XFX Speedster Merc 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT evaluate: It does one component completely

Gift More

It’s a mouthful, however the title “XFX Speedster Merc 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT Murky Model” certainly tells you the entirety you have got to know in regards to the firm’s latest offering.

This graphics card represents the most recent in a series of fine-looking XFX personalized designs—which closing wowed us in the bag of the Radeon RX 6700 XT Merc 319—constructed around AMD’s novel Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU, which provides spectacular 1080p efficiency on excessive refresh-fee shows. If that sounds esteem what you’re shopping for, the XFX will fabricate you very at ease certainly, assuming you doubtlessly would possibly perhaps perhaps perchance abdomen the excessive beginning worth of the Radeon RX 6600 XT whereas the enviornment is in the course of a crippling GPU scarcity.

Fortuitously, XFX doesn’t require your first-born child to plot discontinuance the XFX Merc 308. The overclocked, personalized-cooled card costs between $409 and $419 looking on the retailer, I’m urged. That’s $30 to $40 extra than the Radeon RX 6600 XT’s baseline worth, which is cheap for a kitted-out personalized mannequin esteem this. You’ve bought alternatives, although. Within the occasion you’d take the same frame rates with less bling, XFX’s $399 Like a flash 308 strips out the flair (and RGB) you bag in the Merc, marrying overclocked efficiency with a spruce, sunless cowl. At closing, the firm’s Swft 210 Core sticks to no-frills and reference specs for AMD’s urged $379 pricing.

As of late we’re digging into the flagship Merc 308. Let’s creep.

XFX Speedster Merc 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT specs, worth, and fabricate

Brad Chacos/IDG

Make certain to read our initial Radeon RX 6600 XT evaluate for a deeper scrutinize into the novel GPU’s technical bits. We’ve integrated a refresher cheat sheet below, but on the total, the Radeon RX 6600 XT is a paunchy-fledged RDNA 2 GPU with the complete benefits that provides, from fine energy efficiency to sky-excessive clock speeds.

One tidbit worth noting: AMD tuned the 6600 XT’s Infinity Cache around 1080p gaming. Within the occasion you bump the resolution up to 1440p, its efficiency falls off rather plenty. That’s because utilizing Infinity Cache lets AMD utilize a smaller memory bus width for better energy efficiency, however the GPU needs to ship indicators over that bus to the onboard GDDR6 memory extra most steadily at elevated resolutions. The 6600 XT can sport at 1440p, but it completely simply isn’t optimized for the assignment thanks to its tiny 128-bit bus and smaller Infinity Cache. Within the occasion you have got a 1440p indicate, decide for a GeForce RTX 3060 Ti as an different.

With that out of the vogue, here’s that spec cheat sheet:

AMD

XFX juiced the Merc 308’s Navi 23 GPU somewhat. While AMD’s reference spec targets a conventional Game Clock of 2,359MHz, the Merc 308 united statesthat to 2,428MHz—a nice 69MHz enhance. The 8GB of GDDR6 memory blazes along on the same 16Gbps as the reference spec. That’s plenty of dart and ability for the 1080p gaming at which the Radeon RX 6600 XT excels.

The proper plot is XFX’s personalized cooling fabricate, which looks to be killer and permits these extremely-snappily clock speeds. The Merc 308 is constructed around a personalized PCB with a 6+2 fragment paunchy-digital PWM energy fabricate. A nickel-plated copper plate connects to four 6mm warmth pipes to plot efficiency-killing warmth some distance off from the GPU and GDDR6 memory modules, pulling it into the card’s colossal warmth sink. (Warning for dinky case owners: The Merc 308 makes utilize of a long 2.5-slot fabricate.) Three 80mm fans with nine blades apiece hurry into cooler air by that warmth sink, aided by a lower-out in the aluminum backplate that enables for better airflow.

