XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 review: Fast yet silent - thomafiester

Last week the $650 Radeon RX 6800 XT hit the streets and immediately put Nvidia's $700 GeForce RTX 3080 on notice. For the first-year metre in a long meter, AMD's graphics cards can string up tough with Nvidia's nigh powerful offerings. The first beckon of Radeon RX 6800-serial graphics cards stuck to AMD's (vastly improved) reference design, but customized versions of the Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT hit the streets Wednesday to show us what "Big Navi" is capable of with even more elaborate engineering backing it up.

The $800 XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 (from the troupe's refreshing "Speedster" series) doesn't hold back as XFX's next-gen flagship. This slabber-inducing art add-in packs one of the most gargantuan coolers we've ever seen. Every that heavy antimonial helps the Speedster stay utterly inaudible despite a strong factory overclock that brings its out-of-box speeds well beyond the 2GHz barrier. Equal every RX 6800 XT, XFX's model packs ray tracing capabilities, the ability to engender even faster when paired with Ryzen CPUs, and a massive 16GB retention buffer that dwarfs what you ascertain on touch GeForce GPUs.

But is XFX's custom spin worth a substantial$150 Thomas More than the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT? Lashkar-e-Toiba's dig in.

Farther Radeon Reading:

5 key things you need to lie with about AMD's Radeon RX 6800 and 6800 XT
AMD Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT review: A glorious return to high end gaming
RDNA 2 deep-dive: What's inside AMD's Radeon RX 6000 graphics cards
AMD Radeon RX 6800 and RX 6800 XT: 3440×1440 ultrawide benchmarks

XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 spectacles and features

Under the hood, the XFX Merc 319 is built around the same "Navi 21" nontextual matter buffalo chip as all Radeon RX 6800 XT models. It's not the full 80-compute-social unit version of the GPU—that's being reserved for the $999 Radeon RX 6900 Crosstalk coming in December—but it's close, with each of the 72 CUs including a re accelerator devoted to period beam tracing personal effects.

Hera's a consider the reference specifications for the Radeon RX 6800 XT, alongside the RX 6800 and last-generation's RX 5700 XT:

XFX applies a solid factory overclock unsuccessful of the box. The Speedster Merc 319 comes with dual BIOS switches. The default "Balanced" BIOS on the true is rated for exemplary Game Clock speeds of 2090MHz (+75MHz vs. reference) and level bes Hike up Clock speeds of 2340MHz (+90MHz vs reference). Flipping over to the "Rage" BIOS on the left adds another 20MHz to those speeds, on with bringing up the power limit by another seven watts to help push performance even foster.

rage vs balanced bios — How the XFX Merc 319's dual BIOSes act up using AMD's various Radeon Software tuning presets.

XFX's Rage BIOS takes its name from the brand-new "Rage" business leader tuning predetermined in AMD's Radeon Package, which is available only on the faster XT versions of the Radeon RX 6000-serial artwork cards. Enabling Rage mode in Radeon Software cranks the power point of accumulation even further—and ramps awake the card's devotee speeds to even off.

The XFX-supplied graph at reactionist shows how the two BIOSes on the Merc 319 behave with the various tuning presets in Radeon Computer software. If you're hoping to push performance as far as possible, flipping on both the Ramp BIOS and Fad mode in Radeon software will up the overall power limit by a significant 25 watts. That's before you do any extremity tinkering to clocks or voltages.

The lilliputian two-fold BIOS exchange is just to the left of the dual 8-pin world power connectors. The default on balanced mode is on the right, while the leftmost root activates XFX's Rage mode.

The XFX Speedster Merc 319 fuels that energy using a pair of 8-pin power connectors, unvarying every bit the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT. It as wel features the like display outputs as the reference exemplary, with three-fold Displayports, a USB-C port that backside beryllium used with displays and compatible VR headsets alike, and a single HDMI 2.1 connection with protean review rate abide. If you'rhenium connecting the XFX Merc 319 to a high-end Tv set that includes adaptive sync technology, it'll work evenhanded as symptomless as a FreeSync monitor thanks to HDMI 2.1's inclusion.

XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 design

It's the custom cooling design of the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 that enables those higher speeds and power limits.

The XFX Thicc III Ultra (left), XFX Merc 319 (center), and AMD Radeon RX 6800 Crosstalk reference design (right).

This card is big. XFX's appropriately named Thicc cards were big last generation, but the Merc 319 is justified more solid. (Thicc-er?) It measures a sizeable 13.39 x 5.47 inches, and over two slots deep. Make sure you have board in your case before buying it, but that's real the casing with almost any high-end impost card these days.

This GPU is so foresightful, we actually had to run our power cables over IT from our case's wiring cut-outs, instead than from underneath as we usually do. You'd easy be capable to rebroadcast your cables to avoid that in a typical PC that ISN't perpetually switching out graphics cards, though.

xfx explode — A look at the XFX Merc 319's cooling.

XFX supports that heft with a solid aluminum backplate, an atomic number 13-cast off shroud, and an aluminum "tray" between the PCB and heatsink, whol intended to increase the card's rigidness and combat potential GPU sag. On the GeForce side of things, creators of huge honking high-end graphics cards like the MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio and EVGA RTX 3080 FTW 3 have started to include GPU brook brackets in the box. XFX relies along the rigid construction of the Merc 319 instead.

XFX devotes all that space to a tank that runs entirely silent. You can't hear information technology over our test system's case fans and Central processor ice chest, even during intense gaming lots.

The XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 features a good-duration heatsink with a cop coldplate over the GPU and not one, not two, non trio, merely seven 6mm heatpipes snaking throughout. Three mechanism fans with 13 blades draw breeze into that heatsink—twofold 100mm fans bracket out a slightly little, slightly offset 92mm sports fan in the middle. Swiping a page from Nvidia's RTX 30-serial Founders Edition design, a small cut-out in the backplate on the closing of the card allows melodic phrase to blow clean through and through the heatsink, maximising airflow.

When images of the card appeared online, some online commentators were troubled about the placement of the shaping "light bar" that holds the lighted Radeon RX 6800 XT logo happening the outer edge of the XFX Merc 319. From the side, it looks as though the plastic ginmill importantly blocks air flow happening that side of the notice, which could impede cooling efforts. Fear non! XFX protrudes the bar by about a third gear of an column inch to allow air to escape, and the heat cesspool is unfettered connected the opposite lateral. Ditching it could maybe improve cooling, but that would also affect the sleek aesthetical this card aims for. In any case, the cooler is effective enough that the card runs unheard.

Rather than using AMD's default PCB for the Radeon RX 6800 XT, XFX actually equipped the Merc 319 with the circuitry intended for the step-dormie Radeon RX 6900 Crosstalk for better power delivery, and built the card with a 14+2 power phase design rather than the store 10+2. The company likewise applied 20 opposite thermal pads all over various interior components to improve temperatures for the 16GB of GDDR6 memory, emf regulation, and more than.

You can see some of the quilted pads looking into the edge of the card, as shown to a higher place. That includes putting outpouring pads on the rear of the PCB, allowing the aluminum backplate to doubling as a heatsink—a practice we've seen on many other cards.

XFX is far-famed for its aggressive-looking designs. Last coevals's Thicc models, for instance, evoked the palpate of muscle cars of yesteryear. The Merc 319 refines that aesthetic. I love the blue-collar black-and-fluent vibe of this card, and RGB haters won't find an ounce of unicorn puke anywhere.

The XFX and Radeon RX 6800 XT logos unofficially are illuminated though, and in a surprisingly striking fashion. Their white lights (ruby, for the "RX" lettering) shine much more cleanly and clearly than the logos make out on match art cards—sort of like the departure between standardized railroad car headlights and LED headlights. These pictures don't capture how squeamish it looks.

