Nitro+ is the only 7900XTX I've had that does not exceed 20 degrees delta between edge and hotspot. My Gaming OC that I refunded was always at 30 and above delta. MBA as well.
That can be for good or bad reasons, good reason their chips are better, bad reason the edge actually touches the cooler much less then the center of the die which would cause slightly higher edge temps which in result would mean lower delta as result of edge being slightly hotter, but if the edge temp matches what other vendors have while hotspot is lower then that is a good thing.
my edge used to be 50 55c on my liquid devil 7900 XTX after repaste i even got it down to 38c these days its 40 42c edge temp with PTM7950 and 60 to 70c hotspot at 21c water temp i can achieve 65-66c hotspot temp max which while it usually avg hotspot much lower like 4 or 5c lower usually so at 40 edge 60c hotspot i can also achieve 20c delta at 410w total board power, im not sure if its gonna stay this good i suspect it will as PTM7950 last much longer then regular thermal paste that custom aib apply, but that could also be that Sapphire already aware of PTM7950 being amazing for GPU core using it already, NVIDIA uses it on the 4090 FE as well Lenovo on their laptops.
In such case i would never consider replacing the PTM7950 for regular paste its always gonna be worse.
NVIDIA atleast EVGA used to make the edge touch the cooler more while center much left so when chip heats up its perfectly flat, but it could crack on liquid nitrogen which is risky.
First time 20c this morning at cold boot now 22,1c watertemp avg.
Running 3D occt for 1 minute if the watertemp stays at 20c the edge temp will also stay roughly at 21c 21.5c
Delta of 28c games are usually in 60c to 70c so probably in 55,5c to 65,5 hotspot range at 20c watertemp
Cannot wait for winter cos last winter i had 55c max hotspot on my old gpu at 290 TGP roughly or almost 355w tbp equivalent.
Anyway i think in case of less flat die on AMD gpu hurts edge temp more then it hurts hotspot cos the lack of contact makes edge run hotter decreasing the delta but i could be wrong.
Speaking of which if you do av1 relive recording atleast the edge temp will go up more as well raising edge temp decreasing hotspot temp giving you different deltas as well.
Ratchet clank at 22c minimum 26.1c max watertemp
1 hour or so