XFX Mercury AMD Radeon RX 9070XT OC Gaming Edition with RGB 16GB GDDR6, HDMI 3xDP, AMD RDNA 4 RX-97TRGBBBA

I recently purchased the XFX Swift RX 9060 XT OC 16GB, and I’m beyond impressed. This card is a powerhouse and it’s been an absolute game-changer this card delivers top-tier performance with zero compromises this card delivers flagship-level performance with excellent cooling and AI-enhanced features from the moment I installed it, everything from boot-up to gameplay felt smoother, faster, and more immersive Solid construction with a sleek, aggressive design that looks great it crushes 1440p gaming great value

So, I am an avid VR player. I love playing VRchat with friends, going to events with 60+ people there, and to say it's GPU intensive is an understatement. My NVIDIA 3060 Ti could not keep up, not with it's 8GB of VRAM, and the only option was either accept hindered visuals and not being able to see everyone's avatar at once...or upgrade. I chose upgrade. It was Black Friday, so all the sales were going on.The question was "Do I wait for the 5000 series by NVIDIA, buy a 4070 Ti Super which is being scalped right now, or do I decide to buy from AMD and take a leap of faith?" I chose to take the leap. AMD has a rough reputation with GPU's, driver issues galore, and they used to be very fickle about working properly. But in the day and age where to get 4080~4090 performance, you need to shell out $1,500 or more, right when a new chipset is also around the corner, there's a reason to look at the competition rather than the "name brand". AMD is not the off-brand parts component supplier it used to be, it is a fighting force, and it has product that rivals NVIDIA at lower prices.The Radeon 7900XTX with 24GB of GDDR6 VRAM absolutely blew my expectations. I need to preface, I did have issues initially. My build is older. I'll give a spec sheet at the end of this, but long story short, I can't overclock my GPU without Blue screening. That's more likely due to my system specs than anything else. But that first night, despite PC crashes, I was capable of loading all 80 players with very poor optimization that VRchat has, while also using Full Body Tracking which also taxes GPU's, and it still had more fight in it. My 3060Ti would have been incapable of even running at 10 FPS, where it was running smoothly at 27~35 FPS with everything I could possibly throw at it to hinder my FPS, and just going to any room with less people instantly got me right back up to 45+ FPS. While it may not seem impressive, with my build, it shows this is putting in incredible work. It never even was using more than 60% of the GPU's utilization, which is either due to my build bottlenecking it, or the game itself.The incredible part of this GPU is that with that much VRAM, you can throw so much at games graphically, that you almost don't even need to worry about it. Almost no games currently run you so close to the limit of your VRAM capacity, unlike with the 3060Ti with only 8GB's of VRAM, where it was a constant limiting factor. Still functional, still can handle VR even, but with hinderances. I feel unhindered with this GPU, and with the black friday sale getting it down to $799.99? It was a steal. Expensive, most expensive computer component I've ever spent, but it was worth every penny. I will go ahead and say, if you have been running small(er) graphics cards like the 3060, you may find you cant fit this GPU in your case. You should double check it can fit before you put it in. Even with my current case I bought, it has enough room, but it's a closer fit. It's big. It's monstrous what it can do. I'm limited by everything else, and I think when I upgrade more, I'll see just how much it's capable of. If you can't or don't want to afford an NVIDIA GPU equivalent between a 4080 and 4090, this is a great card to get. Powerful, enough VRAM that games will take time to catch up with this much VRAM being normal in most computers for years, and I see no reason this GPU won't last me another 3 years easily if not longer. If it's on a substantial sale, or in a year or two you can buy one second hand working well, it's a great option. Even for VR. Drivers aren't bad, they aren't NVIDIA, but they are still responsive about getting them out. AMD is truly a competitor and worth looking into even their GPU's, which for years couldn't be trusted. If anything, while they have that reputation, you should capitalize on the bargain if Intel's new budget offering isn't to your liking.Spec Sheet:MSI Tomahawk B350AMD Ryzen 7 5800XAMD Radeon 7900XTXEVGA GQ Gold 1000 Watt PSU32GB DDR4 RAM (Sorry I don't remember specifics on the RAM sticks.)It performs well despite an older CPU and even older Motherboard, and seen 2 different upgrades. Ryzen 5 3600 and NVIDIA 2070 Super to the Ryzen 7 5800X and 3060 Ti, to my current. It performs well for all VR tasks, with nearly if any issues. I run nearly every game on highest settings at 1440p, and desktop games run at stable 60+ FPS, usually higher almost always. It's a fantastic setup that really, I expect can coast me by for a good few years, I may invest more in the motherboard and CPU, go up to DDR5, but really, I'm not hindered by much with my system for my applications I play. This GPU has made a substantial difference, the previous was good, this is another ballpark. This was and is the first PC component I bought and felt excited to see installed, and am still so enthralled with it. I have some deep pride for my AMD 7900XTX.

For anyone building a new computer that might not be in the know, there's really 2 card companies that shine in the 9070XT series; Sapphire and XFX.Cards are very dependent on what your needs are but the XFX Merc is the top of line (sans the magnetic air for the removable fan capability). Having given it a solid couple of tests, this card performs beautifully while creating minimal coil whine, or really any loud noise at all. Keep in mind, I also don't mind noise levels and mostly have on noise cancelling headphones when I'm gaming, but having it run without the headphones on, the levels weren't very loud at all.This card will run all the latest games in fantastic picture quality. I've maxed out some games like Cyberpunk with ease and even ran it in VR, which looked incredible. The card also keeps up if you're loading in a lot of hyperrealistic texture mods or realism mods in games.I can't speak to support, but I've heard XFX has really a great CS team, which is part of the reason I bought the card to begin with. My sole interaction with them was to see if when installing the card, I could pigtail to my 1200w supply without issue. They responded quickly and said I could pigtail 1 to 2 and the independently run 3 for the 8pins. Super easy to install and have no issues.

Works very well, runs very cool while gaming (atleast when I'm playing Overwatch 2, Left4Dead 2, Planetbase, and Black Ops 1). I've personally have never experienced a crash on this GPU yet, (hopefully I never do), but as long as the latest GPU drivers are installed and Windows 11 or Linux updates as well, you shouldn't experience any crashes.Highly Recommend this or the 9060XT for a great more budget alternative. I bought this on Prime Day so the price was around $750 instead the $900+ price range 9070XTs were typically hovering around at the time. There is better value and more bang-for-your-buck GPUs in used/secondhand marketplaces, in my opinion.Very beautiful, High-quality design and feel as well. Perfect for low-profile, all-black stealth builds.

The general performance of this card has been great, as expected from AMD's most expensive gpu. However, there was some driver crashing issues specifically with Destiny 2 for the first couple weeks of use, but it somehow has stopped happening over time without updating drivers or anything. Those crashes were really concerning for a brand new card and had me panicking due to some bad things I've heard about AMD drivers, but I do not regret switching from Nvidia now that it's sorted itself out.If you don't care for ray tracing and frame gen (not worth imo), this will deliver an outstanding experience. I enjoy many games at 1440p, 240fps on max graphics.Installation with the included "z-bar" support is pretty straightforward, but the support will require two additional gpu mounting screw holes on your pc case, leaving a sizeable gap under the card in rear wall of the pc case. With the support, the gpu sag is pretty mild, which is impressive since the card itself is gigantic (make sure your pc case is big enough).Noise level is generally pretty quiet. However, very high loads will induce a decent amount of whine. Not a problem if you game with headphones, but otherwise could be annoying.