Brad Chacos/IDG

That’s a complete lot of words to narrate that the XFX Speedster Merc 308 comes brimming with cooling abilities that effortlessly tames the overclocked Radeon RX 6600 XT GPU inner. Here’s a fab, silent graphics card. The Asus ROG Strix 6600 XT we tested in our initial evaluate runs powerful cooler, but additionally somewhat of extra audibly, and it costs $130 extra than the XFX mannequin even earlier than the inevitable proper-world markup occurs. It’s additionally no longer tangibly quicker than the XFX Merc 308, as you’ll detect in our benchmark fragment.

The Merc 308 additionally entails the aforementioned bling, for which XFX charges a (microscopic) top fee over the bling-less Swft mannequin. While the Swft sticks to a straightforward sunless cowl, the Merc jazzes things up with chrome accents at some stage in the fans and the perimeters of the card, along with a spiffy illuminated logo on the threshold. Refreshingly, you received’t bring together any RGB onboard the Merc.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Here’s what we said in regards to the recent logo fabricate after we first spotted it on the XFX Merc 319 6800 XT, and it smooth holds correct for the 6600 XT version:

“The XFX and [Radeon RX 6600 XT] emblems on the facet are illuminated although, and in a surprisingly inserting model. Their white lights (crimson, for the “RX” lettering) shine powerful extra cleanly and clearly than the emblems attain on rival graphics cards—variety of esteem the variation between usual car headlights and LED headlights. These pictures don’t gain how nice it looks to be.”

That backplate smooth sides a nice, aggressively styled “Merc” logo, as you doubtlessly would possibly perhaps perhaps perchance detect on the head of this page, but it completely’s performed in sunless on the 6600 XT version, so it shouldn’t be as admire-it-or-abominate-it as the standout white letters on pricier Merc choices. (I esteem it.) Within the occasion you don’t esteem all these extras, decide for the easy sunless XFX Swft as an different. Straightforward!

Brad Chacos/IDG

XFX equipped the Merc 308 with a dual-BIOS switch to serve in overclocking endeavors. Many personalized graphics cards load every surroundings with rather about a Efficiency and Easy profiles, however the Merc 319 sticks to the same setup for every. Power comes by the utilize of a single 8-pin connector, and the card comes with an HDMI 2.1 connection and three DisplayPorts.

Brad Chacos/IDG

Worship other RX 6000-series GPUs, XFX’s procure on the RX 6600 XT helps all of RDNA 2’s rather about a sides, including FidelityFX Sizable Resolution and Natty Obtain entry to Memory to elevate efficiency, proper-time ray tracing capabilities, AV1 video decoding, DirectX 12 Closing goodies, an improved version of Radeon Increase that wraps in Variable Rate Shading, Radeon Anti-Crawl at some stage in all significant DX APIs, FreeSync indicate reinforce, AMD Link streaming to other devices, and masses extra. AMD’s strong Radeon Settings app entails both handbook and computerized efficiency tuning controls so that you just doubtlessly would possibly perhaps perhaps perchance tweak the card to your heart’s resolve on with these dual BIOS profiles.

Let’s bag to benchmarking.

Subsequent page: Our take a look at system, benchmarks open

• XFX Speedster Merc 308 Radeon RX 6600 XT

  The Speedster Merc 308 combines a solid and enticing personalized fabricate with AMD’s Radeon RX 6600 XT, and XFX doesn’t payment an negative top fee for its extras. Expend into consideration it while you happen to resolve on an extremely-snappily 1080p gaming abilities, but handiest while you happen to’ve got a excessive refresh-fee video display.

  Pros

  • Unbelievable snappily 1080p gaming
  • Very energy-efficient
  • XFX fabricate is frosty, smooth, and enticing
  • Dual-BIOS switch
  • AMD sides esteem FSR, Radeon Increase, Natty Obtain entry to Memory can fabricate it quicker

  Cons

  • Very, very excessive MSRP for a 1080p card
  • 1440p efficiency is no longer as impressive due to memory setup
  • Ray tracing lags dreary Nvidia’s efficiency