XFX RX 7900 XTX Merc 310 Review

Conclusion

If you’ve already read our review of the AMD Radeon RDNA 3 cards as part of today’s launch then you’ll be aware that AMD have leapt forwards in both regular performance and also performance in ray tracing applications. If you didn’t read that review then you’ll be aware now, particularly if you have looked through our graphs. We know that, for reasons we’ll never understand, a lot of people don’t look at the graphs and skip straight here.

If you’re one of those “just give me the conclusion” people, then of the 22 graphs we have for you today the XFX Merc 310 was at the top of eighteen of them. The outliers being the average clock speed graph – which is strange considering how good it was in actual results; Port Royal where overclocking actually lowers performance somehow; Resident Evil 3 without ray tracing, which we have to confess is spitting out some very strange reseults on these pre-release drivers and Time Spy Extreme which saw the XFX 500 points ahead of the AMD card at stock, but 56 points behind when overclocked, or 0.3% lower.

In every other test amongst the RDNA 3 cards the XFX topped the charts. A ridiculous level of consistency, especially when you consider how good our AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX card was. We think we got super lucky in the silicon lottery with the AMD one, so for the XFX Merc 310 to still best it, and nearly every time, is a measure of how good this card is. Even more impressively the Merc cooler really flexed its muscles. As we saw when we were going over it in detail it has a raft of features designed to keep it cool. The all aluminium heatsink has a 1 meter square amount of fin surface area, a vapour chamber, 20 different thermal pads keeping every component in contact with the heatsink, and an all aluminium backplate that acts as a heat spreader, further reducing the temperatures. The AMD card peaked at 66°C whilst the XFX only peaked at 53°C. Thermal headroom won’t be an issue.

All of which means that if you’ve had your head turned by the combination of fantastic performance and, relatively, affordable pricing of the new AMD Radeon architecture then the XFX Merc 310 is absolutely the model to go for. It’s the embodiment of all a RDNA 3 card can be, and wins our OC3D Performance Award.

Price now confirmed to be $1099

  

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