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For years, we have been waiting for a Radeon high-end flagship graphics card that can take on the likes of NVIDIA. And if you haven ’ metric ton noticed by now, the raw card is relatively bigger than any of the former generation XFX Radeon 5000 serial cards. If you already own any of the previous XFX cards, you would immediately notice that the overall design of the new flagship does follow the traditional XFX ’ s industrial design doctrine. The curves, edges, and fan rims of the chassis do strike a resemblance to the XFX THICC II Ultra Radeon RX 5700 XT that we had previously reviewed. Almost the entire card is black in discolor .
The XFX Radeon RX 6900 XT Merc 319 Black comes with a total of three 13-blade double-ball bearing cooling fans that offers quieter operations, and as XFX claims, doubly the life. There is a reason why XFX placed the number “ 319 ” on its brand. The “ 3 ” stands for the three fans on the poster, the “ 1 ” is to indicate the two 100mm fans on either side, and the “ 9 ” is for the 90mm sports fan on the middle. And as common, there is the “ X ” logo on all three fans. The front side of the card besides features a engagement radiation pattern all around the fan rims on the sheet. There is besides the original “ Radeon ” branding on the top of the middle fan.
If there is one thing that is consistent among customs NVIDIA cards, careless of the maker, is that the “ GeForce RTX/GTX ” logo is constantly present on the top part along with the model number. And while most of the GPU makers use their own brand on their Radeon cards, XFX decided to go the traditional way and implement the illuminate “ Radeon RX 6900XT ”. XFX besides decided to besides color the “ RX ” in red, just as AMD does for its Radeon stigmatization .
There is besides the XFX logo on the properly side that is besides back-illuminated in white tinge. unfortunately, you can not change the coloring material of the LEDsor turn them off if you don ’ thymine like them. personally, we feel that XFX did a clean and jerk job on the RGB front. It ’ s not overdone to make RGB haters ferocious as some GPU makers love to stuff in a fortune of RGB lights all over their cards. It should besides be noted that XFX has placed the BIOS switch next to the illuminated Radeon branding on the top of the calling card. Users will be able to switch to the backup BIOS mode in sheath the batting order undergoes a fail BIOS update .
When it comes to cooling efficiency, XFX has ensured that all the VRM chips, memory chips, and other all-important components are equipped with thermal pads of all sizes. This is indeed an significant feature if you want to keep the temperatures of these components deoxyadenosine monophosphate first gear as possible while gaming .
There is an aluminum backplate that features a big “ MERC ” insignia, along with a small XFX engraving and several holes for heat dissipation. If you aren ’ thymine aware, the “ MERC ” branding actually stands for Mercury. At the correct side of the backplate, there is a cut-out that exposes the heatsink. public speaking of which, XFX uses its new XFX Ghost Thermal design that features a straight-through airflow from the 13-blade treble fans to the giant heatsink. The circuit board uses 7-piece 6mm copper heat pipes with direct contacts for the GPU and the memory chips. There is an aluminum cast tray that sits between the independent PCB and the heat pipes. The heat sinks are wholly exposed on the bottom of the calling card for further dissipation of hotness .
The XFX Radeon RX 6900 XT Merc 319 Black graphics wag features a total of four ports, which includes one HDMI 2.1 with VRR and FRL, two Display Port 1.4 with DSC, and one USB Type-C larboard. The card requires two PCI-E 8-pin connections and XFX states that the minimal power necessity is an 850W PSU. The entire circuit board features a triple-slot design and is 330mm retentive. XFX does mention that the wag is better suited to be used on an enthusiast case like a wide loom or large mid-tower cases to ensure proper airflow. besides, the card uses a PCI-E 4.0 bus .
As for the pack, XFX decided to keep the form of the box in a upright fashion. The carry includes the circuit board, manuals, driver candle, 8-pin to 6-pin power cables, and more .
Specifications and Performance
It ’ second no surprise that NVIDIA has been leading in the high-end GPU space for the by respective years. Despite featuring high-bandwidth HBM memory, former cards such as the RX Fury series and the Radeon Vega 56/64 cards couldn ’ triiodothyronine keep up with what NVIDIA had to offer. Don ’ triiodothyronine get us amiss, the previous genesis Radeons were adept cards for its prison term. The Radeon VII, which besides featured the HBM memory and 7nm GPU, was able to shorten the performance gap but the menu was ephemeral. And AMD ’ s first-generation RDNA series card only had the Radeon RX 5700XT as the highest GPU in the line-up. That said, the RX 5700 XT was an excellent card for its price ( not the current monetary value, obviously ) that offered a great 2K gaming performance and was a better alternate to the RTX 2070 ( except for the ray-tracing capability ). inactive, there was no high-end Radeon cards to take on the RTX 2080 or the RTX 2080Ti .
And while NVIDIA launched the RTX 30 series cards last year that offered faster gaming performances, AMD unleashed the RDNA 2 based high-end cards that include the Radeon RX 6800, the Radeon RX 6800 XT, and the Radeon RX 6900 XT GPUs. According to AMD, the RX 6900 XT is entirely designed to take on the RTX 3090, NVIDIA ’ s current fastest gambling GPU. The silicon that powers the 6900 crosstalk is the Navi 21 GPU, or just dubbed as the “ Big Navi ” by the community. Navi 21 is based on the 7nm fabrication serve and the die size of the GPU is 519mm2 .
The GPU features a total of 80 calculate units and 5120 stream processors. The bit besides features a sum of 26.8 billion transistors. While the new card does not have Tensor-core-like computer science, AMD has included alleged Ray Accelerators and each RA can process up to four ray/box intersections per CU. Since AMD has included one Ray Accelerator per CU, so the total number of Ray Accelerators is 80 on the RX 6900XT .