Then there's the logo. XFX emblazoned the word "Merc" in big, stylized Edward D. White letters crossways the top of the backplate. It definitely fits the vibration of the card, American Samoa well as XFX's general branding, simply if you prefer your hardware to look little "edgy," you mightiness not appreciate it. There's no way to avoid seeing it if your example includes a tempered glass position panel. Me? I dig information technology. Your mileage English hawthorn vary. And what does "Merc 319"mean, in any case? Here's what XFX told me:

"MERC stands for Mercury (not moneymaking), and 319 relates to fan configuration. 3 = Telephone number of Fans, 1 = 100mm, 9 = 90mm. If we were to have a 2 fan model with 100mm fans the number would be 210. So there is some reasoning behind the name, and it's not a random turn. For the predictable future MERC testament comprise our flagship model with all Best features and upgrades."

Simply enough tab-chat. Let's get to the benchmarks.

Our test system

Our votive graphics card test system is a few age old, merely we packed it with some of the quickest complementary components available to put any potential performance bottlenecks squarely on the GPU—especially at the high resolutions these art card game target. Most of the hardware was provided past the manufacturers, but we purchased the cooler and storage ourselves.

Intel Core i7-8700K central processing unit ($300 along Amazon) overclocked to 5GHz all cores
EVGA CLC 240 closed-grummet liquid ice chest ($105 on Amazon)
Asus Maximus X Hero motherboard
64GB HyperX Predator RGB DDR4/2933 ($355 on Amazon)
EVGA 1200W SuperNova P2 power supply ($352 connected Amazon)
Corsair Watch glass 570X RGB shell, with front and pinnacle panels removed and an extra lift fan installed for developed airflow
2x 500GB Samsung 860 EVO SSDs ($70 each on Amazon)

We're comparing the $800 XFX Speedster Merc 319 against the $650 AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT and $580 Radeon RX 6800 book of fact designs, as recovered atomic number 3 the Nvidia Founders Edition versions of the $500 GeForce RTX 3070 and $700 GeForce RTX 3080. (Check over our Radeon RX 6800-serial publication reassessmen for comparisons against a wider set of graphics cards, and our RTX 3080 review to see how the older GTX 1080 and 1080 Te liken against this parvenue generation.) We tested the Merc 319 with its default "balanced" BIOS.

We test a variety of games spanning varied engines, genres, vendor sponsorships (Nvidia, AMD, and Intel), and graphics Genus Apis (DirectX 11, DX12, and Vulkan). Apiece biz is tested using its in-game benchmark at the highest conceivable artwork presets unless otherwise noted, with VSync, frame plac caps, period ray tracing or DLSS effects, and FreeSync/G-Sync out of action, along with any other vendor-specialised technologies like FidelityFX tools or Nvidia Reflex. We've also enabled temporal anti-aliasing (TAA) to push these cards to their limits. We run each benchmark at least three times and list the average result for for each one test.

Because the XFX Speedster Merc 319 is essentially a hair quicker than the reference Radeon RX 6800 XT, we'll present these gambling performance results without additional commentary. Again, run down our Radeon RX 6800-series review for deeper insights on how these fres cards execute against their GeForce rivals and Radeon predecessors game away bet on.

XFX Radeon 6800 XT Merc 319 play benchmarks

Watch Dogs: Legion

Watch Dogs: Legion is extraordinary of the first games to debut on next-gen consoles. Ubisoft upgraded its Disrupt locomotive engine to include unkind-adjoin features ilk sincere-metre re tracing and Nvidia's DLSS. We disable those effects for this examination, just Legion remains a strenuous game even on high-end hardware with its optional high-resolution texture pack installed. No circuit card rump maintain a 60 frames-per-second average with Ultra graphics options enabled, and the game uses more than 8GB of memory even at 1440p. Oof.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Yep, PlayStation exclusives are approaching to the PC now. Horizon Zero Dawn runs on Insurgent Games' Decima engine, the same engine that powers Death Stranding. Ambient Occlusion can bid iffy results if set to Ultra, so we test with that setting at Sensitive. All other visual option is maxed out.

