The AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review, Feat. Sapphire & ASUS
by Ryan Smith on July 10, 2015 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
Bringing this video card review to a close, we’ll start off with how the R9 Fury compares to its bigger sibling, the R9 Fury X. Although looking at the bare specifications of the two cards would suggest they’d be fairly far apart in performance, this is not what we have found. Between 4K and 1440p the R9 Fury’s performance deficit is only 7-8%, noticeably less than what we’d expect given the number of disabled CUs.
In fact a significant amount of the performance gap appears to be from the reduction in clockspeed, and not the number of CUs. And while overclocking back to R9 Fury X clockspeeds can’t recover all of the performance, it recovers a lot of it. This implies that Fiji on the whole is overweight on shading/texturing resources, as it’s not greatly impacted by having some of those resources cut off.
Consequently I can see why AMD opted to launch the R9 Fury X and R9 Fury separately, and to withhold the latter’s specifications until now, as this level of performance makes R9 Fury a bit of a spoiler for R9 Fury X. 7-8% makes R9 Fury notably slower than R9 Fury X, but it’s also $100 cheaper, or to turn this argument on its head, the last 10% or so that the R9 Fury X offers comes at quite the price premium. This arguably makes the R9 Fury the better value, and not that we’re complaining, but it does put AMD in an awkward spot.
As for the competition, that’s a bit more of a mixed bag. R9 Fury X had to compete with GTX 980 Ti but couldn’t surpass it, which hurt it and make the GTX the safer buy. On the other hand R9 Fury needs to compete with just the older GTX 980, and while it’s by no means a clean sweep for AMD, it’s a good outcome for AMD. The R9 Fury offers between 8% and 17% better performance than the GTX 980, depending on if we’re looking at 1440p or 4K. I don’t believe the R9 Fury is a great 4K card – if you really want 4K, you really need more rendering power at this time – but even at 1440p this is a solid performance lead.
Along with a performance advantage, the GTX 980 is also better competition for the R9 Fury (and Fiji in general) since the GTX 980 is only available with 4GB of VRAM. This negates the Fiji GPU’s 4GB HBM limit, which is one of the things that held back the R9 Fury X against the GTX 980 Ti. As a result there are fewer factors to consider, and in a straight-up performance shootout with the GTX 980 the R9 Fury is 10% more expensive for 8%+ better performance. This doesn’t make either card a notably better value, but makes the R9 Fury a very reasonable alternative to the GTX 980 on a price/performance basis.
The one area where the R9 Fury struggles however is power efficiency. GTX 980’s power efficiency is practically legendary at this point; R9 Fury’s is not. Even the lower power of our two R9 Fury cards, the ASUS STRIX, can’t come close to GTX 980’s efficiency. And that’s really all there is to that. If energy efficiency doesn’t matter to you then the R9 Fury’s performance is competitive, otherwise GTX 980 is a bit slower, a bit cheaper, and uses a lot less power. That said, AMD’s partners do deserve some credit for keeping their acoustics well under control despite the high power and heat load. It’s not an apples-to-apples comparison against the reference GTX 980 and its blower, but at the very least picking R9 Fury over GTX 980 doesn’t mean you have to pick a loud card as well.
And that brings us to the third aspect of this review, which is comparing the R9 Fury cards from Sapphire and ASUS. Both partners have come to the plate with some very good open air cooled designs, and while it’s a bit unusual for AMD to launch with so few partners, what those partners have put together certainly paint R9 Fury in a positive light.
Picking between the two ends up being a harder task than we expected, in part because of how different they are at times. From a performance perspective the two cards offer very similar performance, with Sapphire’s mild factory overclock giving them only the slightest of edges, which is more or less what we expected.
However the power and acoustics situation is very different. On its own the ASUS STRIX’s acoustics would look good, but compared to the Sapphire Tri-X’s deliciously absurd acoustics it’s the clear runner-up. On the other hand the ASUS card has a clear power efficiency advantage of its own, but I’m not convinced that this isn’t just a byproduct of the ASUS card randomly receiving a better chip. As a result I’m not convinced that this same efficiency advantage exists between all ASUS and Sapphire cards; ASUS’s higher voltage R9 Fury chips have to go somewhere.
In any case, both are solid cards, but if we have to issue a recommendation then it’s hard to argue with the Sapphire Tri-X’s pricing and acoustics right now. It’s the quietest of the R9 Fury cards, and it’s slightly cheaper as well. Otherwise ASUS’s strengths lie more on their included software and their reputation for support than in their outright performance in our benchmark suite.
And with that, we wrap up our review of the second product in AMD’s four Fiji launches. The R9 Fury was the last product with a scheduled launch date, however AMD has previously told us that the R9 Nano will launch this summer, meaning we should expect it in the next couple of months. With a focus on size and efficiency the R9 Nano should be a very different card from the R9 Fury and R9 Fury X, which makes us curious to see just what AMD can pull off when optimizing for efficiency over absolute performance. But that will be a question for another day.
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SolMiester - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
WOW, so much fail from AMD...might as well kiss their ass goodbye!Pimping the Fury at 4k, when really even the 980Ti is borderline on occasion, and releasing a card with no OC headroom at the same price as its competitor!
