XFX Mercury AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT OC Magnetic Air Edition Review

An absolute unit

XFX has created a monster of a Radeon RX 9070 XT with this Mercury card, and it has a lot of features to go with its gargantuan size. Do you like a factory overclock? XFX has you covered with a hefty 3100 MHz Boost Clock out of the box. Do you like 8-pin PCIe connectors? XFX has outfitted this card with THREE of them. Do you like sharp angles from your massive GPU’s shroud? XFX seems to have taken a page from the Cybertruck handbook with this industrial design, so you’re covered there, too.

Here are some of the features of this design (via XFX):

Mercury Class – The Mercury class exemplifies a modern futuristic style through a clean and edgy design. It is a new design identity that features clean lines and smooth panels that complement its high performance and technology. The Mercury line of graphics cards are XFX’s flagship models, featuring the best in class cooling solutions, highest overclocks, and best features.

Airflow and Aesthetics – With each iteration of the XFX Mercury class, we try to simplify the design while also improving thermal performance. Our nickel-plated copper vapor chamber, double ball bearing fans, and 6mm heatpipes all come together to give amazing cooler performance and thermal dissipation.

Magnetic Air Technology – The Magnetic Air fan hubs instantly lock into the GPU fan shroud frame with powerful magnets capable of supporting up to 1kg of weight. Once locked in Magnetic Air instantly sends both power and PWM data to the fans. Fan separation failures are now a thing of the past. Magnetic Air fans not only have improved longevity but also provide stable performance for the entire life of the fan.

Full Length ARGB Strip – The all-new XFX Mercury class features a full-length 5-volt ARGB element across the shroud. With the provide Sync cable you have numerous personalization options to match your gaming rig or personal style.

The XFX Mercury OC Card

A massive graphics card in every respect, the XFX Mercury design features a big, black shroud with triple fans in a 3-slot+++ size (with plenty of extra height thrown in for good measure). It measures (WxHxD) 360 x 155 x 72 mm (14.17 x 6.1 x 2.83 inches).

Of course, a big part of this card isn’t just the extra thick triple-fan cooler design, but the triple PCI-E 8-pin power input requirement.

Why settle for 12 tiny pins (plus four sense pins) when you can have 24 full-size pins, instead?

This 3x PCI-E 8 pin connection external power requirement is accompanied by a minimum PSU requirement of 800 watts, so this card is definitely not for the faint of powered.‍ And yes, the card’s actual power draw does warrant this third connector (more on this later).

Now, Josh has told you about XFX’s outstanding magnetic fans before – in fact, he’s shown you (YouTube link) – but it bears retelling. These magnetically-attached fans are such a clever design that I wouldn’t be surprised if you see something like this everywhere in a few years.

Don’t do it while they are spinning, but you can just grab a fan with your fingers and pull it right off for cleaning (or whatever else you can think of). This design is really cool (get it?).

Performance Testing

We aren’t going to go into a ton of depth on performance here, though this XFX model’s 3100 MHz max boost frequency out of the box does offer every additional frame you’re going to get from an RX 9070 XT without manual tweaking.

An average increase of less than 2 FPS in these four tests is not going to blow anyone away, but rest assured that the averages you get with a 3100 MHz card are as high as you’re going to get without a manual adjustment.

Speaking of manual adjustments, I did attempt some overclocking (and undervolting), but I wasn’t able to get my biggest OC to remain stable under all test loads, and my lower OC didn’t produce enough of an increase to be worth making more charts. I could get another frame or two, but that was it.

As to power draw (out of the box, no manual OC), it looked like this:

Hitting a momentary max of just over 430 watts, the card certainly does make good use of that third PCI-E connector at times. But AMD’s RX 9070 XT GPU just doesn’t scale all that much with power considering the modest improvements we saw in overall performance.

As to thermals, these were very well controlled, as our 20-minute 3DMark Steel Nomad stress test resulted in a max GPU temp of just 51 C (with a max hot spot of 72 C and max memory temp of 84 C). These temps were achieved with the standard fan profile, which only spun up the fans to a top speed of 1445 RPM (38%).

For those curious, the room was ~17.5 C, which is only realistic during the cooler months, but the card is very cool regardless – particularly as it regularly pulls over 400 watts on its own.

Final Thoughts

It’s big. It’s quiet. The magnetic fans are extremely cool tech. It laughs at the wimpy 12VHPWR connector with its THREE PCI-E 8-pins. And, last but not least, it has a beastly OC right out of the box. So, is there anything to complain about, here? Not really – though even a stock Radeon RX 9070 XT is already damn good. This XFX card is just damn gooder.

As to value, this will depend a lot on the day, but as I write this Newegg has this model for just $759.99, which is $100 less than usual. Considering how much card you are getting here that seems like a pretty good price relative to the real-world market (not the imaginary $599 MSRP one).