TECH NEWS – The card has a high failure rate, which is an embarrassing situation for AMD, even if it only affects its reference cards (and not the custom cooling model cards).

A few days ago, Scott Herkeman, AMD’s senior vice president and general manager of Radeon Graphics, sat down for a chat with PCWorld’s executive editor, Gordon Mah Ung, and no exaggeration: he downplayed the number of people who have reported issues with their AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics cards because the number of users needing replacement/repair tells a different story: “It all comes down to a small batch of vapor chambers have an issue, not enough water and it is a tiny percentage, and we said that’s the root cause. We have identified this. You spent a lot of money if you bought this XTX made by AMD. We want to fix it for you. We have the fix. We are ready to fix it for you. Just call tech support if you bought it from AMD.com or bought it from an AMD AIB Partner. They have units. We know how to identify that they are good units and ensure that we ship them to you. We want you to have a great product, and we want you to be confident in that product.”

According to Germany’s Igorslab, the number of defective cards is estimated to be between 9-11%, as that’s how many have required repair. Igor Wallossek showed that the German AMD customer service wrote that they didn’t have enough stock and would provide an immediate refund and pay for return shipping. However, the AQL (acceptable quality level) should not be forgotten. ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, defines it.

The AQL is “considered the worst tolerable quality level.” ISO 2859-1:1999, published in November 1999 and updated in 2020, offers a quantitative measure of the acceptable quality of a product. AQL defects are divided into three parts (minor, major and critical). Minor defects have an AQL of 4%, significant defects of 2.5%, and critical defects of 0%. AQL standards vary depending on the industry. Certain products can be released with certain defects because the standards met at the manufacturing level allow the product to be released for retail sale. In theory, ten of every 1000 graphics cards sold could be defective before the manufacturer would have to take action (product recall), offering 100% RMA due to RQL, or “rejectable quality level.”

AMD’s claim (a small proportion of graphics cards sold are defective) might be based on the initial numbers reported by the company as being produced. Before the release of the RX 7900 XTX, 200,000 units were reportedly manufactured. Using the AQL standard, 2000 units would have to be shown to be defective for the company to step in and initiate a recall. According to Wallossek, AVC’s (Asia Vital Components Co, Ltd.) quality assurance number is 10,000, five times the standard.

If that many come together, it will seriously damage AMD…

Source: WCCFTech