XFX MERC 319 RX 6800 XT Review

AMD has made their biggest comeback with the RX 6800 XT graphics card and today we check out the XFX Speedster MERC319 AMD Radeon™ RX 6800 XT BLACK Gaming Graphics Card (RX-68XTACBD9).

Product on Review: MERC 319 RX 6800 XT
Manufacturer & Sponsor: XFX
Street Price: £750 GBP | $800 USD | $1489 AUD

We’ve seen AMD take the desktop market by storm in recent years with their Zen-based CPUs and the company isn’t quite finished. NVIDIA has dominated the GPU division for countless years and AMD has largely been unable to challenge the green team, until now.

Various attempts have been made to tackle NVIDIA head on, and AMD has been able to provide satisfactory alternatives for the low-mid range. But it wasn’t until their new RX 6000 Series aka Big Navi arrived that a true rival for the high-end appeared.

Following on from the release of the RX 6800 XT, today we’ll be exploring what XFX has to offer in their new MERC 319 RX 6800 XT. This is a factory overclocked variant which steps forward with a gigantic triple fan cooling system.

Should you be eyeing up this card over the RTX 3080?

About XFX

Founded in 1989, PINE designs, develops, manufactures and distributes high-performance video graphics technology and computer peripherals. The company’s dedicated research and development team are continually pushing the limits to meet the demands of the ever-growing and performance-driven community.

Technical Specifications

Below are the technical specifications surrounding the MERC 319:

GPU
Navi 21 XT
Shader Units
4608
Video Memory
16GB GDDR6
Memory Bus
256-bit
Engine Clock Boost
2340MHz
Memory Clock
16000MHz Effective
PCI Express
4.0
Display Outputs
3x DisplayPort 1.4
2x HDMI 2.1
Recommended Power Supply
750W
DirectX
12 API feature level 12_2
OpenGL
4.6
Cooling
Triple cooling fans
Slot Size
2
Supported OS
Windows 10
Card Length
340 x 138 x 54 mm

Closer Look Video Review

For this review we’ve produced a video of MERC 319. In this video we go into great detail about this graphics card, walking you through all of the features and detaching the cooler for a look at the thermal solution and innards. View the video here or watch below:

Test Setup & Methodology

HOW WE TEST GRAPHICS CARDS

Testing a graphics card is an extremely lengthy process. We sometimes see reviews where a graphics card has been tested using out of date equipment, out of date games and even out of date drivers. While the latter can be excused due to the sheer amount of driver updates making a thorough review impossible we will however notify the reader when we have used a different driver to the normal for example a pre-release driver. For the most part however we will always use the same hardware and latest drivers so this does certainly need to be taken into consideration when viewing our testing results. Each game and benchmark is tested times with the lowest and highest scores omitted out of the 5 results and the average then taken from the three remaining to give us our final result for each resolution and setting used.

HARDWARE

In Q3 2020 we decided to move on from our Intel X99-based graphics card test system to embrace AMD Ryzen Gen3. The basis for this was quite simple, AMD’s platform is one of the most popular choices for gamers and by using such a configuration, we can hopefully showcase to our readership what they can expect. In the past we’ve used HEDT platforms and while this does indeed align itself to the bleeding edge for a computer system, it doesn’t reflect what most gamers will be using.

With NVIDIA and AMD now using PCIe 4.0 for their bus interface on graphics cards, AMD Ryzen Gen3 and the X570 chipset are well-equipped to test appropriately.

Graphics Cards on test:
AMD RX 5700
AMD RX 5700 XT
AMD RX 6800
XFX MERC 319 RX 6800 XT
NVIDIA RTX 2060
NVIDIA RTX 2060 SUPER
NVIDIA RTX 2070 SUPER
NVIDIA RTX 2080 SUPER
NVIDIA RTX 2080 Ti
ZOTAC RTX 3060 Ti Twin Edge OC
ASUS TUF RTX 3080 OC
ASUS ROG STRIX RTX 3090 OC

Special thanks go to AMD, MSI, Corsair, Noctua and AverMedia for providing the hardware configuration for our graphics card reviews:

Motherboard: MSI PRESTIGE X570 CREATION
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
RAM – 16GB (2x8GB) Corsair LPX Vengeance DDR4 @ 3000MHz
Power Supply – CORSAIR HX1050
Hard Drive – Samsung 830 EVO 250GB + Crucial MX300 2TB
Cooler – CORSAIR Hydro Series™ H150i Pro 360mm Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler
Capture Card – Avermedia Live Gamer Extreme 2

BENCHMARKS

If you are a regular reader of our reviews you will know we like to test the latest hardware with the latest games and benchmarks on the market. Here are the games we’ve chosen:

Horizon Zero Dawn
Control
Shadow of the Tomb Raider
F1 2020
A Total War Saga: Troy

To capture framerates we use a combination of in-game benchmark tools and FRAPS.

We also take into consideration the benchmarkers out there so have included three of the more popular synthetic benchmarks available:

3DMark Time Spy
3DMark Port Royal
Unigine: SuperPosition

In light of the new RTX and DLSS features, we have also added in some tests to cover this tech to provide some analysis, showcasing what users can expect with/without such a feature enabled. For this we are using:

3DMark DLSS
Control – RT Off/RT On

Let’s see how today’s graphics card performed…

Power, Temperatures, Acoustics

To test for power consumption, we take a measurement from the plug socket. It is important to note that the figures below represent total system power use and not just the GPU. The CPU was always in a fixed state so did not affect the additional power load when the GPU was placed under 100% load using AIDA64 stability test (GPU Only) which was ran for 20 minutes at which point a load reading was taken. Idle readings were taken 5 minutes after system boot to ensure any background services and applications had loaded.

