XFX 7900 XTX Merc 310 Graphics Card Review

Tear Down

Taking the card apart is fairly easy with 6 hidden screws behind the three fans to remove the outer shroud. There’s a single fan connector that needs removing from the PCB and it comes apart.

There’s also four screws to remove the cooler from the GPU core, and a further 7 screws to remove the heatsink from the PCB all of which are located on the rear of the card.

With a little light pressure, the card should then come apart revealing another 9 screws for the backplate. This then allows you to separate the backplate from the PCB which is fairly large due to the triple 8-pin connectors, though there is a small unused area on the right side of the PCB due to its size.

Much like other AIB models, the XFX card comes with 20 power phases that’s split between 17 phases for the GPU and 3 phases for the memory. The GPU phases are managed by the Monolithic Power Systems MP2857 controller, while the memory is controlled by the Monolithic Power Systems MP2856 controller and all 20 phases are Monolithic Power Systems MP87997 components are all rated at 70 Amps of current each. So identical to the PowerColor Hellhound that we looked at recently.

The heatsink is comprised of two components. The first being the large finned heatsink which spans the whole of the card, while the second is a nickel plated copper vapor-chamber based plate which makes direct contact to the GPU core, memory and the individual power phases which uses a total of eight 6mm heatpipes to transfer heat away to the ends of the heatsink.

XFX have also utilised the backplate  as a heatspreader by adding in thermal pads to various locations on the PCB, and have increased the surface area by 33% when compared to the previous generation flagship.

So on paper it all seems to tick the right boxes and having such a mammoth cooler, I’m expecting good results in terms of the cooling and overall performance, but first, let’s take a look at what the out of box performance looks like compared to other 7900 XTX cards as well as other comparative cards.