The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Aiming For the Top
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2015 11:15 AM ESTOverclocking
Finally, no review of a high-end video card would be complete without a look at overclocking performance.
To get right to the point here, overclockers looking at out of the box overclocking performance are going to come away disappointed. While cooling and power delivery are overbuilt, in other respects the R9 Fury X is very locked down when it comes to overclocking. There is no voltage control at this time (even unofficial), there is no official HBM clockspeed control, and the card’s voltage profile has been finely tuned to avoid needing to supply the card with more voltage than is necessary. As a result the card has relatively little overclocking potential without voltage adjustments.
So what do we get for overclocking?
| Radeon R9 Fury X Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Boost Clock | 1050Mhz | 1125MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 1Gbps (500MHz DDR) | 1Gbps (500MHz DDR) | ||
| Max Voltage | N/A | N/A | ||
Our efforts net us 75MHz, which is actually 25MHz less than what AMD published in their reviewer’s guide. Even 100MHz would lead to artifacting in some games, requiring that we step down to a 75MHz overclock to have a safe and sustainable overclock.
The end result is that the overclocked R9 Fury X runs at 1125MHz core and 1Gbps memory, a 75MHz (7%) increase in the GPU clockspeed and 0% increase in the memory clockspeed. This puts a very narrow window on expected performance gains, as we shouldn’t exceed a 7% gain in any game, and will almost certainly come in below 7% in most games.
Our gaming benchmarks find just that. A few percent performance improvement there, a 5% improvement there. Overall we wouldn’t go as far as saying there no reason to overclock, but with such limited gains it’s hardly worth the trouble right now.
True overclocking is going to have to involve BIOS modding, a riskier and warranty-voiding strategy, but one that should be far more rewarding. With more voltage I have little doubt that R9 Fury X could clock higher, though it’s impossible to guess by how much at this time. In any case the card is certainly built for it, as the oversized cooler, high power delivery capabilities, and dual BIOS switch provide all the components necessary for such an overclocking attempt.
Meanwhile HBM is a completely different bag, and while unofficial overclocking is looking promising, as a new technology it will take some time to get a good feel for it and understand just what kind of performance improvements it can deliver. The R9 Fury X is starting out with quite a bit of memory bandwidth right off the bat (512GB/sec), so it may not be bandwidth starved as often as other cards like the R9 290X was.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
458 Comments
View All Comments
Samus - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
Being an NVidia use for 3 generations, I'm finding it hard to ignore this cards value, especially since I've invested $100 each on my last two NVidia cards (including my SLI setup) adding liquid cooling. The brackets alone are $30.Even if this card is less efficient per watt than NVidia's, the difference is negligible when considering kw/$. It's like comparing different brand of LED bulbs, some use 10-20% less energy but the overall value isn't as good because the more efficient ones cost more, don't dim, have a light buzz noise, etc.
After reading this review I find the Fury X more impressive than I otherwise would have.
Alexvrb - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Yeah a lot of reviews painted doom and gloom but the watercooler has to be factored into that price. Noise and system heat removal of the closed loop cooler are really nice. I still think they should launch the vanilla Fury at $499 - if it gets close to the performance of the Fury X they'll have a decent card on their hands. To me though the one I'll be keeping an eye out for is Nano. If they can get something like 80% of the performance at roughly half the power, that would make a lot of sense for more moderately spec'd systems. Regardless of what flavor, I'll be interested to see if third parties will soon launch tools to bump the voltage up and tinker with HBM clocks.chizow - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Water cooling if anything has proven to be a negative so far for Fury X with all the concerns of pump whine and in the end where is the actual benefit of water cooling when it still ends up slower than 980Ti with virtually no overclocking headroom?Based on Ryan's review Fury Air we'll most likely see the downsides of leakage on TDP and its also expected to be 7/8th SP/TMU. Fury Nano also appears to be poised as a niche part that will cost as much if not more than Fury X, which is amazing because at 80-85% of Fury X it won't be any faster than the GTX 980 at 1440p and below and right in that same TDP range too. It will have the benefit of form factor but will that be enough to justify a massive premium?
Alexvrb - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
You can get a bad batch of pumps in any CLC. Cooler Master screwed up (and not for the first time!) but the fixed units seem to be fine and for the units out there with a whine just RMA them. I'm certainly not going to buy one, but I know people that love water cooled components and like the simplicity and warranty of a CL system.Nobody knows the price of the Nano, nor final performance. I think they'd be crazy to price it over $550 even factoring in the form factor - unless someone releases a low-profile model, then they can charge whatever they want for it. We also don't know final performance of Fury compared to Fury X, though I already said they should price it more aggressively. I don't think leakage will be that big of an issue as they'll probably cap thermals. Clocks will vary depending on load but they do on Maxwell too - it's the new norm for stock aircooled graphics cards.
As for overclocking, yeah that was really terrible. Until people are able to tinker with voltage controls and the memory, there's little point. Even then, set some good fan profiles.
Refuge - Thursday, July 23, 2015 - link
To be honest, the wine I've seen on these isn't anything more than any other CLC I've ever seen in the wild.I feel like this was blown a bit out of proportion. Maybe I'm going deaf, maybe I didn't see a real example. I'm not sure.
tritiumosu3 - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
"AMD Is nothing if not the perineal underdog"...
perineal =/= perennial! You should probably fix that...
Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
Thanks. Fixed. It was right, and then the spell-checker undid things on me...ddriver - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
I'd say after the Hecktor RuiNz fiasco, "perpetual underdog" might be more appropriate.testbug00 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Er, what fiasco did Hector Ruiz create for AMD?Samus - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
I'm wondering the same thing. When Hector Ruiz left Motorola, they fell apart, and when he joined AMD, they out-engineered and out-manufactured Intel with quality control parity. I guess the fiasco would be when Hector Ruiz left AMD, because then they fell apart.