XFX Mercury AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air Video Card Review

ReviewsVideo CardsAMD RX 7000 SeriesAMD RX 7900 Series
By Brent Justice
10
OVERALL SCORE

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Gameplay Performance 4K Ray Tracing

On this page, we are going to focus on the 4K Ray Tracing gameplay performance with the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air video card.  We will include DLSS and FSR performance on the same graph in the games that are supported shown in the Upscaling Bar, DLSS for NVIDIA, and FSR for AMD.

Alan Wake 2

Alan Wake 2 was launched on the PC in October of 2023 and is based on the Northlight Engine. The game supports detailed graphics and ray tracing with path tracing support. This game defaults to DLSS or FSR but does allow Native AA resolution settings with DLSS or FSR respectively. We can utilize Super Sampling upscaling, and for our graphs, we will just call that DLSS or FSR. We utilize the graphics presets to set High quality, as well as the Ray Tracing presets to set Low or High quality. We use a manual run-through in the Initiation 5: Room 665 chapter.

Alan Wake 2 Ray Tracing Performance Graph

In Alan Wake 2 we are now enabling “LOW” preset Ray Tracing, which does not utilize Path Tracing, and thus allows Radeon GPUs to run Ray Tracing better in this game. We can see that none of the video cards allow a playable gameplay experience at 4K even with Ray Tracing on LOW, without upscaling. You will need upscaling on each video card to make it playable at 4K, and with upscaling, it is playable on Low-Ray Tracing on the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air.

In terms of performance, the video cards are very close to each other, technically the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air performs the same as the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER FE, which is interesting. Technically the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is 1FPS faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. Overclocking the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air improves performance by 6%, and now at this performance level, it is 10% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. With overclocking and Quality FSR, we can almost achieve 60FPS with Low Ray Tracing at 4K. If we lower the FSR setting to Balanced, it does exceed 60FPS at 4K with Low Ray Tracing.

Returnal

Returnal was launched on the PC in February of 2023 and is based on Unreal Engine 4. The game supports real-time ray tracing effects, particle systems, and volumetric rendering. We utilize the graphics preset to set EPIC graphics settings with an unlocked framerate, and everything is enabled. For ray tracing tests we have enabled Ray Traced Shadows and Reflections at EPIC settings. We use the built-in benchmark.

Returnal Ray Tracing Performance Graph

In Returnal the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is playable with EPIC Ray Tracing at 4K! The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is 3% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX, but the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER FE is faster by 8%. When we overclock the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air performance increases only slightly by 3% but now it is closer to RTX 4080 SUPER FE performance, and in fact matches it with upscaling enabled for the exact same performance.

Forspoken

Forspoken was released on January 24th, 2023, on the PC and uses the Luminous Engine. The game supports all upscaling methods and Ray Tracing. We are going to customize the settings and enable the highest graphics settings, including Ultra High Texture Memory. We are going to enable both Ray Tracing options, Shadows, and Ambient Occlusion. We use the built-in benchmark.

Forspoken Ray Tracing Performance Graph

Forspoken is actually playable on the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air with Ray Tracing at 4K. It also ends up beating the RTX 4080 SUPER by 1FPS and the 7900 XTX by a couple as well. When we overclock the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air performance increases by 3% and now it is 7% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

Chernobylite Enhanced Edition

Chernobylite was released on the PC in 2021, but the free Enhanced Edition update for the game was released in April 2022. The Enhanced Edition provides a visual overhaul of the game with better textures, plus introduces tessellation and ray tracing features. It features raytraced reflections, raytraced translucency, raytraced caustics, and raytraced dynamic diffuse global illumination. The game is based on Unreal Engine 4. For our Ray Tracing test, we have enabled the Ultra Ray Tracing option.

Chernobylite Enhanced Edition Ray Tracing Performance Graph

In Chernobylite Enhanced Edition turning on “Ultra” Ray Tracing creates a very demanding burden as it uses Ray Traced global illumination. Similar to Alan Wake 2, none of the video cards are playable here without upscaling. However, as you can see the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air with upscaling is playable. The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is 5% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX but the RTX 4080 SUPER FE is 30% faster. When we overclock the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air performance only slightly increases, we are very much Ray Tracing bound here.

Dying Light 2

Dying Light 2 was released in February 2022 on the PC and uses Techland’s C-Engine. The game supports Ray Tracing, DLSS, and FSR2. This game supports Ray Tracing environmental effects including Ray Traced Soft Shadows, Ray Traced Ambient Occlusion, Ray Traced Global Illumination, and Ray Traced Reflections. We utilize the built-in preset option to set “HIGH-QUALITY RAYTRACING” which enables the game’s highest graphics settings plus the environmental effects explained above at the highest values. The game is run in DX12 Ultimate mode with ASYNC Compute turned on. We use the built-in benchmark.

Dying Light 2 Ray Tracing Performance Graph

Dying Light 2 is also demanding with full Ray Tracing quality. We see that none of the video cards are actually playable at 4K with the highest Ray Tracing until we utilize upscaling. The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is playable with upscaling enabled. The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is 5% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX but the RTX 4080 SUPER FE is 30% faster. Overclocking the XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air improves performance by 5% and now it is 9% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX.

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 was released in December 2020 and uses the REDengine 4. We have the game patched to version 2.0 and use the built-in benchmark. We test using the Graphics Preset option to set graphics settings. We use the Ray Tracing Graphics Preset of either: “Ray Tracing: Low”, or “Ray Tracing: Medium” or “Ray Tracing: Ultra” as indicated. This game supports DLSS and FSR2.

Cyberpunk 2077 Ray Tracing Performance Graph

In Cyberpunk 2077, not surprisingly, no video card is playable with Ultra Ray Tracing at 4K, even with upscaling only the GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER FE is closest to playable. The XFX Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air is marginally faster than the Radeon RX 7900 XTX because both video cards are just completely Ray Tracing bound in this game. The GeForce RTX 4080 SUPER FE is 41% faster but also still needs “Balanced” DLSS to really be playable at 4K with Ultra Ray Tracing.

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REVIEW OVERVIEW

Gaming Performance
10
Build Quality and Cooling
10
Overclocking
10
Value
10

SUMMARY

The XFX AMD Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air offers a unique design, features and excellent gaming performance and value in this price range. With its unique XFX Magnetic Air technology the XFX AMD Mercury Radeon RX 7900 XTX Magnetic Air offers something innovative, and the cooling design and build quality is exceptional with great temperatures, even overclocked. It also has overclocking headroom, and enthusiasts will find this video card enticing with its potential. The price range is right, and competitive with the competition offering a lot of value in the segment.
10
OVERALL SCORE
Brent Justicehttps://www.thefpsreview.com
Former managing editor of GPUs at HardOCP for 18 years, Brent Justice has been reviewing computer components since the late 90s, educated in the art and method of the computer hardware review, he brings experience, knowledge, and hands-on testing with a gamer-oriented and hardware enthusiast perspective. You can follow him on Twitter - @Brent_Justice You can sub to his YouTube channel - Justice Gaming https://www.youtube.com/c/JusticeGamingChannel You can check out his computer builds on KIT - @BrentJustice https://kit.co/BrentJustice

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