Yesterday I had the chance to check out both of AMD's reference cards for the Radeon RX 7900 XTX and XT launch. Well, today cards are available for sale and alongside of that, I have the opportunity to check out an aftermarket card from XFX, specifically the XFX MERC 310 7900 XT. This gives us a great chance to check out how XFX’s card compares with the stock-clocked reference design both in performance but also in cooling and noise. Being an aftermarket card, the MERC 310 7900 XT is larger than AMDs design, and XFX has used that as a chance to up the clock speeds as well with the game clock increased from 2000 MHz up to 2220 MHz and the boost clock which on the reference card can go up to 2400 MHz can go up to 2560 MHz on XFX’s card which is a big overclock. So let’s dive in and see what XFX has to offer!

Product Name: XFX MERC 310 7900 XT Black Edition

Review Sample Provided by: XFX

Written by: Wes Compton

Amazon Affiliate Link: HERE

As I mentioned in the opening, this is an overclocked card and XFX has given it a bigger than average overclock over the stock reference card clock speeds. The game clock is set to up to 2220 MHz compared to 2000 of the reference card and the boost clock is up to 2560 MHz compared to 2400 MHz on the reference card. I did run GPUz before testing but sadly as of writing this it hasn’t been updated with support for the new cards so the clock speeds were all over the place and with that, I couldn’t confirm the clock speeds match the specs. I tested with the press prerelease driver and GPUz also isn’t picking up the BIOS revision number just yet so it isn’t documenting that like we normally do.

Packaging

Unlike the reference cards which have a very traditional wide shape. XFX has gone a completely different direction with their packaging for the last few generations and that hasn’t changed with the MERC 310 7900 XT. It has a vertical orientation to the box, similar to how EVGA would do their boxes. XFX has their logo up in the top left corner which also has a small sticker that lets us know that this is the black edition, something that I think could be a little more prominent on the box. The Speed Series is in the background and MERX 310 is in bright white and a huge font, but Black Edition should be as visible as those other things given that it lets you know that this is overclocked. Then because of the vertical layout, the AMD wrap-around is a lot smaller with the 20GB memory in the bottom left corner and the model name in the bottom right. I was about to mention not having a picture of the card on the front but the back of the box has pictures of the MERC 310 7900 XT both from the front and back. Then below that, they have a list of AMD features along with a list of what comes in the box. Below that is the other half of the AMD wrap-around with more features highlighted. The only thing missing for me is a spec listing which if it had the overclock speeds would be super helpful when shopping in retail or at least the card dimensions and the display connections because both of those can be important when picking out a card.

There is a second box inside of the outer box with the branding on it. When you open up that black box XFX has a paper inside up on top that shows you the included support bar and how to install it as well as a thank you for your purchase as well. Under that is a thick foam panel with a card glued to the top, this one covers everything and has two QR codes on it, one for the latest drivers and the other with warranty information. Then under the foam, you finally get to the MERC 310 7900 XT which is buried in another thick layer of foam cut to the shape of the card. It also comes wrapped in a plastic bag.

Along with the card, XFX included an anti-sagging bracket to help support the huge card. The design is simple and is metal with a black finish. One end has four mounting holes to attach to the top of the PCI brackets. The other end has a bracket that has three screw holes for attaching to the card itself on the end. You get a bag with all of the mounting hardware for both ends and this includes a small metal plate used to fill in the height difference to match the thickness of the PCI bracket on the card.

Card Layout and Photos

At first glance, the MERC 310 7900 XT has the same styling as we saw last year on cards like the MERC 310 6800 XT but it is only the front fan shroud design that is the same. XFX did change things up on the top edge and completely changed the backplate. The shroud design on the other hand has a simple flat design which is a nice change from the constant “gamer” focused designs with their angular shapes and random useless accents. The MERC 310 7900 XT is more like a nice black suit, it isn’t for everyone but I bet that for some people the clean look is the only look that they will like.

Where the reference cards from AMD kept things compact, the MERC 310 7900 XT goes hog wild in size just like XFX’s designs last generation and frankly any other aftermarket card design as well. The MERC 310 7900 XT is 344 mm long or 13.5 inches which is longer than what some smaller/mid-sized cases will be able to handle. For thickness it is 55mm thick which puts it as a 2.75 slot card, leaving a little room before the 3^rd slot but not much. Then for height, it is 128 mm tall or 5.04 inches tall or as I like to look at it, 24 mm taller than the top of the PCI bracket which is tall but far from the tallest out there. The 4090 Founders Edition for example is 137 mm tall and there are even taller aftermarket cards available.

