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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Sefem - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
"Draw calls are the best metric we have right now to compare AMD Radeon to nVidia ON A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD."Well, lets just for a moment consider this as true (and you should try to explain why :D )
Looking at draw calls a GTX 980 should perform 2.5x faster than a 290X in DX11 (respectively 2.62M vs 1.05M draw calls) and even a GTX 960 would be 2.37x faster than the over mentioned 290X (respectively 2.49M vs 1.05M draw calls) :)
D. Lister - Friday, July 17, 2015 - link
Performing minor optimizations, on an API that isn't even out yet, to give themselves the appearance of a theoretical advantage in some arbitrary GPU function, as a desperate attempt to keep themselves relevant, is so very AMD (their motto should be, "we will take your money now, and give you its worth... later..., maybe.)Meanwhile people at NV are optimizing for the API that is currently actually being used to make games, and raising their stock value and market share while they're at it.
Why wouldn't AMD optimize for DX11, and instead do what it's doing? Because DX11 is a mature API, so any further improvements would be small, yet expensive, while DX12 isn't even out yet, so it would be comparatively cheaper to get bigger gains, and AMD is seriously low on funds.
Realistically, proper DX12 games are stll 2-3 years away. By that time AMD probably wouldn't even be around anymore.
Hence, in conclusion, whatever DX12 performance the Fury trio (or AMD in general) claims, means absolutely nothing at this point.
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Thank GOD for nvidia or amd would have this priced so sky high no one could afford it.Instead of crazy high scalping greedy pricing amd only greeded up on price perf the tiny bit it could since it can't beat nvidia, who saved our wallets again !
THANK YOU NVIDIA ! YOUR COMPETITION HAS KEPT THE GREEDY RED TEAM FROM EXHORBITANT OVERPRICING LIKE THEY DID ON THEIR 290 SERIES !
f0d - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
i wasnt really impressed with the fury-x at its price point and performancethis normal fury seems a bit better at it price point than the fury-x does
as i write this the information on overclocking wasnt finished - i sure hope the fury overclocks much better than fury-x did because that was a massive letdown when it came to overclocking, when nvidia can get some crazy high overclocks with its maxwell it kinda makex the fury line seem not as good with its meager overclocks the fury-x had
hopefully fury (non x) overclocks like a beast like the nvidia cards do
noladixiebeer - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
AMD haven't unlocked the voltage yet on Fury X. Hopefully, they will unlock the voltage cap soon, so the Fury X should be able to overclock better. Better than 980ti? We'll see, but Fury X still has lots of uptapped resources.Chaser - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
Don't hold you breath. There is very little overhead in Fiji. That's clearly been divulged. As the article states Maxwell is very efficient and has a good deal of room for partners to indulge themselves. Especially the Ti.chrnochime - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
The WC for the X makes up ~half of the price increase from non-x. For someone who's going to do moderate OC and don't want to bother doing WC conversion the X is a good choice, even over a Ti.cmdrdredd - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
no it's not...the 980ti bests it handily. It's not a good choice at all when 980ti can overclock as well and many coolers have 0rpm fan modes for when it's at idle or very low usage.akamateau - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
You haven't seen the DX12 Benchmarks yet. Anand has been keeping them from you. Once you see how much Radeon crushes nVidia you would never buy green again.nVidia silicon is RUBBISH with DX12 and Mantle. Radeon 290x is 33% faster than GTX 980Ti.
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
sefem already told you..." "Draw calls are the best metric we have right now to compare AMD Radeon to nVidia ON A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD."
Well, lets just for a moment consider this as true (and you should try to explain why :D )
Looking at draw calls a GTX 980 should perform 2.5x faster than a 290X in DX11 (respectively 2.62M vs 1.05M draw calls) and even a GTX 960 would be 2.37x faster than the over mentioned 290X (respectively 2.49M vs 1.05M draw calls) :) "
Now go back to stroking your amd spider platform.