may have been affected, meaning that many cards may have to be sent back to AMD for a fix and This may have to be done. Overclocker der8uer (opens in new tab) also suggests that a vapor chamber defect is the cause of the card concerns, although AMD has yet to confirm this specific detail. However, by process of elimination, this is the most likely cause.

On the affected cards, der8auer found a much higher delta between GPU and GPU hotspot temperature readings than on unaffected cards. Essentially, the affected cards suffer from isolated hotspots that are much higher than the average GPU temperature, causing thermal protection measures to kick in and throttle clock speeds.

Some users who experienced high temperatures have reported that when they consulted AMD support prior to this statement, they were told that these temperatures were normal (opens in new tab) or that RMA was not possible because the box was open (opens in new tab). These complaints have since been addressed. While it is true that high temperatures can be just fine in some situations, it is clear that these particular high temperatures are in fact rather unacceptable.

If you find that your card is affected by this issue, you should contact AMD and get an RMA, such as MSI Afterburner (open in new tab) (listed as GPU Temperature 2) or HWInfo (open in new tab), which lists hot spot temperatures

We can verify this by running an application that lists the temperatures of the hotspots.

To see if our card is affected by this issue, we ran the RX 7900 XTX (open in new tab) in our review, and even with just three modest runs of F1 22, the average GPU temperature was 72°C. Okay, that's good. But the hotspot temp was 107C... And rising. It is indeed a hotspot.

After seeing these results on my personal PC case, I decided to install XTX on my test bench. Some say this improves the temperatures somewhat, but I had no such luck. The hotspot temperatures spiked to 110°C, and the average GPU temperature was about 81°C. Clock speeds also dropped to about 1,754 MHz, well below the 2,300 MHz game clock advertised for this particular model card.

Unfortunately, this clock speed discrepancy on the XTX is nothing new and is one of the things I noted as odd in my review. However, the Frameview software we use to measure power and heat does not record hotspot temperatures, only average temperatures, so this important information was hidden under the water. By comparison, the RX 7900 XT (open in new tab), which reportedly has not been affected by the enormous XTX problem, does not experience such a large drop in clock speed.

I will look further into the heat generation issue with this card and will contact AMD to see about further investigation. If you are sure that you are also affected, now is the time to contact AMD support.