The AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review, Feat. Sapphire & ASUS
by Ryan Smith on July 10, 2015 9:00 AM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
As one of the few games that can hit 60fps on the R9 Fury at 4K with everything turned up, it’s interesting to see how resolution impacts all of our cards with Civilization. At 4K the R9 Fury is well ahead of the GTX 980, surpassing it by 17%. Yet at 1440p that lead becomes a very slight loss, with the Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury’s mild factory overclock giving it just enough of a boost to stay ahead of the GTX 980.
Meanwhile the Fury/Fury X gap widens ever so slightly here. The R9 Fury is now a full 10% behind the full-fledged Fury.
The minimum framerate situation for Civilization is very nearly a mirror of the averages. The R9 Fury does relatively well at 4K, but at 1440p it’s now neck-and-neck with the GTX 980 once again.
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siliconwars - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
Any concept of performance per dollar?D. Lister - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
The Fury is 8% faster than a stock 980 and 10% more expensive. How does that "performance per dollar" thing work again? :pNagorak - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
By that token the 980 is not good performance per dollar either. It's sonething like a 390 non-x topping the charts. These high end cards are always a rip off.D. Lister - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
"These high end cards are always a rip off."That, is unfortunately a fact. :(
siliconwars - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
The Asus Strix is 9.4% faster than the 980 with 20% worse power consumption. I wouldn't call that "nowhere near" Maxwell tbh and the Nano will be even closer if not ahead.Dazmillion - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
Nobody is talking about the fact that the Fury cards which AMD claims is for 4k gaming doesnt have a 4k@60Hz port!!David_K - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
So the displayport 1.2 connector isn't capable of sending 2160p60hz. That's new.Dazmillion - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
The fury cards dont come with HDMI 2.0ES_Revenge - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
Which is true but not the only way to get that resolution & refresh. Lack of HDMI 2.0 and full HEVC features is certainly another sore point for Fury. For the most part HDMI 2.0 affects the consumer AV/HT world though, not so much the PC world. In the PC world, gaming monitors capable of those res/refresh rates are going to have DP on them which makes HDMI 2.0 extraneous.mdriftmeyer - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
I'll second ES_Revenge on the DP for PC Gaming. The world of 4K Home Monitors being absent with HDMI 2.0 is something we'll live with until the next major revision.I don't even own a 4K Home Monitor. Not very popular in sales either.
Every single one of them showing up on Amazon are handicapped with that SMART TV crap.
I want a 4K Dumb Device that is the output Monitor with FreeSync and nothing else.
I'll use the AppleTV for the `smart' part.