The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Aiming For the Top
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2015 11:15 AM ESTOverclocking
Finally, no review of a high-end video card would be complete without a look at overclocking performance.
To get right to the point here, overclockers looking at out of the box overclocking performance are going to come away disappointed. While cooling and power delivery are overbuilt, in other respects the R9 Fury X is very locked down when it comes to overclocking. There is no voltage control at this time (even unofficial), there is no official HBM clockspeed control, and the card’s voltage profile has been finely tuned to avoid needing to supply the card with more voltage than is necessary. As a result the card has relatively little overclocking potential without voltage adjustments.
So what do we get for overclocking?
| Radeon R9 Fury X Overclocking | ||||
| Stock | Overclocked | |||
| Boost Clock | 1050Mhz | 1125MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 1Gbps (500MHz DDR) | 1Gbps (500MHz DDR) | ||
| Max Voltage | N/A | N/A | ||
Our efforts net us 75MHz, which is actually 25MHz less than what AMD published in their reviewer’s guide. Even 100MHz would lead to artifacting in some games, requiring that we step down to a 75MHz overclock to have a safe and sustainable overclock.
The end result is that the overclocked R9 Fury X runs at 1125MHz core and 1Gbps memory, a 75MHz (7%) increase in the GPU clockspeed and 0% increase in the memory clockspeed. This puts a very narrow window on expected performance gains, as we shouldn’t exceed a 7% gain in any game, and will almost certainly come in below 7% in most games.
Our gaming benchmarks find just that. A few percent performance improvement there, a 5% improvement there. Overall we wouldn’t go as far as saying there no reason to overclock, but with such limited gains it’s hardly worth the trouble right now.
True overclocking is going to have to involve BIOS modding, a riskier and warranty-voiding strategy, but one that should be far more rewarding. With more voltage I have little doubt that R9 Fury X could clock higher, though it’s impossible to guess by how much at this time. In any case the card is certainly built for it, as the oversized cooler, high power delivery capabilities, and dual BIOS switch provide all the components necessary for such an overclocking attempt.
Meanwhile HBM is a completely different bag, and while unofficial overclocking is looking promising, as a new technology it will take some time to get a good feel for it and understand just what kind of performance improvements it can deliver. The R9 Fury X is starting out with quite a bit of memory bandwidth right off the bat (512GB/sec), so it may not be bandwidth starved as often as other cards like the R9 290X was.
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TallestJon96 - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
This card is not the disappointment people make it out to be. One month ago this card would have been a MASSIVE success. What is strange to me is that they didn't reduce price, even slightly to compete with the new 980 ti. I suspect it was to avoid a price war, but I would say at $600 this card is attractive, but at $650 you only really want it for water cooling. I suspect the price will drop more quickly than the 980 ti.mccoy3 - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
So it is as expensive as the 980Ti by delivering less performance and requires watercooling. Once Nvidia settles for a TITAN Y including HBM, its all over for the red guys.just4U - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
Well that would be great news for AMD though wouldn't it since Nvidia would have to pay for the use of HBM in some form or another..Oxford Guy - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
AMD could have released a hot leaf blower like the GTX 480 and chose not to.chizow - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
No, they couldn't have. Fury X is already a 275W and that's with the benefit of low temp leakage using a WC *AND* the benefit of a self-professed 15-20W TDP surplus from HBM. That means in order for Fury X to still fall 10% short of 980Ti, it is already using 25+20W, so 45W more power.Their CUSTOM cooled 7/8th cut Fury is going to be 275W typical board power as well and its cut down, so yeah the difference in functional unit power is most likely going to be the same as the difference in thermal leakage due to operating temperatures between water and custom air cooling. A hot leaf blower, especially one as poor as AMD's reference would only be able to cool a 6/8 cut Fiji or lower, but at that point you might as well get a Hawaii based card.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Your posts don't even try to sound sane. I wrote about the GTX 480, which was designed to run hot and loud. Nvidia also couldn't release a fully-enabled chip.Ignore the point about the low-grade cooler on the 480 which ran hot and was very loud.
Ignore the point about the card being set to run hot, which hurt performance per watt (see this article if you don't get it).
How much is Nvidia paying you to astroturf? Whatever it is, it's too much.
Margalus - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
this AMD card pumps out more heat than any NVidia card. Just because it runs a tad cooler with water cooling doesn't mean the heat is not there. It's just removed faster with water cooling, but the heat is still generated and the card will blow out a lot more hot air into the room than any NVidia card.Oxford Guy - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
If you can't afford AC then stick with something like a 750 Ti. Otherwise the extra heat is hardly a big deal.zodiacfml - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
My excitement with HBM has subsided as I realized that this is too costly to be implemented in AMD's APUs even next year. Yet, I hope they do as soon as possible even if it would mean HBM on a narrower bus.jburns - Saturday, July 4, 2015 - link
Probably the best graphics card review I've ever read! Detailed and balanced... Thanks Ryan for an excellent review.