XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT

This is the AMD flagship chipset, which we already know is pretty fantastic. We hoped it would compete with Nvidia when it launched, but I don’t think any seriously expected it to do as well as it did. The remarkable high-resolution performance gave Nvidia something to worry about and it still does actually. Now, with XFX putting their enormous custom cooler on there, they’re able to bring those clock speeds up. The card has a base clock of 1925 MHz, brought up to a whopping 2105 MHz for gaming and a boost clock of 3450 MHz. The idea is that the bigger cooler will see you able to use the maximum clock speeds more often and for a lot longer.

Nach den bereits ausführlich getesteten Referenzkarten der RX-6000-Serie von AMD hat es auch die XFX RX 6800 XT Merc 319 16 GB als Boardpartnerkarte den Weg zu mir ins Labor gefunden. Die anhaltende Nichtverfügbarkeit aller dieser Karten für die breite Masse ist umso ärgerlicher, als dass es sich bei diesen Produkten um wirklich gute und konkurrenzfähige Grafikkarten handelt, die es verdient hätten, auch die breite Masse der Kaufwilligen zu beglücken. Und so bleibt zu hoffen, dass sich die Lage bald wieder bessert. Doch immer schön der Reihe nach…

The XFX Radeon RX 6800 XT Speedster Merc 319 Black is the company's flagship for the RX 6800 XT Navi 21 generation. That name is quite a mouthful. When I see such names, I sometimes wonder how Apple is able to sell "iPhone 12" and make billions; XFX also forgot to add "Gaming" to the name. Kidding aside, the idea behind "319" is that the card is a triple-fan design, using two 1(00) mm fans in combination with a 9(0) mm fan in the middle. I'm still not convinced. Out of the box, the card runs at a rated boost of 2360 MHz, which is the highest boost setting available on any custom design.

The custom AMD Radeon XT 6800 XT graphics cards launched this week and the very first card to be delivered is the XFX Speedster MERC319 Radeon RX 6800XT. We found that the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT was no joke in our launch article, but we’ve been told by AMD’s board partner that their custom cards truly next level. The Speedster MERC319 Radeon RX 6800 XT is the flagship model for XFX and commands a paltry $799 (buy on Amazon) for those that think they are worthy of owning one. This card is nothing like the AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT reference cards that came to market last week at $649 to do battle with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 that is priced at $699.

The Radeon RX 6800/6800 XT launch has been exciting and a great follow up to Nvidia’s launches as well. That is of course not including the supply issues affecting nearly all of the launches packed into the last quarter of 2020. It’s clear that XFX hasn’t been sitting on their hands between the 5000 series and the 6000 series. The old cooler design is gone as well as the entire naming scheme they used to have. Thicc is no longer and we now have the speedster series with their top-end mercury card. Specifically, the RX 6800 XT Merc 319 which I took a look at today. It’s all new look which has what I like to think of as speed dimples aren’t as clean and simple as some of XFX’s past designs. But it isn’t far off, sticking with black and not going overboard with RGB lighting at all. It also dropped the chrome from the Thicc lineup for silver accents which are a little more muted. XFX learned from mistakes from their early 5700’s and have improved the cooling design here with extra ventilation, a larger cooler, larger cool plate, and thermal pads on everything. The result is solid cooling performance, though I will say cranking the fans up doesn’t result in much more. They upgraded the VRMs over the stock AMD offering as well. My biggest complaints about the card are that it is huge and that when you do crank the fans up it is a lot noisier than it should be. The noise shouldn’t be an issue as long as you stay close to the stock fan profile which isn’t bad at all. As for the size, well you just need to make sure this beast is going to fit into your case. I know a lot of SFF cases aren’t going to be able to fit this and a lot of the other aftermarket cards from this generation on both sides. I also noticed that the MERC 319 doesn’t have a way to turn off the top lighting for anyone who might want that. Unless I missed it. Now for pricing XFX has this their flagship card with an MSRP of $799 which is a lot more than the MSRP of the stock RX 6800 XT which was $649. The $799 is in line with some of the other RX 6800 XT aftermarket cards and cheaper than a few as well. More importantly though, until RX 6800 XT card availability improves the pricing isn’t going to matter. Especially when stock is selling on eBay for twice its MSRP. SO for now, the XFX MERC 319 RX 6800 XT looks to be a solid card and a good option if you come across availability. As far as its pricing, we will have to reevaluate that later when there is enough availability for it to matter. It is $100 less than the RTX 3080 Suprim X that I recently reviewed which puts it about right with its performance but more than a lot of the other RTX 3080’s on the market. Which would make the decision hard given that the 3080 does come out ahead in more of the games tested.

The XFX RX 6800 XT custom version called Merc 319 is about the best you can get from the GPU in terms of performance. The limitations of overclocking are not in XFX control, but the 200MHz increase to 2.6GHz is just incredible to see at the very least. The real limitation to the overclocking is the voltage, which is controlled and locked by AMD. It is a little disappointing for those who are into that overclocking scene.

To put things in their simplest terms, the XFX Speedster RX 6800 XT MERC319 proves this beyond doubt that custom designs still have what it takes to surpass AMD's reference models. XFX has taken an already impressive GPU and has cranked it up to 11. While the XFX Speedster RX 6800 XT MERC319 is still an RX 6800 XT, it is a model which has been tweaked to near perfection. Think of it like this, how your body would look after a year at the gym? The Speedster RX 6800 XT is still an RX 6800 XT, but though some hard work and engineering, XFX has unlocked the GPU's potential.

Ah, man, I kind of miss the quirky THICC naming :) It was so wrong that's it's good :) But hey now, SpeedSter 319 it is. The card series shares many design elements from that THICC series, though, as the cooler really closely resembles it. That also indicates that noise and temperatures will be well under control with that big 3-fan behemoth of a cooler. The factory tweak makes it perform a notch faster than reference as well. That does remain a tad relative, though, as, in the high-end spectrum, the margins for more performance and tweaking over the years have dissolved a bit, as the players like AMD will attempt and get as much as they can from the products in that baseline configuration. Typically, tweaking margins were 15, maybe even 20% years ago; these days, you're lucky to gain 5 to 10% overall.