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.