Gears Tactics

Gears Maneuver puts it own brutal, fast-paced twist on the XCOM-like musical style. This Unreal Engine 4-powered game was built from the prime up for DirectX 12, and we love being able to work a tactics-style game into our benchmarking entourage. Better yet, the game comes with a plethora of graphics options for PC snobs. More games should devote such admiring care to explaining what flipping all these visual knobs mean.

You can't use the presets to benchmark Gears Tactics, as it intelligently scales to go go-to-meeting on your installed hardware, meaning that "Ultra" on extraordinary nontextual matter card can incumbrance different settings than "Ultra" on a weaker bill of fare. We manually set entirely options to their highest possible settings.

Wolfenstein: Youngblood

Wolfenstein: Youngblood is the most fun when you can playact cooperatively with a buddy, but IT's a audacious experiment—and an right-down technical showcase. Running connected the Vulkan API, Youngblood achieves vitriolic frame rates, and it supports all sorts of with-it technologies like ray tracing, DLSS 2.0, HDR, GPU culling, asynchronous computing, and Nvidia's Content Adaptive Shading. The game includes a built-in benchmark with two different scenes; we proven Lab X.

Metro Exodus

One of the best games of 2019, Metro Book of Exodus is one of the best-looking games around, excessively. The latest version of the 4A Railway locomotive provides incredibly toothsome, ultra-elaborated visuals, with one of the to the highest degree stunning real-meter ray tracing implementations released one of these days. We test in DirectX 12 fashion with ray tracing, Hairworks, and DLSS unfit for our canonical benchmarks.

Borderlands 3

Borderlands is back! Gearbox's game defaults to DX12, so we practice besides. It gives us a glimpse at the ultra-popular Fabricated Engine 4's performance in a handed-down gunman.

Crazy Brigade

Naturalized Brigade is a cooperative third-person shooter where a team of adventurers blasts through hordes of mythological enemies. It's a technological display case, well-stacked around the future-gen Vulkan and DirectX 12 technologies and infused with features like HDR support and the ability to toggle asynchronous calculate on and off. It uses Rising's custom Azure engine. We test using the Vulkan renderer, which is faster than DX12.

Complete War: Troy

The modish game in the popular Total War saga, Troy was conferred away free for its first 24 hours on the Verse form Games Store, moving all over 7.5 million copies before it went on square-toed sales event. Total War: Ilion is built using a modified version of the Total State of war: Warhammer 2 engine, and this DX11 title of respect looks stunning for a turn-based scheme game. We test the more intensifier battle benchmark.

F1 2020

The latest in a long line of prospering racing games,F1 2020 is a precious stone to test, supply a wide lay out of both in writing and benchmarking options, making it a more more reliable (and fun) option that theForzaseries. It's shapely along the latest version of Codemasters' buttery-smooth Self-importance game engine, complete with support for DX12 and Nvidia's DLSS engineering. We test two laps on the Commonwealth of Australi course, with prima facie skies happening and DLSS soured.

Shadow of the Grave Raider

Shadow of the Grave Raider concludes the reboot trilogy, and it's utterlybeautiful. Square Enix optimized this game for DX12, and recommends DX11 only if you're victimisation older hardware operating theatre Windows 7, so we examination with DX12.Shadow of the Tomb Raider uses an increased version of the Foundation engine that too poweredRise of the Grave Raider and includes ex gratia real-meter ray tracing and DLSS features.

Rainbow Six Siege

Like GTA V, Ubisoft's Rainbow Six Siege still dominates the Steamer charts years after its launch, and IT'll be acquiring a visual upgrade for the following-gen consoles. The developers birth poured a ton of work into the game's AnvilNext engine finished the years, eventually pronounceable out a Vulkan version of the gimpy that we usance to tryout. By nonpayment, the game lowers the translate scaling to gain frame rates, but we set it to 100 percentage to benchmark native interpreting performance on graphics cards. Even tranquillize, framing rates soar.

Power draw, thermals, and noise

Quick programming note: We included the MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio in these tycoo and outpouring results to show how an overclocked, highly customized RTX 3080 mountain up against the overclocked, extremely customized XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319.

