AMD’s Scott Herkelman Addresses Radeon RX 7900 XTX Cooler Issue In New Interview

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The controversy over AMD's new flagship Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards is largely overblown, according to Scott Herkelman, Senior Vice President & General Manager Graphics Business Unit at AMD, who was stopped by PCWorld's Gordon Ung at CES 2023 to discuss the alleged cooler issue and stated that while AMD did identify a problem with the product's vapor chamber cooler, only a small batch of units are affected and the company already has a fix, with replacements available to ship.

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Glad to see replacements are available and they have identified the batch.

Makes me wonder if Nvidia slipped some money to the manufacturer to cause a disturbance in the force.
 
Yeah, it's kind of a bummer since this is his first chiplet GPU launch but I'm glad they're working getting is resolved quickly.
 
Now we just need some reduced MSRP's and cards available at the reduced prices. Imagine if AMD dropped the price of the 7900xt to below the new 4070ti MSRP. Dunno if they have the margin to do it but man that would be cool to see.
 
Grimlakin said:
Now we just need some reduced MSRP's and cards available at the reduced prices. Imagine if AMD dropped the price of the 7900xt to below the new 4070ti MSRP. Dunno if they have the margin to do it but man that would be cool to see.
Click to expand...
I'm kind of thinking this could happen in the next 30-60 days. Its just a gut feeling but we'll see. It's not unusual for the some price drops to happen right around summer either.
 
Unfortunate that it happened.

But hey, it didn't take the weeks of Reddit shaming and scary flaming pictures that nVidia took to publicly identify and acknowledge a problem, if only to ultimately blame the end user.
 
Con manipulation 101!

First:

"Oh, all is well, yo, because the thermals that you all are seeing is 'normal'. Nothing to see here. Just buy up, folks!"

Second:

7900xtx OWNERS (not free-samplers, etc. because many were to busy defending this BS) proves that it's not just the high temps but the cards are also throttling - AMD first response - denied RMAs/Refunds - and they still claimed: "all is well, just buy up!" 😏

Uh-oh!

3rd:

GAMERS UNITE GLOBALLY!

Oodles of gamers STOOD TOGETHER (not any MSM, free-samplers, YTers, etc. at first, you know, majority of them were still favoring the suits, shocking, huh /s 😏) deploying video after video, etc. that forced the attention of Igor, etc. to pull their 1st weak stance, and they had to further investigate these STRONG allegations (IMO, many free-samplers withheld these findings deliberately).

4th:

MASSIVE backlash hits AMD from all 4-winds... FAST!

5th: AMD IS FORCED TO RETRACT but now, AMD are offering RMAs or refunds... BUuuUT... if the owner(s) opt for an RMA, AMD WILL NOT SEND THEM A SHIPPING LABEL... The owners has to foot the bill sending their defective, by design, card back to AMD! Dafuq!! 😡

But AMD is still lying about the TRUE numbers of defected units DUE to fear of a massive recall campaign's COST!

So, it's clear to me on what AMD is hoping for here and that is, AMD is hoping that all defective cards' owners won't even know if their card is defective or not (noobs, etc.) and/or hoping that many won't even stress test, etc. their cards to find out if they're on this list of defective units, you know, con 101!

So, from: "All is dandy, just buy up" to "you are denied a RMA/refund because we need your money, who cares if its work correctly" to "oops, our bad. Just hit us up!"

Yeah, there's nothing to see here, folks! /s 😏
 
Grimlakin said:
Now we just need some reduced MSRP's and cards available at the reduced prices. Imagine if AMD dropped the price of the 7900xt to below the new 4070ti MSRP. Dunno if they have the margin to do it but man that would be cool to see.
Click to expand...
It would be very surprising if they don't have quite a bit of margin they can cut. One of the big reasons for the chiplet GPU design was to be able to make GPUs a good bit cheaper especially since the much smaller die size means a lot more chips from the same wafer and fewer bad chips. This is beyond the obvious super high prices of practically all GPUs right now.
 
Peter_Brosdahl said:
Yeah, it's kind of a bummer since this is his first chiplet GPU launch but I'm glad they're working getting is resolved quickly.
Click to expand...
Well there is nothing wrong xith the card itself it seems, just a badly made cooling solution by some third party, you can't realy ask a company that they recall and refund all customers when 1 or 2 of their products are defective without some investigation first. (unlike some posters I have seen here and on other forums).

Still waiting on the first real chiplet GPU's like the CPU's, but this seems a like a decent start to the tech.
 
GunShot said:
Con manipulation 101!

First:

"Oh, all is well, yo, because the thermals that you all are seeing is 'normal'. Nothing to see here. Just buy up, folks!"

Second:

7900xtx OWNERS (not free-samplers, etc. because many were to busy defending this BS) proves that it's not just the high temps but the cards are also throttling - AMD first response - denied RMAs/Refunds - and they still claimed: "all is well, just buy up!" 😏

Uh-oh!

3rd:

GAMERS UNITE GLOBALLY!

