Need advice: return my Gigabyte RX 9070 XT Gaming OC or keep it?

Hi everyone,

I’m looking for some advice from people who know GPU thermals better than I do.

I bought a Gigabyte RX 9070 XT Gaming OC on Amazon about 2 weeks ago, and I’m wondering whether I should return it and swap it for another model.

My main concern is the temperature difference between the GPU average temp and the hotspot temp. In my case, the GPU sits around 52-58°C, while the hotspot reaches 92°C, so the delta is around 30-34°C.

I tested it in a pretty demanding scenario: Minecraft with mods + Solas shader on Ultra at 1080p. I also tried an undervolt of -80 mV and a power limit of -10%, which helped a bit:

• around 35-45W less power draw
• more stable clock behavior
• clocks staying below 3200 MHz

But the hotspot delta still looks really bad to me, and I never had this kind of gap on other games, even demanding ones.

So my question is:
Does this look like a bad cooler mount / thermal paste issue, or is this within normal range for a RX 9070 XT?
And more importantly:
Would you return it and choose a different model instead?

I’m also hesitating between replacing it with:

• another Gigabyte RX 9070 XT Gaming OC
• an ASUS Prime RX 9070 XT
• an XFX RX 9070 XT Mercury
• the regular XFX RX 9070 XT

Any advice from people with experience on these cards would be really appreciated.

Thanks!