We trial top executive draw by looping theF1 2020 benchmark at 4K for about 20 minutes later we've benchmarked everything else. We note the highest reading happening our Watts Up Pro meter, which measures the top executive consumption of our entire test system. The initial part of the race, where every last competing cars are onscreen simultaneously, tends to be the most demanding component part.

This isn't a worst-shell test; we removed the Inwardness i7 8700K's overclock and specifically chose a GPU-bound game running at a GPU-paperback resolution to gauge performance when the graphics card is hidrosis hard. If you're playing a game that besides hammers the CPU, you could escort high gross organisation power draws. Consider yourself warned.

GPUs this powerful take apart a lot of power. AMD's RDNA 2 computer architecture is efficient enough that the overclocked XFX Merc 319 manages to draw little Energy than even the store GeForce RTX 3080 Founders Edition, though. Regardless, make sure your power supply is equal to chukker-brown before you acclivity.

We test thermals by leaving GPU-Z open during theF1 2020 power draw test, noting the highest maximum temperature at the end.

GPUs this herculean take a good deal of effort to stay cool, too. The XFX Merc 319 girdle roughly as cool as the some other enthusiast-class graphics cards in this category.

Its world-class features aren't represented on this list. First, while you can hear the reference versions of these cards during gaming sessions, the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 stays utterly inaudible under load, connexion the similarly priced MSI RTX 3080 Gaming X Trio. We couldn't hear it piddle a peep over our case fans and closed-curl liquid tank. That's seriously impressive.

Also, XFX's deliberate temperature reduction tweaks help beyond the raw GPU temperature. Every last graphics cards report a core GPU temperature, and that's what we report Hera. But RDNA-based Radeon nontextual matter cards seed with significantly more sensors embedded passim. AMD uses the hottest of those musca volitans to conform time speeds as requisite—a metric rumored as the "GPU conjugation temperature." This hotspot is significantly cooler in XFX's graphics card. While the reference AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT hits a 103-degree Celsius hotspot temp, the Merc 319 tops unstylish at 93 degrees C.

A ten-degree dispute is massive for keeping boost clock speeds higher, longer. The unneeded headroom would enter very William Christopher Handy indeed during any overclocking endeavors.

Should you buy the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319?

If you'atomic number 75 look for an ultra-powerful art card that can chew through any game in pure silence, the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 is worth considering. It's a fantastic selection for 4K, 3440×1440 ultrawide, and tall refresh-rate 1440p gaming, backed by a future-proof 16GB of aboard memory. The Merc 319 bests all rivals for 1080p 144Hz gaming likewise, but at that resolution (or 1440p 60Hz) you'd follow better off getting a cheaper graphics card.

You might desire a cheaper Radeon RX 6800 XT option, too. XFX charges $800 for the mill-overclocked Speedster Merc 319. That's a astonishing$150 over the alkali $650 Mary Leontyne Pric for the Radeon RX 6800 XT, negating AMD's pricing reward versus rival RTX 3080 graphics cards. Your money only buys you a few extra frames of performance out of the box, simply you'Ra really remunerative for the cooler. This gargantuan triple-slot card remains utterly silent in its stock conformation and girdle remarkably peaceful even if you flip to the higher-performance "Furor" secondary BIOS. Its hot spot temperatures stay a awash 10 degrees chillier than the reference RX 6800 XT design, likewise, and XFX offers a three-year warranty with the Merc 319.

Between the dual BIOS switch and the fantastic custom tank, the XFX Merc 319 should satisfy overclockers looking to push their hardware to the bleeding edge of performance. Simply switch to the Rage BIOS's high power and fan limits and running the conservative machine-overclocking tool in AMD's Radeon Package had this graphics card running at a blistering 2,509MHz in under three transactions with no real effort required whatsoever. If you flip to XFX's Rage BIOS and enable AMD's "Rage mode" tuning preset in Radeon Software, you can increase the card's power limit aside a goodly 25 Watts to deoxyephedrine performance high without voiding your warranty. And if you behave decide to try your give at a manual overclock, having a backup BIOS in case things go wrong is e'er a receive fallback.

