XFX retroactively removed advertised features from base RX 9070 XT Mercury model
TLDR at the end of the post.
Known information at release
The vast lineup of XFX cards for the RX 9070 XT can be broadly summarized in three tiers, from best to worst: Mercury, Quicksilver and Swift.
Inside the Mercury class there are once again three types of cards: Magnetic Air OC, standard OC and non-OC.
Looking at the detailed specs for the non-OC model, it was advertised as being on par hardware-wise with the rest of the Mercury class, only missing rgb lighting and factory overclock. In particular, it was clearly advertised as having a vapor chamber cooling solution and 3x8pin PCIe connectors (as it can also be seen in the images shown in Gamers Nexus' video part about this product).
Screenshot of the product details taken by me on march 14th
Users report missing features
Once customers started receiving the cards they ordered, the ones that bought a non-OC Mercury were baffled by there only being 2 PCIe connectors. After further inspection, the first poster concluded that theirs was a weird frankenstein card consisting of a Quicksilver board (the middle class) and a Mercury shroud. They would contact XFX to inquire about this and ask for a refund/replacement.
But in the following hours more cases like the one above started popping up, making it clear that this was not an isolated production error. Maybe there was an entire faulty batch being shipped out?
To the dismay of the people still hopefully waiting to receive a correct version of the card (like yours truly), confirmation was given here on reddit by an XFX spokeperson that this was the result of a "marketing error". The non-OC Mercury was intended from the start to not have 3x8pins, a vapor chamber and the same heatsink as the other Mercurys, basically rendering it identical to a Quicksilver card.
Conversation with the XFX spokeperson happening under a relevant post in r/Radeon
Sadly, communication of this mishap was not transparent at all. It took additional direct inquiries to find out what exactly was actually missing, like the vapor chamber in this example, compared to the advertised product.
Aftermath
As of now, XFX has quietly modified their website to include these updated information. You can visit it to check the differences compared to the references posted above.
Updated product page stating the lack of a vapor chamber
No other official statement was made, the only acknowledgement of this situation being a reddit comment.
XFX also shifted the handling and remediation to the resellers, which will probably offer a full refund if the customer wants to give the product back. But knowing the current landscape of the gpu market, accepting a refund means lacking a card and being unable to buy a comparable one, even from a different brand, for a similar price. A customer that bought this card at release at the then (probably already inflated) MSRP is now unable to buy one back for the same price.
What this all means is that customers are now stuck with an underperforming product compared to what they've ordered, knowing that sending it back for a refund they are not guaranteed at all to find a replacement without breaking the bank.
TLDR
XFX retroactively removed advertised features from theirs non-OC Mercury RX 9070 XT. Compared to information given at release the product lacks:
- 3x8pin PCIe connectors, having only 2
- Vapor chamber cooling
- Hardware-parity with the Mercury class, being instead a Quicksilver (lower class) board with a Mercury shroud
This was only confirmed when customer started reporting problems, with XFX not giving official statements apart from reddit replies. Since then their site was silently updated to reflect these changes. XFX shifted the handling of these cases to resellers.