This is definitely a cool product but I would hesitate to call it commercially viable given the extra cost. It really doesn't perform
that much better than a standard XTX without overclocking the hell out of it. I have to admit that a 13% increase in performance from a non-liquid-cooled video card overclock is one of, if not the, best that I've ever seen but there's always these questions to ask:
1) How many people would be willing to pay more for this than any other RX 7900 XTX or, for that matter an RTX 4080 Super? (I wouldn't)
2) How many people realistically overclock their video cards? (I don't)
3) How many people will care about easily removing fans from their video card? (I don't)
4) How much of a difference will there be between this card when overclocked as opposed to any other XTX when overclocked? (Probably not much)
5) Is the ~40W difference between this and any other RX 7900 XTX enough to matter to most people? (It doesn't matter to me)
Now, I'm only looking at it from my own perspective, comparing it to my own ASRock RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC. It's very possible that many people
would be interested in the Mercury Magnetic Air, but I don't see that being the case. I think that if people are looking to spend $1,000 on a video card today, the RTX 4080 Super would be their most likely choice since the
PNY Verto is $50 less at $950.
Yes, but not like this. These are removable/replaceable. This feature makes replacing them with fans that have different blade profiles an easy job. It also means that cleaning the fans and the heatsink is a MUCH easier situation.
It is a much easier job, sure, but let's be honest, how often is it needed? My video cards are all pretty much pristine and I have
never had to clean them.
Sure, but I can control when to install them, so it aligns with my full retests every few months. Definitely no plans to add any always online game. My life is complicated enough already
They're also kinda pointless because online games are always designed to be playable with the lowest-end hardware possible to maximise the number of potential customers. They're completely irrelevant when examining top-end cards like the RX 7900 XTX. I think that the highest-end card for which online gaming could be even slightly relevant would be the RX 7800 XT and even then, the overwhelming majority of online games could be completely maxxed-out by an RX 7700 XT or RTX 4070.
The only thing that you really learn from testing online games with top-tier video cards is whether or not the game engine has a frame cap.
But yes, none of all the gpus i had, ever needed a replacement fan.
Neither have I, and I have working video cards that date back to 2008 and earlier. Even my ancient Palit GeForce 8500 GT with it's single dinky little fan works perfectly:
Nice review
@W1zzard, but wait, does this actually mean that somebody, anybody, is attempting to introduce a feature that is even remotely innovative.... oh my, how dare they.
..
I'm all for innovation but innovation for the sake of it is a waste of time and resources. Having "easy to remove" fans for video cards that almost never have fans fail or get really dirty seems like the result of having many engineers with a lot of time on their hands looking to justify their own existence.
That's not only XFX, the whole industry are trying their hardest to normalise these chonkers. Of course every reasonable user enjoys silent and cool equipment that's very far from risky conditions but c'mon, this has become ridiculous 2.5 generations ago already.
From what I hear, the RTX 5090 is going to make the RTX 4090 look like an RTX 2060 with regard to size. Just look at this pic from
Guru3D:
I would really like to see this become more common.
GPU fans break? Now you don't need to redneck one together or have to buy a new heatsink, just take out the fans and slot a new one in.
I'd like to see how it fares over time. Since I'm sure you'd have to replace them more often wouldn't you?
Who knows? I have never had a video card fan fail on me, like ever. I've also never cleaned a video card in my life but all of the cards in my collection dating back to my GeForce 8500 GT are still pristine.
That's not comparable. I can get my 7900 XTX to use only 280W to 320W (spikes up to 400W still) by lowering the power limit. Those special BIOS options are basically doing the same thing: Limiting TGP
Yeah, I'm not really seeing a huge difference over my own XTX either.
It doesn't help that the initial batch had a manufacturing defect in the vapor chamber either. But you don't want to run the MBA design on a card with such a hideously high TDP anyway. There's no incentive to purchase such a card because they are consistently the loudest, hottest and simultaneously the worst performers. Any space-constrained build is far better serviced by an equivalent Ada Lovelace GPU regardless of targeted volume, since their performance per watt is far higher and its upscaling features (which can be used for power saving and thermal management purposes) are still superior to what AMD currently offers.
These are facts, no doubt, but they only apply to RTX 40-series cards because nobody in their right mind would choose an RTX 3050 over an RX 6600.
Hopefully, they will consider releasing a high-quality first-party design, something like they did with RX Vega generation. They will need to pull a compact and efficient GPU with RDNA 4 since they won't compete with Blackwell on the performance front, so a premium design for this niche makes sense to me.
The thing is, even so-called "first-party" coolers are third-party coolers. The nVidia Founder's Edition coolers are reportedly made by Cooler Master and the ATi Reference cards are made by PC Partner (better known as Zotac or Inno3D). Instead of out-sourcing like they do, I'd be interested to see how well both companies would do at actually making their own cooling solutions.
Here in the wild we see the typical AMD GPU fanboy. The fanboy, when confronted with the truth of how AMD's consumers GPUs are poorer on a performance-per-watt level than their competition, desperately defends the honour of their favourite company by moving the goalposts to talk about the competition's non-consumer GPUs.
It is true that in this generation, GeForce cards are more efficient. In the previous generation, Radeon cards were more efficient. I think that the reason nobody talked about it back then was because the GPU shortage made people a lot less picky. The primary focus was on
actually getting a GPU (while trying to get raped as gently as possible when it came to price) in a desired performance tier. A secondary criterion like power consumption was reduced to the level of semantics so it wasn't something that anyone focused on.
Having said that, he does kinda have a point when it comes to comparing Intel and AMD CPUs because, at the high-end, the power use gulf between AMD and Intel CPUs is pretty colossal. I think that it's actually a bigger deal with CPUs than video cards because video cards already have massive cooling solutions on them and aren't heavily-used as commonly as CPUs are. I have criticised Intel for releasing products like the i9-13900KS and i9-14900KS but at the same time, I've also criticised AMD for releasing products like the R9-7900X3D and R9-7950X3D. I have no patience for cynical products like those.
, furthermore I monitor all my components thermal all the time using MSI Afterburner for the past 20 years.