Oodles of gamers STOOD TOGETHER (not any MSM, free-samplers, YTers, etc. at first, you know, majority of them were still favoring the suits, shocking, huh /s 😏) deploying video after video, etc. that forced the attention of Igor, etc. to pull their 1st weak stance, and they had to further investigate these STRONG allegations (IMO, many free-samplers withheld these findings deliberately).

4th:

MASSIVE backlash hits AMD from all 4-winds... FAST!

5th: AMD IS FORCED TO RETRACT but now, AMD are offering RMAs or refunds... BUuuUT... if the owner(s) opt for an RMA, AMD WILL NOT SEND THEM A SHIPPING LABEL... The owners has to foot the bill sending their defective, by design, card back to AMD! Dafuq!! 😡

But AMD is still lying about the TRUE numbers of defected units DUE to fear of a massive recall campaign's COST!

So, it's clear to me on what AMD is hoping for here and that is, AMD is hoping that all defective cards' owners won't even know if their card is defective or not (noobs, etc.) and/or hoping that many won't even stress test, etc. their cards to find out if they're on this list of defective units, you know, con 101!

So, from: "All is dandy, just buy up" to "you are denied a RMA/refund because we need your money, who cares if its work correctly" to "oops, our bad. Just hit us up!"

Yeah, there's nothing to see here, folks! /s 😏
Click to expand...
This here is some grade a gorilla marketing.
 
Response from der Bauer, and also a self-incinerating 7900XTX!

 
Perhaps by "batch" AMD just meant a bunch of, and wasn't technically referring to a certain 'batch' of cards. Batch can also be used as a term to just mean a grouping of, or a barrel of, rather than the specific engineering term for the word. My spidey sense tells me AMD would want to downplay the number yes, but, they may really not know how many are affected and are still pulling data to find out. This is sudden, and CES just happened where everyone is, so the teams are divided right now. An official press release, once they know the facts of what cards are affected, if it's a specific batch, or a whole lot more from several batches, would be prudent IMO.
 
I have to go along with Bauer here. AMD should know pretty much where the problem is.....ie, who made the suspect vapor coolers and be able to trace those down. They sold the units and should be able to find the owners. Rather than let the owners have to find them.
I guess they are sitting around with their collective fingers crossed hoping not all of the defective cards blow up.
Bauer said the European customers were telling him they were 2-4 weeks out before they could replace the product. So.....they were offering pretty much immediate cash refunds. He then stated, just go and buy anyone else's 7900 XTX except AMD and you'll be fine.

I guess Bauer doesn't have to deal with eBay scalpers......and the fact that a partner 7900 XTX is several hundred dollars more than a reference card.

I think he was fairly diplomatic, but did come down on AMD for not being more proactive.

The best part of the video.....he shows a card he bought from a guy who said he had the overheating issue so he could test it.....plugs it in, turns on the PC and the cards immediately blows up with a plume of white smoke and a gentle "pop".
 
Brent_Justice said:
Perhaps by "batch" AMD just meant a bunch of, and wasn't technically referring to a certain 'batch' of cards. Batch can also be used as a term to just mean a grouping of, or a barrel of, rather than the specific engineering term for the word. My spidey sense tells me AMD would want to downplay the number yes, but, they may really not know how many are affected and are still pulling data to find out. This is sudden, and CES just happened where everyone is, so the teams are divided right now. An official press release, once they know the facts of what cards are affected, if it's a specific batch, or a whole lot more from several batches, would be prudent IMO.
Click to expand...

We will never know how much cards are affected, in theory they could just replace the coolers and be done with it, not sure how feasable that is especially if it would be tons of cards.

Some time ago Greg Salazar made a huge stink on youtube about some MSI AIO's that were supposedly defective, more then MSI at the time admitted, I think he got them so far as to add additional batches of serial nr's to the recall for people who were having issues, but I never seen or heard anyone else even mention this issue.

Companies will most of the time try to downplay the issue and discreetly try to resolve it.
 
magoo said:
I have to go along with Bauer here. AMD should know pretty much where the problem is.....ie, who made the suspect vapor coolers and be able to trace those down. They sold the units and should be able to find the owners. Rather than let the owners have to find them.
I guess they are sitting around with their collective fingers crossed hoping not all of the defective cards blow up.
Bauer said the European customers were telling him they were 2-4 weeks out before they could replace the product. So.....they were offering pretty much immediate cash refunds. He then stated, just go and buy anyone else's 7900 XTX except AMD and you'll be fine.

I guess Bauer doesn't have to deal with eBay scalpers......and the fact that a partner 7900 XTX is several hundred dollars more than a reference card.

I think he was fairly diplomatic, but did come down on AMD for not being more proactive.

The best part of the video.....he shows a card he bought from a guy who said he had the overheating issue so he could test it.....plugs it in, turns on the PC and the cards immediately blows up with a plume of white smoke and a gentle "pop".
Click to expand...
That sounds weird to me, with so many thermal safeguards now a days.
 
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