XFX MERC 310 Radeon RX 7900 XT review - Introduction

MERC 310 Radeon RX 7900 XT 20GB review
XFX Speedster Series

We're here with XFX; we have got the power of a Radeon RX 7900 XT in the MERC 310 flavour, ready to go. The item has been fine-tuned in the factory, is completely customized, and is stunning. XFX is not taking any chances with their design, instead choosing to model it after Radeon's RX 6000 line. This black and silver cooling system keeps the popular THICC triple-fan arrangement. XFX introduced the RX 7900 Merc 310 as part of their Speedster range a few years ago. There has been a major upgrade to the backplate of these cards, with silver theming being applied for the first time. The RX 7900 XT Merc 310 uses a dual-connector 8-pin power system, whereas the RX 7900 XTX uses three. No custom SKU has been released with a USB Type-C port, and the XFX Merc 310 series is no exception. Gamers will get three DisplayPort ports. A secondary BIOS mode is available; however, as opposed to the XTX model, it is set up exactly the same as the default BIOS (so you have dual BIOS).

Though the RDNA 3 competitor may not be as strong as we previously believed, it will nonetheless hover at 3090 Ti and near 4080 performance levels and thus compete with Nvidia's next-generation GPU lineup. Two cards are launched for the initial launch: the 7900XT and 7900 XTX. Both are based on the Navi 31 GPU, which has RDNA3 architecture and is based on a new chiplet design. The transition from a single monolithic chip to numerous chiplets is the most noticeable shift in the new Radeon cards. Combining many chips into one harmonious whole is similar to what AMD has been doing with the Ryzen CPUs for several generations. The Navi 31 chip is the foundation for the Radeon RX 7900 XT and XTX. There can be up to seven chiplets on a single die, with the Graphics Compute Die serving as the most prominent and housing all shader processors. In addition to the Infinity Cache and 64-bit memory controller for the GDDR6 memory, these supplementary chiplets, known as Memory Cache Dies, surround the central GCD.  The die area of the Navi 31 graphics processor chip is 300 mm2. AMD confirmed that its RDNA 3 graphics processing units (GPUs) have a huge performance boost. AMD will highlight some of the essential parts of the RDNA 3 GPUs, such as:

	Radeon RX 7900 XTX	Radeon RX 7900 XT
Architecture	5nm RDNA3	5nm RDNA3
GPU	Navi 31 XTX	Navi 31 XT
Shader Processors	12288/6144SP	10752/5376SP
Memory	24GB G6	20GB G6
Memory Bus	384-bit	320-bit
Memory Speed	20 Gbps	20 Gbps
Infinity Cache	96 MB	80 MB
Bandwidth	960 GB/s	800 GB/s
TBP	355W	300W
Price	$999	$899

The RX 7900 XT has a lot of performance claims made by AMD. Ray tracing performance is suggested to be up to 50 per cent better than on the RX 6950 XT, while rasterization performance is expected to be up to 70 per cent better. David Wang, the company's Senior Vice President of Engineering for the Radeon Technologies Group, said that the next-generation GPUs for the Radeon RX 7000 series would be more efficient than the current RDNA 2 GPUs by more than 50% per watt. The Radeon RX 7900 XT and RX 7900 XTX, in both standard and bespoke cards developed by board partners, will be available beginning on December 13. XFX uses the default TGP here, 290W, with 15% more available. Full digital PWM power (13+2) and dual 8-pin PCIE-E connectors allow for more GPU power delivery. Cooling sees a return of a vapour chamber; compared to a cold plate alone, phase vacuum heat transfer significantly boosted heat transmission. Nickel-plated copper construction. Both GPU and DDR modules use the nickel-plated copper vapour chamber. XFX employs extensive thermal pad placement throughout all GDDR, VRM, and other vital components, including the PCB's backside (a total of 20 thermal pads).  XFX offers a boost frequency of 256 on this product with a 2220 MHz game clock. That means it'll be marginally faster than the reference card from AMD.