TEMPERATURE

To test temperatures we measured idle temperatures after booting windows, letting all applications finish loading and ran a few benchmarks. Once the benchmarks were complete we left the card to reach a cooling plateau where we then took the idle temperatures. For the load tests we set Unigine SuperPosition running in game mode continuously for ~30 minutes and recorded the peak/maximum GPU temperature.

ACOUSTICS

For the purpose of testing audio levels we have the NDI KC-3300 sound level meter. During the temperature recording above, while in Unigine SuperPosition gamemode we monitored the audio and the results are found below. All graphics cards are tested in their out of the box state (auto).

DX12: 3DMark Time Spy

Download your copy now

With its pure DirectX 12 engine, which supports new API features like asynchronous compute, explicit multi-adapter, and multi-threading, 3DMark Time Spy is the ideal benchmark for testing the DirectX 12 performance of the latest graphics cards.

DX12: 3DMark Port Royal

Download your copy now

3DMark Port Royal is the world’s first dedicated real-time ray tracing benchmark for gamers. You can use Port Royal to test and compare the real-time ray tracing performance of any graphics card that supports Microsoft DirectX Raytracing. As well as benchmarking performance, 3DMark Port Royal provides a realistic and practical example of what to expect from ray tracing in upcoming games.

DX11: Unigine SuperPosition

Superposition is a new-generation benchmark tailored for testing reliability and performance of the latest GPUs. Top-notch visuals, support for VR-devices and an interactive mode with mini-games — the list of features built into Superposition could go on and on.

DX12: Horizon Zero Dawn

Horizon Zero Dawn is an action role-playing game developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The plot follows Aloy, a hunter in a world overrun by machines, who sets out to uncover her past

DX12: Control

Control Ultimate Edition contains the main game and all previously released Expansions (“The Foundation” and “AWE&quot

in one great value package. Winner of over 80 awards, Control is a visually stunning third-person action-adventure that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

DX12: Shadow of the Tomb Raider

Shadow of the Tomb Raider is an action-adventure video game developed by Eidos Montréal in conjunction with Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix. It continues the narrative from the 2013 game Tomb Raider and its sequel Rise of the Tomb Raider, and is the twelfth mainline entry in the Tomb Raider series.

DX12: F1 2020

F1® 2020 allows you to create your F1® team for the very first time and race alongside the official teams and drivers. Alternatively, challenge your friends in new split-screen with casual race options for more relaxed racing. Compete on 22 circuits, with current and classic content.

DX12: A Total War Saga: TROY

A Total War Saga: TROY is the first in the award-winning strategy series to focus on the Bronze-Age Mediterranean and the legendary twenty-year conflict between the kingdoms of Troy and Mycenaean Greece, known as the Trojan War.

Overall Performance

Here we take a look at the overall performance of the graphics card. This figure is determined by finding the average FPS across all of the settings used in a particular benchmark(game) to give us an overall value.

Value For Money

We make a simple calculation for this set of results. For each game we add all of the resulting FPS totals together and then divide by the four sets to give us an overall performance figure. While the figures alone do not give you an accurate picture of how the card will perform in any given scenario, they do tell you, when averaged, which GPU is the more capable across all of the benchmarks and settings tested.

Please note: we’ve used GBP for currency but since this is relative – regardless of which currency you use, this will give you a good indication of value for money.

DLSS Analysis: 3DMark DLSS

Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) is an NVIDIA RTX technology that uses the power of deep learning and AI to improve game performance while maintaining visual quality.

Ray Tracing Analysis: Control

Control is an action-adventure video game title which has the ability to take advantage of real-time ray tracing. For this test we ran the game in 1440p with Ultra Detail set. Under the settings we enable Ray Tracingand assign the preset as “High”. Below are the results with RT On and RT Off.

Conclusion

Clearly AMD has done an astounding job with the introduction of the RX 6800 XT and under the guise of the XFX MERC 319 it effectively challenges the RTX 3080, and in most cases comes out as the victor.

This graphics card is destined to be used for 4K and operating at that resolution with detail levels maxed out present us with some excellent performance. Some gaming titles are specifically designed to be optimized for AMD GPUs and as a result, MERC will perform better, but we found that even with ray tracing enabled this model does not disappoint either, pulling in some impressive performance figures.

Having a large factory overclock applied to the GPU is extremely beneficial, we just wish the memory also received some of that OC treatment too. If you switch to RAGE mode (either by the onboard switch or Adrenalin) then you’ll be able to reach a GPU clock boost of up to 2340MHz.

The cooler on this model has been armed with three fans and a gigantic heatsink which performs reasonably well by keeping the temperature reading around the mid 70s. Noise is something that many can be sensitive to but during gaming under ‘auto’ we found this cooler to be far from disruptive.

At a cost of £750 GBP | $800 USD | $1489 AUD, this model isn’t the cheapest 6800 XT you can buy, but it has all the bells and whistles – touted as XFX’s flagship. We think it represents decent value for money, especially so when you factor in a 3 year warranty.

The new MERC 319 is XFX’s best looking graphics card to date, it’s equipped with an impressive factory OC and a burly thermal design. If you’re on the hunt for a GPU which is more than capable of handling 4K Ultra, consider this!

Pros
+ Very appealing design
+ Solid build quality
+ Excellent 4K performance
+ Low-noise cooler
+ Zero decibel technology
+ 3 years warranty

Cons
– Extremely large
– Heavy

Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.

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