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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UltraWide - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
What took so long? :)Ryan Smith - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
I was out of commission for a week with a nasty cold (which I likely picked up from the AMD trip).CajunArson - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
"(which I likely picked up from the AMD trip)."It seems AMD has stooped to using biological warfare!
chizow - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
Hope you are feeling betterRanger101 - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
Here we go, Chizoo once again attempting to align himself with the reviewer, as he does at PCPER no doubt attempting to gain much needed credibility. I'm afraid it's too late bro as you are universally recognised as a psychotic AMD hater. But feigning concern for the reviewer's health is a laughable cheap shot, even by your bottom feeding standards.Michael Bay - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
Boy, is your behind in flames!chizow - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
lmfao, yeah, wishing someone who was sick well is now some covert attempt to woo favors towards my sekret Nvidia agenda.You're an idiot, delete your account from the internet and quietly wait in the corner with your tinfoil dunce cap until AMD implodes, thanks.
Ranger101 - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Good to see you charging in to defend Chizoo there Michael, he does need help. The point is, dearest Chizoo, You can't on the one hand @ PCPER claim that Ryan Smith conveniently got sick to avoid raining on the fury like other websites and then pretend that you are concerned about his health @ Anandtech. It's too late for damage control bro, people are now well aware of your mentality or lack thereof.Wreckage - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
The irony of getting a cold from AMDsaru44 - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
lol :D