The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Aiming For the Top
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2015 11:15 AM ESTGRID Autosport
For the racing game in our benchmark suite we have Codemasters’ GRID Autosport. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, delivering realistic looking environments with layed with additional graphical effects. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID Autosport includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty on lower-end cards but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world.
Unfortunately for AMD, after a streak of wins and ties for AMD, things start going off the rails with GRID, very off the rails.
At 4K Ultra this is AMD’s single biggest 4K performance deficit; the card trails the GTX 980 Ti by 14%. The good news is that in the process the card cracks 60fps, so framerates are solid on an absolute basis, though there are still going to be some frames below 60fps for racing purists to contend with.
Where things get really bad is at 1440p, in a situation we have never seen before in a high-end AMD video card review. The R9 Fury X gets pummeled here, trailing the GTX 980 Ti by 30%, and even falling behind the GTX 980 and GTX 780 Ti. The reason it’s getting pummeled is because the R9 Fury X is CPU bottlenecked here; no matter what resolution we pick, the R9 Fury X can’t spit out more than about 82fps here at Ultra quality.
With GPU performance outgrowing CPU performance year after year, this is something that was due to happen sooner or later, and is a big reason that low-level APIs are about to come into the fold. And if it was going to happen anywhere, it would happen with a flagship level video card. Still, with an overclocked Core i7-4960X driving our testbed, this is also one of the most powerful systems available with respect to CPU performance, so AMD’s drivers are burning an incredible amount of CPU time here.
Ultimately GRID serves to cement our concerns about AMD’s performance at 1440p, as it’s very possible that this is the tip of the iceberg. DirectX 11 will go away eventually, but it will still take some time. In the meantime there are a number of 1440p gamers out there, especially with R9 Fury X otherwise being such a good fit for high frame rate 1440p gaming. Perhaps the biggest issue here is that this makes it very hard to justify pairing 1440p 144Hz monitors with AMD’s GPUs, as although 82.6fps is fine for a 60Hz monitor, these CPU issues are making it hard for AMD to deliver framerates more suitable/desirable for those high performance monitors.
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anandreader106 - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
@Wreckage Not quite. Cash reserves play a role in evaluating a company's net worth. When AMD acquired ATI, they spent considerable money to do so and plunged themselves into debt. The resulting valuation of AMD was not simply the combined valuations of AMD and ATI pre-acquisition. Far from it.AMD is the undisputed underdog in 2015, and has been for many years before that. That is why Ryan gave so much praise to AMD in the article. For them to even be competitive at the high end, given their resources and competition, is nothing short of impressive.
If you cannot at least acknowledge that, than your view on this product and the GPU market is completely warped. As consumers we are all better off with a Fury X in the market.
Yojimbo - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
Yes, NVIDIA was definitely the underdog at the time of the AMD purchase of ATI. Many people were leaving NVIDIA for dead. NVIDIA had recently lost its ability to make chipsets for Intel processors, and after AMD bought ATI it was presumed (rightly so) that NVIDIA would no longer be able to make chipsets for AMD processors. It was thought that the discrete GPU market might dry up with fusion CPU/GPU chips taking over the market.chizow - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
Yep, I remember after the merger happened most AMD/ATI fans were rejoicing as they felt it would spell the end of both Nvidia and Intel, Future is Fusion and all that promise lol. Many like myself were pointing out the fact AMD overpayed for ATI and that they would collapse under the weight of all that debt given ATI's revenue and profits didn't come close to justifying the purchase price.My how things have played out completely differently! It's like the incredible shrinking company. At this point it really is in AMD and their fan's best interest if they are just bought out and broken up for scraps, at least someone with deep pockets might be able to revive some of their core products and turn things around.
Ranger101 - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
Well done Mr Smith. I would go so far as to say THE best Fury X review on the internet barnone. The most important ingredient is BALANCE. Something that other reviews sorely lack.
In particular the PCPer and HardOCP articles read like they were written by the green
goblin himself and consequently suffer a MASSIVE credibility failure.
Yes Nvidia has a better performing card in the 980TI but it was refreshing to see credit
given to AMD where it was due. Only dolts and fanatical AMD haters (I'm not quite sure
what category chizow falls into, probably both and a third "Nvidia shill") would deny that
we need AMD AND Nvidia for the consumer to win.
Thanks Anandtech.
Michael Bay - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
Except chizow never stated he wishes to see AMD dead.I guess it`s your butthurt talking.
chizow - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
Yep, just AMD fanboys ;)"What's Left of AMD" can keep making SoCs and console APUs or whatever other widgets under the umbrella of some monster conglomerate like Samsung, Qualcomm or Microsoft and I'm perfectly OK with that. Maybe I'll even buy an AMD product again.
medi03 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
"AMD going away won't matter to anyone but their few remaining devout fanboys'So kind (paid?) nVidia troll chizow is.
chizow - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
@medi03 no worries I look forward to the day (unpaid?) AMD fantroll's like you can free yourselves from the mediocrity that is AMD.chizow - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
Yet, still 3rd rate. The overwhelming majority of the market has gone on just fine without AMD being relevant in the CPU market, and recently, the same has happened in the GPU market. AMD going away won't matter to anyone but their few remaining devout fanboys like Ranger101.piiman - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
"AMD going away won't matter to anyone but their few remaining devout fanboys'Hmmm you'll think different when GPU prices go up up up. Competition is good for consumers and without it you will pay more, literally.