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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nader_21007 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
As an analyst , I Guarantee AMD’s Success by taking the following simple steps:1. To Stop wasting money on R&D investments altogether at once.
2. To employ a bunch of marketers like Chizow, N7, AMDesperate, . . . to Spread Rumors and bash best products of the competition, constantly.
3. To Invest saved money (R&D wasted money on new techs like HBM, Low level API Mantle, Premium water cooler, etc, etc) in Hardware Review sites to Magnify your products Strengths and the competition’s Weaknesses.
(Note: Consumers won’t judge your product against the competition in practice, They just accept what they see in Hardware Review sites & Forums)
I just gave these advices to some companies in the past, and believe me, one have the best CPU out there, and the other make the best GPU. Innovation is not an R&D’s fruth, it’s a Marketing FRUTH.
Please contact me for more details, Regards.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Astroturfing got Samsung smacked with a penalty, but a smart company would hire astroturfers who are good at disguising their bias, not obvious trolls.SanX - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
AMD only hope left is that company with better lithography like Samsung for example buy it entirely. You're welcome, Samsung. Hope you will not forget my as always brilliant advices.amro12 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Why no 970? 290? At least a 970, it's better than that 290x up there...Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Perhaps because the 970 should have been withdrawn from the market for fraud? It should have been relabeled the 965 and consumers who bought one should have been offered more than just a refund.Innokentij - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
To be from Oxford u seem to lack logical thinking.Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
I'm logical enough to see a comment with no substance to it.chizow - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Of course this is nonsense, if the 970 launched at its corrected specs, would you have a problem with its product placement? Of course not. But let's all act as if this is the first and last time a cut down ASIC is sold at a lower price:performance segment nonetheless!Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Your post in no way rebuts what I wrote.Hxx - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
right because that 0.5 partition really hindered its performance lol. Lets face it , the 970 is an excellent performer with more vram than last gen nvidia's top dog (870 ti) and performing within 15% from nvidia's top tier gtx 980 for $200 less...what more there is to say?