The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Aiming For the Top
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2015 11:15 AM ESTDragon Age: Inquisition
Our RPG of choice for 2015 is Dragon Age: Inquisition, the latest game in the Dragon Age series of ARPGs. Offering an expansive world that can easily challenge even the best of our video cards, Dragon Age also offers us an alternative take on EA/DICE’s Frostbite 3 engine, which powers this game along with Battlefield 4.
Similar to Battlefield 4, we have swapped out Mantle for DirectX here; the R9 Fury X didn’t suffer too much from Mantle, but it certainly was not in the card’s favor.
Perhaps it’s a Frostbite thing or maybe AMD just got unlucky here, but Dragon Age is the second-worst showing for the R9 Fury X. The card trails the GTX 980 Ti at all times, by anywhere between 13% and 18%. At this point AMD is straddling the line between the GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti, and at 1440p they fall closer to the GTX 980.
Meanwhile I feel this is another good example of why single-GPU cards aren’t quite ready yet for no-compromises 4K gaming. Even without MSAA the R9 Fury X can’t break out of the 30s, we have to drop to High quality to do that. On the other hand going to 1440p immediately gets Ultra quality performance over 60fps.
Finally, the R9 Fury X’s performance gains over its predecessor are also among their lowest here. The Fiji based card picks up just 22% at 4K, and less at 1440p. Once again we are likely looking at a bottleneck closer to geometry or ROP performance, which leaves the shaders underutilized.
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looncraz - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
We don't yet know how the Fury X will overclock with unlocked voltages.SLI is almost just as unreliable as CF, ever peruse the forums? That, and quite often you can get profiles from the wild wired web well before the companies release their support - especially on AMD's side.
chizow - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
@looncrazWe do know Fury X is an exceptionally poor overclocker at stock and already uses more power than the competition. Who's fault is it that we don't have proper overclocking capabilities when AMD was the one who publicly claimed this card was an "Overclocker's Dream?" Maybe they meant you could Overclock it, in your Dreams?
SLI is not as unreliable as CF, Nvidia actually offers timely updates on Day 1 and works with the developers to implement SLI support. In cases where there isn't a Day 1 profile, SLI has always provided more granular control over SLI profile bits vs. AMD's black box approach of a loadable binary, or wholesale game profile copies (which can break other things, like AA compatibility bits).
silverblue - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
No, he did actually mention the 980Ti's excellent overclocking ability. Conversely, at no point did he mention Fury X's overclocking ability, presumably because there isn't any.Refuge - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
He does mention it, and does say that it isn't really possible until they get modified bios with unlocked voltages.e36Jeff - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
first off, its 81W, not 120W(467-386). Second, unless you are running furmark as your screen saver, its pretty irrelevant. It merely serves to demonstrate the maximum amount of power the GPU is allowed to use(and given that the 980 Ti's is 1W less than in gaming, it indicates it is being artfically limited because it knows its running furmark).The important power number is the in game power usage, where the gap is 20W.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
There is no "artificial" limiting on the GTX 980 Ti in FurMark. The card has a 250W limit, and it tends to hit it in both games and FurMark. Unlike the R9 Fury X, NVIDIA did not build in a bunch of thermal/electrical headroom in to the reference design.kn00tcn - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
because furmark is normal usage right!? hbm magically lowers the gpu core's power right!? wtf is wrong with younandnandnand - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
AMD's Fury X has failed. 980 Ti is simply better.In 2016 NVIDIA will ship GPUs with HBM version 2.0, which will have greater bandwidth and capacity than these HBM cards. AMD will be truly dead.
looncraz - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
You do realize HBM was designed by AMD with Hynix, right? That is why AMD got first dibs.Want to see that kind of innovation again in the future? You best hope AMD sticks around, because they're the only ones innovating at all.
nVidia is like Apple, they're good at making pretty looking products and throwing the best of what others created into making it work well, then they throw their software into the mix and call it a premium product.
Intel hasn't innovated on the CPU front since the advent of the Pentium 4. Core * CPUs are derived from the Penitum M, which was derived from the Pentium Pro.
Kutark - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
Man you are pegging the hipster meter BIG TIME. Get serious. "Intel hasn't innovated on the CPU front since the advent of the Pentium 4..." That has to be THE dumbest shit i've read in a long time.Say what you will about nvidia, but maxwell is a pristinely engineered chip.
While i agree with you that AMD sticking around is good, you can't be pissed at nvidia if they become a monopoly because AMD just can't resist buying tickets on the fail train...