The AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review, Feat. Sapphire & ASUS
by Ryan Smith on July 10, 2015 9:00 AM ESTMiddle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Our next benchmark is Monolith’s popular open-world action game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. One of our current-gen console multiplatform titles, Shadow of Mordor is plenty punishing on its own, and at Ultra settings it absolutely devours VRAM, showcasing the knock-on effect that current-gen consoles have on VRAM requirements.
Shadow of Mordor ends up being a big win for AMD, with the R9 Fury cards shooting well past the GTX 980. Based on our earlier R9 Fury X review this was not an unexpected result, but at the end of the day with a 20%+ performance advantage, it’s a great situation for AMD to be in.
Meanwhile the R9 Fury’s performance relative to its X-rated sibling is yet again in the 7% range. So far the performance difference between the two cards is surprisingly consistent.
Finally, since AMD’s last two $550 cards were the R9 290X and HD 7970, let’s take a look at those comparisons quickly. At 1440p the R9 Fury only has a 17% lead over the R9 290X “Uber”, which for a card almost 2 years old is more than a bit surprising. The R9 Fury has more efficient front-ends and back-ends and significant advantages in shader throughput and memory bandwidth, and yet the performance gains compared to 290X are fairly small. On the other hand 7970 owners looking to upgrade to another Radeon should like what they’re seeing, as the R9 Fury’s 79% performance advantage is approaching upgrade territory.
Shifting gears to minimum framerates, the situation is similarly in AMD’s favor at 4K. One of the outcomes of going up against the GTX 980 is that it’s just as VRAM-limited as R9 Fury is, so in a VRAM intensive game like Shadow of Mordor, neither card has an advantage. However it’s quite interesting that once we back off to 1440p, the GTX 980 surges forward.
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CiccioB - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
For a GPU that was expected to beat Titan X hands down, just being faster than 980 is quite a fail.Also due to the high cost technology involved in producing it.
Be happy for that, and just wait or DX12 to have some hope to gain few FPS with respect to the competitor.
I just think DX12 is not going to change anything (whatever these cards will gain will be the same for nvidia cards) and few FPS more or less is not what we expected from this top ties class (expensive) GPU.
Despite the great steps ahead made by AMD in power consumption, it still is a fail.
Large, expensive, still consuming more, and badly scaling.
Hope that with the new 16nm FinFet PP things will change radically, or we will witness a 2 year dominance again by nvidia with high prices.
superjim - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
Used 290's are going for sub-$200 (new for $250). Crossfire those and you get better performance for much less.P39Airacobra - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Ok compared to the Fury X, The Regular R9 Fury makes a bit more sense than the X model. It is priced better (But still priced a bit too much) And it has almost even performance with the X model. However the power consumption is still insane and unreasonable for todays standards! And the temps are way too high for a triple fan card! With a 70c temp running triple fans I doubt there is any room at all for overclocking! I do respect this card's performance! But it is just not worth it for the price you have to pay for a hefty PSU, And the very loud and expensive cooling setup you will have to put inside your case! To be honest: If I was stuck with a old GTX 660 Ti, And someone offered me a R9 Fury for even trade, I would not do it!ES_Revenge - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
The power consumption is not insane or unreasonable for "today's standards". Only the GTX 960, 970, 980, Titan X are better. So it's unreasonable for Nvidia's new standard but it's actually an improvement over Hawaii, etc. of the past.Compared to current Nvidia offerings, it's bad yeah but we can't really established standards on their cards alone. R9 390/X, 380, etc. are still power hungry for their performance and they are still "today's" cards, like it or not.
Don't get me wrong I agree they really need to start focusing on power/heat reduction, but we're not going to see that from AMD until their next gen cards (if they make it that far, lol).
Gunbuster - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
AMD thread with no Chizow comments? My world is falling apart :POxford Guy - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
I'm sure this person has more than one alias.FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
We'd know him by his words, his many lengthy words with links and facts up the wazoo, and he is so proud he would not hide with another name, like a lousy, incorrect, uninformed, amd fanboy failure.FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Just think about placing your bare hand on 3 plugged in 100 Watt light bulbs ... that's AMD's housefire for you !My god you could cook a steak on the thing.
3X 100 watter light bulbs frying everything in your computer case... awesome job amd.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Because the GTX 480 was quieter, had better performance per watt, and was a fully-enabled chip.FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
So the 480 being hot makes this heated furnace ok ?What exactly is the logic there ?
Are you a problematic fanboy for amd ?