XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 Black Review

W1zzard

on Dec 18th, 2020,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: XFX

(44 Comments) »

Introduction

The XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 Black is the company's fastest custom-design RX 6800 XT "Big Navi" graphics card, designed to offer maximum performance out of the box for the RX 6800 XT, the highest overclocking headroom, and the quietest cooler when gaming. The Speedster Merc 319 (where "Merc" is a contraction of the word "mercury," not "mercenary") is the company's successor to its popular THICC III line of graphics cards based on the original RX 5700 series "Navi." XFX has taken many lessons from the THICC, in giving the Merc 319 much better ventilation and heat dissipation, and paired it with a custom-design PCB with an incredibly powerful custom VRM solution.

AMD's new RDNA2 graphics architecture at the heart of "Big Navi" is built on the philosophy of using enormous amounts of compute power to accomplish real-time raytracing, and full DirectX 12 Ultimate logo compliance for the latest generation of AAA games. The most compute-intensive part of raytracing is performed by fixed-function hardware called Ray Accelerators. To accomplish its design goals, AMD doubled the SIMD muscle of "Big Navi" over the previous generation, which should also result in an enormous performance uplift with conventional raster 3D rendering, which still makes up the vast majority of 3D gaming. AMD is hence marketing the RX 6800 XT as a card for maxed-out 4K Ultra HD gaming, as well as extreme refresh-rate esports gaming.

The RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 Black is based on the new 7 nm "Navi 21" silicon by AMD, which features 72 RDNA2 compute units, working out to 4,608 stream processors. Each of these CUs has one Ray Accelerator. AMD also bolstered the memory sub-system by giving the card 16 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 16 Gbps. The memory bus width is 256-bit wide, which works out to 512 GB/s of raw memory bandwidth, but AMD has deployed an interesting solution called Infinity Cache to improve memory sub-system performance. This is a 128 MB last-level cache on the "Navi 21" silicon with an enormous bandwidth the GPU can use as a fast scratchpad. Our RX 6800 XT reference-design review takes an in-depth look at the RDNA2 architecture.

As mentioned earlier, the XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Merc 319 Black pairs AMD's swanky new GPU with a powerful triple-slot cooling solution that uses a large aluminium fin-stack heatsink ventilated by a trio of fans. The metal cooler shroud and backplate feature perforations to enable free flow of heat exhaust. The card is longer than the PCB underneath, so some of the airflow from the third fan flows through—the "hottest" design trend with graphics cards of this generation. XFX has also given the RX 6800 XT a factory overclock, with its engine boost frequency now dialed up to 2360 MHz (compared to 2250 MHz reference). XFX is pricing the card at $800, a $150 premium over the $650 baseline price for the RX 6800 XT. In this review, we take a close look at this dapper-looking card.

Radeon RX 6800 XT Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Shader Units	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
RX Vega 64	$400	4096	64	1247 MHz	1546 MHz	953 MHz	Vega 10	12500M	8 GB, HBM2, 2048-bit
GTX 1080 Ti	$650	3584	88	1481 MHz	1582 MHz	1376 MHz	GP102	12000M	11 GB, GDDR5X, 352-bit
RX 5700 XT	$370	2560	64	1605 MHz	1755 MHz	1750 MHz	Navi 10	10300M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070	$340	2304	64	1410 MHz	1620 MHz	1750 MHz	TU106	10800M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2070 Super	$450	2560	64	1605 MHz	1770 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
Radeon VII	$680	3840	64	1802 MHz	N/A	1000 MHz	Vega 20	13230M	16 GB, HBM2, 4096-bit
RTX 2080	$600	2944	64	1515 MHz	1710 MHz	1750 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Super	$690	3072	64	1650 MHz	1815 MHz	1940 MHz	TU104	13600M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 2080 Ti	$1000	4352	88	1350 MHz	1545 MHz	1750 MHz	TU102	18600M	11 GB, GDDR6, 352-bit
RTX 3070	$500	5888	96	1500 MHz	1725 MHz	1750 MHz	GA104	17400M	8 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800	$580	3840	96	1815 MHz	2105 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 6800 XT	$650	4608	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
XFX RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319	$800	4608	128	2110 MHz	2360 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3080	$700	8704	96	1440 MHz	1710 MHz	1188 MHz	GA102	28000M	10 GB, GDDR6X, 320-bit
RX 6900 XT	$1000	5120	128	2015 MHz	2250 MHz	2000 MHz	Navi 21	26800M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 3090	$1500	10496	112	1395 MHz	1695 MHz	1219 MHz	GA102	28000M	24 GB, GDDR6X, 384-bit

Packaging

The Card

The design language of the XFX Merc 319 is subtle yet stylish because of its mostly black cooler with silver highlights around the fans. On the backplate, "Merc" is displayed in big, bold font. Unlike many other custom designs, the cooler shroud is made from metal.

Dimensions of the card are 34 x 14 cm, and it weighs 1805 g.

Installation requires three slots in your system.

Display connectivity includes two standard DisplayPort 1.4, one HDMI 2.1, and one USB type-C with DisplayPort passthrough.

The card uses two 8-pin power inputs. This configuration is rated for up to 375 W power draw.

XFX has installed a dual-BIOS feature on the Merc 319 that lets you toggle from the default "Balanced" BIOS to a "Hardware Rage" BIOS, which has a slightly increased power limit.

The AMD Radeon RX 6000 series doesn't support multi-GPU.

Teardown

The XFX heatsink is a very elaborate design of multiple components. Seven heatpipes quickly move any heat away from the GPU core and to a large array of fins, where it is dissipated in the airflow of the three fans. Note that the center fan is 90 mm across, while the two outer fans are 100 mm in diameter—this is what the 1(00) 9(0) of the "319" in the name refers to.

Once the main heatsink is removed, this metal bracket becomes visible; it stabilizes the card against sagging. The bracket works very well and has a high quality feel, comparable to what ASUS uses on their cards.

The metal backplate protects the card against damage during installation and handling.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles or forum posts.