AMD recommends to ‘stay safe’ with Radeon RX 7900 standard power connectors
AMD’s Senior Director of Gaming Marketing Sasa Marinkovic spared no time making fun of NVIDIA’s biggest problem with the RTX 40 series, which are the melting power cables.
With GeForce RTX 40 series NVIDIA decided to switch to modern PCIe Gen5 power connector which supports up to 600W of power. By doing so, the company is abandoning the standard PCIe 8-pin and 6-pin power connectors which have been successfully used for many years, even by high-end custom RTX 30 designs.
NVIDIA Ada Lovelace GPUs all feature this 12VHPWR/16-pin new power connector, including the company’s own Founders Edition and all partner designs. Unfortunately for all parties involved, there are issues with some power adapters melting, either due to user error or something that has not yet been confirmed by NVIDIA. Either way, this is a blow to the company’s reputation, who instead of selling this as a feature, are facing a marketing nightmare.
AMD’s executive recommends choosing Radeon RX 7900 series instead, equipped with dual 8-pin power connectors (AMD reference design). No power dongles are required for AMD RDNA3 GPUs, including partner cards, meaning the risk of cables melting is just as high as it was with Radeon RX 6000 series.
Stay safe this holiday season. @amdradeon pic.twitter.com/DOpg0f2qaP
— Sasa Marinkovic (@SasaMarinkovic) November 17, 2022
NVIDIA is still facing reports from some users who encountered melting power cables/connectors problem on their GeForce RTX 4090 graphics cards. Thus far the independent investigation has shown that the cables could melt when they are not fully seated, although manufacturing defects are not yet off the table. NVIDIA is yet to make an official statement on the matter.
Thus far no reports on RTX 4080 series have been made, but these cards come with a different power dongle combining three 8-pin cables instead of RTX 4090’s four. The only issue with AMD Radeon RX 7900 series is that they are not available yet, while RTX 4090/4080 cards are now sold globally.
Source: Tom’s Hardware