The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Aiming For the Top
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2015 11:15 AM ESTGrand Theft Auto V
The final game in our review of the R9 Fury X is our most recent addition, Grand Theft Auto V. The latest edition of Rockstar’s venerable series of open world action games, Grand Theft Auto V was originally released to the last-gen consoles back in 2013. However thanks to a rather significant facelift for the current-gen consoles and PCs, along with the ability to greatly turn up rendering distances and add other features like MSAA and more realistic shadows, the end result is a game that is still among the most stressful of our benchmarks when all of its features are turned up. Furthermore, in a move rather uncharacteristic of most open world action games, Grand Theft Auto also includes a very comprehensive benchmark mode, giving us a great chance to look into the performance of an open world action game.
On a quick note about settings, as Grand Theft Auto V doesn't have pre-defined settings tiers, I want to quickly note what settings we're using. For "Very High" quality we have all of the primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, with the exception of grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced redering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but it not increasing the view distance any further.
Otherwise for "High" quality we take the same basic settings but turn off all MSAA, which significantly reduces the GPU rendering and VRAM requirements.
Our final game sees the R9 Fury X go out on either an average or slightly worse than average note, depending on the settings and resolution we are looking at. At our highest 4K settings the R9 Fury X trails the GTX 980 Ti once again, this time by 10%. Worse, at 1440p it’s now 15%. On the other hand if we run at our lower, more playable 4K settings, then the gap is only 5%, roughly in line with the overall average 4K performance gap between the GTX 980 Ti and R9 Fury X.
In this case it’s probably to AMD’s benefit that our highest 4K settings aren’t actually playable on a single GPU card, as the necessary drop in quality gets them closer to NVIDIA’s performance. On the other hand this does reiterate the fact that right now many games will force a tradeoff between resolution and quality if you wish to pursue 4K gaming.
Finally, the performance gains relative to the R9 290X are pretty good. 29% at 1440p, and 44% at the lower quality playable 4K resolution setting.
Shifting gears to 99th percentile frametimes however – a much-welcome feature of the game’s built-in benchmark – finds that AMD doesn’t fare nearly as well. At the 99th percentile the R9 Fury X trails the GTX 980 Ti at all times, and significantly so. The deficit is anywhere between 26% at 1440p to 40% at 4K Very High.
What’s happening here is a combination of multiple factors. First and foremost, next to Shadow of Mordor, GTAV is our other VRAM busting game. This, I believe, is why 99th percentile performance dives so hard at 4K Very High for the R9 Fury X, as it only has 4GB of VRAM compared to 6GB on the GTX 980 Ti. But considering where the GTX 980 places – above the R9 Fury X – I also believe there’s more than just VRAM bottlenecking occurring here. The GTX 980 sees at least marginally better framerates with the same size VRAM pool (and a lot less of almost everything else), which leads me to believe that AMD’s drivers may be holding them back here. Certainly the R9 290X comparison lends some possible credit to that, as the 99th percentile gains are under 20%. Regardless, one wouldn’t expect to be VRAM limited at 1440p or 4K without MSAA, especially as this test was not originally designed to bust 4GB cards.
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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.