XFX Radeon RX 6700 XT MERC 319 review - Introduction

All 6000 cards released by AMD and their board partners will be fitted with GDDR6 memory, the 6700 XT however sees 12 GB of it. And that means a more bandwidth-limited 192-bit wide memory bus. However, AMD has got that trick up their sleeves architecture-wise, as they added an L3 cache into the GPU. All RDNA2 based graphics processors are DirectX Ultimate compatible, a naming placeholder for extra feature levels such as DirectX Raytracing (DXR), Variable Rate Shading (VRS), Mesh Shaders, and Sampler Feedback. 

Pricing

The Radeon RX 6700 XT reference is to cost a rather extravagant 479 USD. You can thus expect board partner cards with custom designs and cooling to sit above the 500 USD marker. At the time of writing, we just cannot make any sense of price levels as to where NVIDIA increases pricing, AMD now follows suit. Unfortunately, prices are now at such levels that people will flee to consoles far more easily. Traditionally the Radeon RX x700 Series should have been mainstream to high-end product. Coming from the last-gen 5700 XT. The MERC 319 Black Edition is receiving an MSRP of $569 USD.

XFX 6700 XT MERC 319 BLACK Speedster Series

XFX fabbed a rather mythical Speedster series graphics cards ready, locked, and loaded ... BIG! I won't make any THICC puns here, but oops I just did, The Speedster Merc 319 in a BLACK edition was submitted, and while in the more mainstream/high-end segment, this product looks like it is the most premium you'll ever have seen. It is based on a triple-fan cooler and a 2.7-slot design with dual 8-pin PCIe power connectors, the card is bound to please and tease many. The design stays close to XFX's THICC III cards, however, THICC branding was succeeded by the 'Speedster MERC series.' The modified RX 6700 XT graphics card has an outspoken black and white and design with a backplate. In the I/O area, the card includes three DisplayPort 1.4 ports, one HDMI 2.1. Clock frequencies are listed as being at a 2457MHz Base, 2548MHz Game, 2622MHz Boost. The Boost frequency however isn't a fixed setting anymore these days, the power limiter is the dominating factor. Depending on the power allowance frequencies have different values. The 12GB GDDR6 memory clocks in at 2000 MHz (16 Gbps effective). The bitter pill to swallow is that MSRP, $569 USD for the MERC 319 Black Edition. The card has a length of close to 32cm and has been fitted with dual-BIOS. We have a lot to talk about, have a peek at what is reviewed today. On the next two pages some in-house photos, after which we then head onwards into the review.