The fan side of the MERC 310 7900 XT has three matching axial fans that blow down into the heatsink which has a vertical layout that pushes the warmed air up out the top and down out the bottom of the card. All three of the fans have the same orientation and have 13 blades. Unlike most cards, XFX didn’t go with an outer ring on the fans for even more support. Each of the fans has a silver center sticker with a 2/3 pie-shaped black shape in the middle. This goes with the fan shroud design which is black but with silver accents around each fan and at the ends. While I do like the black and silver, I do think this design might look even better if it was all blacked out including the heatsink as AMD did with their reference design. Each of the fans is the same size coming in at 100 mm for the size of the opening.

Looking around at the edges of the MERC 310 7900 XT we can see the vertical heatsink layout and the top and bottom views show that XFX packed the heatsink into any available space. Under that is a copper vapor chamber which you can see looking at the bottom view of the MERC 310 7900 XT. The vapor chamber touches the GPU and all of the memory. The end of the MERC 310 7900 XT has the silver backplate wrapped around but with a gap between it and the front fan shroud. That space has a metal bracket designed to work with the included Z-bar support bracket to help support the length and weight of the card.

While the fan shroud on the MERC 310 7900 XT carried over from the 6000 series XFX did change things up on the top edge of the card. The backlit XFX logo in the shroud is the same but the MERC 310 7900 XT no longer has the backlit Radeon RX and card model that they had last generation. All of that space has been opened up here for airflow across the entire top of the card. The Radeon branding is still there but is now printed on a flap of the backplate that is folded down over the top. In that same area, the MERC 310 7900 XT has a small switch for switching between two different BIOS but with our sample, both are programmed with the same overclocked profile. The top of the card does also have the power connections which like the AMD 7900 XT are two 8-pin PCIe power connections. These aren’t at the end of the card and are about an inch away from the end of the PCB.

The back of the MERC 310 7900 XT shows off its length. It is also another big area where XFX has changed things up. For the 6000 series, while the cooler design does share some similarities, the backplate on the 6000 Series MERC 310 was an aluminum panel with a black finish and a design made of circular holes. The MERC 310 7900 XT changes all of that with a silver finish, slots for ventilation, and groves in the aluminum the length of the backplate. It also has a small sticker with your serial number and model information tucked away down at the bottom. Near the power connections the backplate drops down to stay out of the way and then at the end the backplate has a hole in it for the blow-through design on the last fan.

The PCI bracket for the MERC 310 7900 XT is completely different than the reference card which had a unique setup with no ventilation and replaced one of the DisplayPort connections with a Type-C. XFX has stuck with the standard layout for the display connections. You get one HDMI up at the top and three full-sized DisplayPort plugs. Then above that, the bracket does have some ventilation even though the cooler layout doesn’t need it. They went with slots along with a section with the XFX logo cutout.

The lighting on the MERC 310 7900 XT is simple and to the point. XFX just has their logo on the top edge lit up in white which goes well with the black and silver theme of the cooler design. I’m not the biggest fan of just having backlit logos, it ends up making your PC look like Times Square with ads. But overall this isn’t too bad, I do wish that the card has some other backlit accents to go with it and potentially RGB as an option to match it with your build.

Test Rig and Procedures

Test System

CPU: Intel Core-i9 12900K – Live Pricing

Motherboard: MSI MEG Z690I UNIFY Gaming Motherboard – Live Pricing

Cooling: Corsair H100i Elite LCD Display - Live Pricing

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Paste - Live Pricing

 Memory:  Crucial 32GB Kit (2 x 16GB) DDR5-4800 UDIMM– Live Pricing

Storage:  Sabrent Rocket Q4 2TB – Live Pricing

Power Supply: Corsair AX1200 - Live Pricing

Case: Primochill Wetbench - Live Pricing

OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit - Live Pricing

Synthetic Benchmarks

As always I like to start my testing with a few synthetic benchmarks. 3DMark especially is one of my favorites because it is very optimized in both Nvidia and AMD drivers. It's nice to not have to worry about it being favored too much either way and the repeatability of the results makes it a nice chance to compare from card to card, especially when comparing with the same GPU. This time around because this is our second RX 7900 XT I’m excited to see how the XFX MERC 310 7900 XT compares with the stock-clocked 7900 XT from AMD given the significant overclock that it has.

