XFX Speedster RX 6800 XT MERC319 Review

Up Close

XFX have used vertical boxes for a while now and we have to say we’re big fans of them. Oddly the front calls it the Merc 319, but the back says Mercury 319 and the sides say nothing at all.

  
  

From the front/top the card looks like a lot of other designs with three fans. We’re not sure if the middle fan is smaller just to fit the logo on, or if it has a benefit to the airflow. We’re not experts in Computational Fluid Dynamics. The proof will be in our thermal charts at the end of this. Once you step away from the front view though the XFX looks like little else.

  

We’ve seen a lot of different takes upon backplates, and the XFX has one of the nicer ones we’ve seen. Maybe we’re just suckers for a freehand looking logo, but the amount of vents and holes in the backplate is a major step up from the uniform, holeless design on the AMD version of the XT.

  

Sometimes the devil is in the details and you can tell how much design effort has been expended upon the XFX Mercury 319 from this shot. It has an airflow throughput cutout as we have seen on a lot of recent cards, but the smoothness and good fit of the backplate just screams attention to detail.

  

AMD used a 10+2 power setup, whereas the XFX card has 14+2 which explains why there are lots of heatpipes and supporting brackets to go along with the thick, large surface area heatsink.

  

This is the side of the MERC319 you’ll see most often and it’s a gorgeous looking card. Very smooth, reminiscent of the XFX THICC range, with lovely lighting too as you can see at the top of the page. Power is provided by two 8pin PCIe inputs.

  

The 319 has a HDMI 2.1 for 8K60 goodness, alongside DisplayPort and USB Type-C outputs for all your connectivity needs.