ES_Revenge - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
I didn't have too high hopes for the "regular" Fury [Pro] after the disappointing Fury X. However I have to say...this thing makes the Fury X look bad, plain and simple. With a pretty significant cut-down (numerically) in SPs and 32 fewer TMUs, you'd expect this thing to be more of a yawn. Instead it gives very near to Fury X performance and still faster than a GTX 980.The only problem with it is price. At $550 it still costs more than a GTX 980 and Fury has less OC potential. And at only $100 less than Fury X it's not really much of a deal considering the AIO/CLC with that is probably worth $60-80. So really you're only paying $30 or so for the performance increase of Fury X (which isn't that much but it's still faster). What I suggest AMD "needs to do" is price this thing near to where they have the 390X priced. Fury Pro at ~$400 price will pull sales from Nvidia's 980 so fast it's not funny. Accordingly the 390X should be priced lower as well.
But I guess AMD can't really afford to undercut Nvidia at the moment so they're screwed either way. Price is high, people aren't going to bother; lower the price and people will buy but then maybe they're just losing money.
But imagine buying one of these at $400ish, strapping on an Asetek AIO/CLC you might have lying around (perhaps with a Kraken bracket), and you have a tiny little card* with a LOT of GPU power and nice low temps, with performance like a Fury X. Well one can dream, right? lol
*What I don't understand is why Asus did a custom PCB to make the thing *longer*??? One of the coolest things about Fury is how small the card is. They just went and ruined that--they took it and turned it back into a 290X, the clowns. While the Sapphire one still straps on an insanely large cooler, at least if you remove it you're still left with the as-intended short card.
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
can you even believe the 390x is at $429 and $469 and $479 ... the rebrand over 2.5 years old or so... i mean AMD has GONE NUTS.akamateau - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
@Ryan SmithHmmm.
You ran a whole suite of synthetic Benchmarks yet you completely ignored DX12 Starswarm and 3dMarks API Overhead test.
The question that I have is why did you omit DX12 benchmarks?
Starswarm is NOW COMPLETE AND MATURE.
It is also NOT synthetic but rather a full length game simulation; but you know this.
3dMark is synthetic but it is THE prime indicator of the CPU to GPU data pipeline performance.
They are also all we have right now to adequately judge the value of a $549 dollar AMD GPU vs a $649 nVidia GPU for new games coming up.
Since better than 50% of games released this Christmas will be DX12 don't you think that consumers have a right to know how well a high performance API will work with a dGPU card designed to run on both Mantle and DX12?
AMD did not position Fiji for DX11. This card IS designed for DX12 and Mantle.
So show us how well it does.
Ryan Smith - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
The Star Swarm benchmark is, by design, a proof of concept. It is meant to showcase the benefits of DX12/Mantle as it applies to draw calls, not to compare the gaming performance of video cards.Furthermore the latest version is running a very old version of the engine that has seen many changes. We will not be able to include any Oxide engine games until Ashes of the Singularity (which looks really good, by the way) is out of beta.
Finally, the 3DMark API Overhead test is not supposed to be used to compare video cards from different vendors. From the technical guide: "The API Overhead feature test is not a general-purpose GPU benchmark, and it should not be used to compare graphics cards from different vendors."
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
" Since better than 50% of games released this Christmas will be DX12 "I'LL BET YOU A GRAND THAT DOES NOT HAPPEN.
It's always the amd fanboy future, with the svengali ESP blabbed in for full on PR BS...
akamateau - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
@Ryan SmithDo you also realise that Fiji completely outclasses Maxwell and Tesla as well?
Gaming is a sideshow. AMD is positioning Fury x to sell for $350+ as a single unit silicon for HPC. With HBM on the package!!!
HPGPU computing is now up for grabs. Compaing the Fiji PACKAGE to the Maxwell or Tesla PACKAGE has AMD thoroughly outclassing the Professional Workstation and HPC silicon.
HBM stacked memory can be configured as cache and still feed GDDR5 RAM for multiple monitors.
AMD has several patents for just that while using HBM stacked memory.
I think that AMD is quietly positioning Fiji and Greenland next for High Performance Computing.
Fury X2 with 17 Tflps of single precision and almost 8Tflops dual precison is going to change the cluster server market.
Of course Fury X2 will rock this Christmas.
What will be the release price? I think less than $999!!!
AMD has made a habit of being the grinch that stole nVidias Christmas.
Ryan Smith - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
Note that Fiji is not expected to appear in any HPC systems. It has no ECC, minimal speed FP64, and only 4GB of VRAM. HPC users are generally after processors with large amounts of memory and ECC, and frequently FP64 as well.AMD's HPC product for this cycle is the FirePro S9170, a 32GB Hawaii card: http://www.amd.com/en-us/products/graphics/server/...
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
ROFLMAO delusion after delusion...loguerto - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
Looking at what happened with the old generation AMD and nvidia gpus, i wouldn't be surprised if after a few driver updates the fiji will be so ahead of maxwell. AMD always improved it's old architectures with software updates while nvidia quite never did that, actually they downgrade their old gpus so that they can sell their next overpriced SoC.