The first round of tests were done in the older Fire Strike benchmark which is a DX11 test. There are three detail levels, performance, extreme, and ultra. The MERC 310 7900 XT shows a noticeable improvement in all three tests over the stock clocked card. With the base Fire Strike benchmark, the MERC 310 7900 XT improved on the stock card by 2% and the same on the Fire Strike Extreme test. The Ultra test saw a little more at a 2.5% improvement.

The next two were both based on the Time Spy benchmark. One is the standard test and then there is the extreme detail level. The MERC 310 7900 XT is sitting right above the stock 7900 XT with a 1.6% improvement in the base Time Spy test. In Time Spy Extreme the gap was higher at 2.4% with the MERC 310 7900 XT scoring 1872 over the stock 7900 XT at 12566.

For ray tracing performance, I ran both the 3DMark Port Royal test which is ray tracing focused as well as the new 3DMark Speed Way test which tests all future-looking features including ray tracing. In Speed Way, the MERC 310 7900 XT had a smaller improvement at just .7% and 1.6% on Port Royal. Overall this still kept it behind the 3090 Ti in Port Royal and behind the 3080 Ti in Speed Way. Overall AMD improved on the ray tracing performance but Nvidia is still out ahead.

The last test was using the Unigine-based Superposition benchmark and I tested at 1080p with the extreme detail setting as well as the 4K optimized setting. In the extreme detail setting the MERC 310 7900 XT is sitting just ahead of the stock 7900 XT in both the 1080p extreme test and at 4k. This keeps the 4080 out in front.

VR Benchmarks

As for Virtual Reality, I love it but it is more demanding than traditional gaming. This is partially because of the resolutions needed to render for two eyes and because they render more than what is immediately visible. But also because of post effects to get the proper “fisheye” effect for it to look proper in your eyes with the HMD. You also have to have much higher expectations for frame rates in VR, skipping frames or lower FPS can cause motion sickness in VR. Because of that, I ran a few tests.

My first test was again in Superposition. This time I tested the VR Future test using the Oculus resolution. Here the MERC 310 7900 XT improved on the stock 7900 XT by 1.4% which was enough to jump ahead of the RTX 4080 FE but not enough to outperform the overclocked 4080.

My second round of VR testing was in VRMark which has three tests that are similar to the VR tests in Superposition. I only focused on just the most demanding test called Blue Room which is looking more at future VR performance. The MERC 310 7900 XT saw an improvement of 2.4% with its overclock over the stock 7900 XT, but this wasn’t enough to do much in the Blue Room test with the RTX 4080 still way out in front along with the 7900 XTX.

In-Game Benchmarks

Now we finally get into the in game performance and that is the main reason people pick up a new video card. To test things out I ran through our new benchmark suite that tests 10 games at three different resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). Most of the games tested have been run at the highest detail setting and a mid-range detail setting to get a look at how turning things up hurts performance and to give an idea of if turning detail down from max will be beneficial for frame rates. In total, each video card is tested 54 times and that makes for a huge mess of results when you put them all together. To help with that I like to start with these overall playability graphs that take all of the results and give an easier-to-read result. I have one for each of the three resolutions and each is broken up into four FPS ranges. Under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, over 30 is playable but not ideal, over 60 is the sweet spot, and then over 120 FPS is for high refresh rate monitors.

So how did the MERC 310 7900 XT do? Well like with the stock 7900 XT 1080p and 1440p performance was out of hand, with both resolutions the MERC 310 7900 XT didn’t have even one test result down below 120 FPS and most of those were WELL above that. It was only at 4K did anything drop below 120 FPS and even then 9 out of the 16 tests were above 120 FPS, the other 6 fell in the 60 to 119 range which is more than playable as well.