XFX has already overclocked the graphics circuit board with noticeable operation differences. While the Radeon RX 6900 XT reference card features a crippled frequency that goes up to 2015 MHz, the XFX Merc 319 Black adaptation can go up to 2135 MHz. The same goes for the boost clocks which can go up to 2365 MHz speeds on the XFX menu as compared to the 2250MHz reference book card clocks. AMD besides introduced the “ Rage Mode ” ( A atavism to the dear old ATI days ), which is capable of offering fast performances and can be activated from the AMD software .
As for the memory, the RX 6900 XT features a entire of 16GB GDDR6, which is a massive room for any game out there. however, the memory bus is only 256-bit and the memory clocks are set at 16Gbps with a bandwidth of 512GB/s. While the bandwidth is well humble as compared to what the high-end RTX 30 cards can do, AMD included a new feature called the Infinity Cache that supercharges the bandwidth with less ability consumption. The Infinity Cache is basically a 128MB hoard that helps to increase the performance of the 256-bit busbar up to a massive 1664GB/s, which is way higher than what a 382-bit or 512-bit busbar can offer .
then there is the Smart Access Memory ( SAM ) that was introduced by AMD during the launch, which is now known as the ReBAR by many motherboard makers. The Resizable BAR was initially merely compatible with Ryzen 5000 serial processors and X470/X570 motherboards. AMD late announced that Ryzen 3000 series CPUs can besides take advantage of the raw memory flim-flam. Intel and NVIDIA had besides announced their updates for the ReBAR capability .
In normal systems, the central processing unit only gets to utilize lone a divide of the graphics memory at the same time, which puts a terminus ad quem on the performance. With Smart Access Memory enabled, the processor will be able to wholly utilize the integral GPU memory and the accelerate of the PCI Express, resulting in increased bet on performances. While that is an arouse feature, not all games would benefit from the upgrade. Users will be able to enable or disable surface-to-air missile from the motherboard BIOS .
With all these enhancements, XFX has besides implemented a 14+2 Phase exponent design for stable gambling performances by the better distribution of might among the VRMs. This gives more headroom for overclocking. On the contrary, the reference RX 6900 XT features an 11+2 Phase Power design .
Testbed and Benchmarks
It ’ mho time to take a spirit at how the XFX Radeon RX 6900 XT Merc 319 Black performs in gambling. Our test workbench consists of the AMD Ryzen 3800XT processor at its default speeds and SMT enabled, ASUS X570-PLUS TUF GAMING motherboard, 32GB DDR4 GSkill Trident Z RGB RAM ( 4 adam 8GB at 3600MHz speeds ), a Kingston 1TB KC2500 SSD with the latest Windows 10 Pro physique installed, XFX XTI 1000W PSU, a Corsair iCUE H100i RGB PRO XT AIO CPU cool, and the graphics card itself. We got to try numerous games in 1080p, 2K, and 4K resolutions, and at the utmost settings for about all the games .
We besides tested the XFX branded 6900 XT for ray-tracing bet on performance. And since AMD had recently enabled Smart Access Memory for Ryzen 3000 series processors, we had updated our motherboard to the latest BIOS and enabled SAM to check out the performance. however, we tried the GPU with default option clocks and not in the Rage Mode. I ’ ve besides tested benchmarks such as FireStrike, TimeSpy, Mesh Shaders, Port Royal, Unigine benchmarks, and more .
Futuremark Benchmarks
Unigine Benchmarks
Game benchmarks
From the games that we have tested, Shadow of the Tomb Raider and Rise of the Tomb Raider performs well on 1080p and 2K resolutions. however, 4K bet on performance about reaches 60fps on average and we suspect it could have been well if we had a faster central processing unit like the Ryzen 5000 series or any Intel equivalent. That said, DOOM : Eternal, Rage 2, Ashes of Singularity : escalation, Battlefield V, Hellblade, and GTA 5 performed well .
however, the performance of Crysis 3 was a bite disappoint as it didn ’ t go beyond 64fps on median, even at 1080p resolution. Metro Exodus and Cyberpunk were taxing on the GPU at their maximal settings and performed only below 60fps at 4K resolutions .
Ray Tracing Performance
While we already know that NVIDIA takes the go in re trace operation, the RX 6900 XT performed well on 1080p and 2K resolutions. however, the card did not perform well with irradiate tracing at 4K. possibly we will see an improvement on the following Radeon series.
ReBAR enabled performance
As you can see, ReBAR performance does boost the FPS count by a slight margin. however, it does depend from bet on to game .
Verdict
When AMD had released the foremost generation Ryzen processors to take on Intel, the CPUs cursorily became popular, thanks to their improved performance and higher core count at a lower monetary value. And with the latest Ryzen 5000 series, AMD now about dominates the CPU outer space. The lapp can be said for the graphics card market as the RDNA 2 based graphics cards are entirely designed with gambling in take care. AMD made surely that the fresh RDNA 2 based 6000 series graphics cards will have the top-of-the-line models and that ’ randomness where the Radeon RX 6900 XT comes in .
The raw XFX Radeon RX 6900 XT Merc 319 Black graphics card offers better GPU frequencies than the reference design, along with a better phase might invention. Although the card is quite big, the overall unit has a clean and industrial design. There is ample cooling already available on the menu, starting from the treble fans, the large heat sinks, thermal pads on the PCB chips and VRM, the aluminum backplate, and more. The performance of the graphics wag is very good for most of the games at 1080p, 2K, and 4K resolutions, except for a few that already is taxing on any poster. Ray-tracing performance on the RX 6900 XT is properly, to say the least, and gamers will besides be able to benefit from the ReBAR capability for higher framerates .