The XFX Merc 319 is one and only of the largest graphics card game we've ever tested. Most enthusiast-class graphics card game are long and thick these days, but this is longer and thicker than most. The new blueprint looks attractive as well, though the immense, stylized "Merc" logo splayed across the backplate won't suit everyone's tastes.

Stepping dorsum a trifle promote, AMD's Radeon RX 6800 XT offers importantly more retentivity capacity (16GB vs. 10GB) than Nvidia's competitor GeForce RTX 3080, and a Fresh Access Memory feature article that lets the card take even faster when paired with an AMD Ryzen 5000 processor. The GeForce GPU offers significantly quicker electron beam tracing performance, powered by Nvidia's performance-boosting DLSS have, and AMD has no more answer for that yet. DLSS lets you play ray-copied games at 4K resolution, piece Radeon RX 6800-series cards big top out at 1440p with the fashionable ignition applied science enabled. Nvidia also offers superior encoding and content creation software ecosystems that people WHO work and play Crataegus laevigata find invaluable.

The features that substance many to you should guide your purchasing decision, A the RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 trade in performance blows in criterional games. The conclusion of our Radeon RX 6800-series review dives deeper into the RX versus RTX comparison.

AMD's reference Radeon RX 6800 XT starts off at $50 less than Nvidia's reference 3080, just past charging a monolithic $150 premium, the partizan-level XFX Merc 319 winds up competitive with incomparable-in-class GeForce RTX 3080 offerings like the outstanding EVGA RTX 3080 FTW3 Radical. At $810, EVGA's card costs $110 more than Nvidia's GeForce RTX 3080 MSRP and clean $10 more than XFX's Merc 319. They're both great high-close graphics card game with similar performance, utterly dumb cooling, and treble BIOS switches, but the FTW3 runs a few degrees cooler and offers extra niceties such as customizable RGB ignition, fan speed and RGB headers, a bundled GPU support bracket, and EVGA's superior Precision X control software. All those extra features make it look like-minded you draw a bit more for your money with the FTW3.

If XFX had stuck to a $100 or so premium, it would be competing against solid, but non to the full undischarged GeForce options like the $760 MSI RTX 3080 Gambling X Trio in Leontyne Price, which would arrive justified more powerful. MSI's bill of fare also offers a unreal cooler (and abundant RGB light) but lacks the determinant-to-overclocking dual BIOS alternate base on XFX's card.

If you don't care some overclocking and are pure with skilful, merely non utterly silent noise levels, the $650 Radeon RX 6800 XT point of reference design offers virtually the unvaried proscribed-of-the-box public presentation and core AMD features as the Merc 319 for significantly less money. XFX is hoping to pop the question custom Radeon RX 6800 XT options opening at $700 before the end of the year, merely with more conservative cooling and force designs, and possibly different display outputs.

Bottom assembly line? XFX knocked it impermissible of the parking area with the Radeon RX 6800 Crosstalk Speedster Merc 319's carrying out and chilling, only this board is priced like the no-compromises flagship IT is. The Merc 319 is blazing-locked, whisper-unpretending, and better-looking (if you aren't bothered by the backplate logo). Just make sure you experience room in your case earlier you buy information technology.

If XFX maintained AMD's Radeon pricing advantage versus its GeForce RTX 3080 rivals and charged $50 less, the Merc 319 would be facing easier competition and easily earn our Editors' Pick award. At $800, even so, it's worth weighing all your on hand options. I stool get wherefore XFX wants to charge the same for its incredible custom kit as Nvidia partners do for their flagship entries, since the RX 6800 XT and RTX 3080 trade performance blows and compete with rival features. We seaport't seen an enthusiast-sort out Radeon artwork card kick this untold ass in a long time. But the steep $150 premium over MSRP keeps the card from being an absolute slam-dunk essential-buy for Radeon enthusiasts.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/393759/xfx-radeon-rx-6800-xt-merc-319-review.html

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