Of course, I have all of the actual in game results as well for anyone who wants to sort through the wall of graphs below. The Radeon RX 7900 XT has a little more variation on where it is in the graphs than the 7900 XTX. In some tests like Borderlands, the 7900 XT came in below the 3090 Ti but then in others like Far Cry and Ghost Recon the 7900 XT outperformed the RTX 4080. On average though it came in behind the RTX 4080 but ahead of last year's flagship the RTX 3090 Ti. For the MERC 310 7900 XT specifically the overclock was enough to jump ahead of the 4080 FE in one extra result compared to stock and ahead of the overclocked RTX 4080 once as well. Beyond that, the MERC 310 7900 XT stuck right ahead of or tied with the stock card except for one Metro result where it was .18 of an FPS lower. Overall the MERC 310 7900 XT averaged 131.39 FPS to 129.71 FPS for the stock-clocked 7900 XT which is an improvement of 1.3%, less than what we saw on some of the synthetic benchmarks but still not too bad for an overclock.

Compute Benchmarks

Now some people don’t need a video card for gaming, they need the processing power for rendering or 2D/3D production, or in some cases people who game also do work on the side. So it is also important to check out the compute performance on all of the video cards that come in. That includes doing a few different tests. My first test was a simple GPU Compute benchmark using Passmark’s Performance Test 10 and the MERC 310 7900 XT with its overclock came extremely close to catching the 7900 XTX with its 21034 score which was a 3% improvement over the 7900 XT.

Blender is always my favorite compute benchmark because the open-source 3D rendering software is very popular and it isn’t a synthetic benchmark. With the latest version of Blender, they redid the benchmark so we now have a new test that runs three different renderings and gives each a score. I have all three stacked together so we can see the overall performance. None of the 7900s did very well in Blender and even with the overclock the MERC 310 7900 XT was no different. In fact, it scored less than the stock 7900 XT but overall given their performance this isn’t the best use for the 7900 XT.

Cooling Noise and Power

For my last few tests, rather than focusing on in game performance, I like to check out other aspects of video card performance. These are also the most important ways to differentiate the performance between cards that have the same GPU. To start things off I took a look at power usage. For this, I use our Kill-A-Watt hooked up to the test bench to record the total wattage of the system. I ran two tests with the first using 3DMark Time Spy to put the system under a load similar to normal in game performance. Here our test system with the MERC 310 7900 XT  pulled 576 watts which was just behind the 7900 XTX and up over even the overclocked RTX 4080. I also ran AIDA64’s stress test on the video card to load up only the GPU and using the Kill-A-Watt the test bench with the MERC 310 7900 XT pulled 488 watts and is sitting between the RTX 3080 and the RTX 3080 Ti.

While the overall system numbers are nice, with the addition of a PCat into our testing hardware I have finally been able to look at the total power draw of just the GPU by monitoring the power over the PCIe slot and the power cables. For this test I have also expanded the number of tests I run by testing power usage in two games (Fay Cry 6 and Watch Dog Legion both at 4k and ultra detail) testing with Time Spy and Time Spy Extreme, AIDA64’s GPU workload, and Blender 3.4. I take those numbers and average them out for our average number and also look at the max wattage which is with just one exception always the Time Spy Extreme result. This gives us a much better look at the power usage across multiple situations and also the max power draw. The MERC 310 7900 XT pulled an average of 385 watts which put it up over the overclocked XFX 6800 XT and is 35 watts more than the stock 7900 XT. This also puts it up near the stock-clocked 7900 XTX. For peak wattage, the MERC 310 7900 XT is just 1 watt away from the 7900 XT.

My next round of tests were looking at noise levels. These are especially important to me because I can’t stand to listen to my PC whirling. Especially when I’m not in game and other applications are using the GPU. For my testing, though I first tested with the fan cranked up to 100% to get an idea of how loud it can get, then again at 50% to get an idea of its range. I test using both A and C weighting, A is the standard way and C has a little more of the low end to check for low-level hums. The MERC 310 7900 XT wasn’t exactly quiet for the 50% fan speed test, landing near the top of our charts at 49.3 decibels. The 100% fan speed test was similar with the MERC 310 7900 XT  again up near the top of the charts at 65.7 decibels which is surprising with the MERC 310 7900 XT fan RPM being down below the middle of the chart. I also take a look at noise performance while under load. For that when running AIDA64’s stress test I wait until the temperature of the card has leveled off and then measure how loud things are when the card is at its worst-case scenario with the stock fan profile. Here the MERC 310 7900 XT came in at 42.9 decibels which is again up at the top of our chart but was quieter than the stock 7900 XT in the same test.

To finish up my testing I of course had to check out the cooling performance. To do this I ran two different tests. I used AIDA64’s Stress Test run for a half-hour each to warm things up. Then I documented what temperature the GPU leveled out at with the stock fan profile and then again with the fans cranked up to 100%. With the stock profile, the MERC 310 7900 XT did extremely well coming in at 54c, 7 degrees less than the stock 7900 XT. Then with the fans cranked up, the MERC 310 7900 XT cooled things down further to 47c which was just 1 degree below the reference 7900 XT. Of course, given the higher power usage and the overclock the MERC 310 7900 XT is doing very well to deal with the additional heat. The delta between the two was 7c, which isn’t leaving too much headroom left in the cooler but the MERC 310 7900 XT is already overclocked with an aggressive overclock from XFX.

While running the stock fan profile testing I also took the time to get a few thermal images so we could see what is going on. As expected with the heatsink designed to push air out the top and bottom of the card the hotspot is up on the top edge of the card, even when facing the fan side. That said the top thermals are cooler than the stock 7900 XT and the fan side is especially cool with parts down to 25c. The top-down view shows the hottest area is the vapor chamber that sits over the GPU and memory and helps spread the heat out across the heatsink. The top venting airflow does also have the power cables warmed up somewhat as well but not enough to be a concern. Then the backplate view shows that most of the heat is centered behind the GPU and the thick aluminum backplate is doing a great job of dissipating heat out using the groves in the backplate as an additional heatsink. 

Overall and Final Verdict

When I first saw pictures of the XFX MERC 310 7900 XT Black Edition I thought that XFX had reused a majority of the cooler design from their last generation of cards but after getting the MERC 310 7900 XT in I was surprised to find that they have changed a lot up. The fan shroud design has the same flat design and is black with silver accents, but outside of that everything has been changed up. This includes the new grooved silver backplate and XFX also dropped some of the extra branding on the top to open up airflow more. The result is a simple design that doesn’t have any of the typical gaming design stereotypes. The MERC 310 7900 XT is a huge card which I feel like an old man yelling at the clouds complaining about card size getting out of control when everyone is doing it at this point.

The MERC 310 7900 XT has a surprisingly big overclock over top of the stock RX 7900 XT that we already covered. This translated to a 1%-3% performance improvement in just about every test which wasn’t enough to make any significant changes but did push the MERC 310 7900 XT out in front of the 4080 in a few situations. Overall though the MERC 310 7900 XT, like with the stock 7900 XT, sits below the RTX 4080 in a category lacking competition from Nvidia right now. What that means is that the MERC 310 7900 XT and the 7900 XT, as a whole, bodies any 1080p or 1440p tests that I put it through, coming out at over 120 FPS in every game at those resolutions no matter the detail level. Even at 4K nothing I threw at it struggled with everything over 60 FPS and a majority were over 120 FPS even still.  Like with AMDs other RDNA 3 cards, ray tracing performance was improved but still has more catching up to do compared to Nvidia and FidelityFX Super Resolution is great but without frame generation, DLSS 3 is still ahead there as well.

The overclock that XFX gave the MERC 310 7900 XT Black Edition did also translate to more power usage with the MERC 310 7900 XT Black Edition averaging 35 more watts than the stock 7900 XT which wasn’t exactly power efficient itself. It also didn’t do well in any of our noise tests, coming in near the top of the charts in all three tests even with the fan RPM being in the middle of our charts. But the cooling performance of the large card was good even with the overclock creating more heat.

As always pricing is key and AMD introduced the RX 7900 XT with a suggested price of $899 which was the cheapest so far of the next generation of cards. Of course, their RX 7900 XTX is just $100 more at $999 which leaves a very small window for overclocked aftermarket cards to fit into. XFX said that we should expect to see the MERC 310 7900 XT Black Edition in the $949 to $979 range but a quick look this morning shows it on the high end at Newegg right now. With AMD's tight pricing it puts aftermarket cards into an impossible situation where once you figure in the larger cooler design are you going to want to get an overclocked 7900 XT for $979 or a stock-clocked and faster 7900 XTX for $30 more. If given that option I would go with the XTX every day of the week. Of course, I don’t think that those cheaper XTX or XT options are going to be available much so most won’t have to worry about being put in that spot. Overall XFX is offering some value with its improved cooling, clean styling, and overclocked performance but keep an eye out for an XTX as well when you are shopping as you might end up with a cheap upgrade.

Live Pricing: HERE

Author Bio

Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org

Editor-in-chief

You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.