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 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
This card and the 980 ti meet two interesting milestones in my mind. First, this is the first time 1080p isn't even considered. Pretty cool to be at the point where 1080p is considered at bit of a low resolution for high end cards.Second, it's the point where we have single cards can play games at 4k, with higher graphical settings, and have better performance than a ps4. So at this point, if a ps4 is playable, than 4k gaming is playable.
It's great to see higher and higher resolutions.
XtAzY - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Geez these benchies are making my 580 looking ancient.MacGyver85 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Idle power does not start things off especially well for the R9 Fury X, though it’s not too poor either. The 82W at the wall is a distinct increase over NVIDIA’s latest cards, and even the R9 290X. On the other hand the R9 Fury X has to run a CLLC rather than simple fans. Further complicating factors is the fact that the card idles at 300MHz for the core, but the memory doesn’t idle at all. HBM is meant to have rather low power consumption under load versus GDDR5, but one wonders just how that compares at idle.I'd like to see you guys post power consumption numbers with power to the pump cut at idle, to answer the questions you pose. I'm pretty sure the card is competitive without the pump running (but still with the fan to have an equal comparison). If not it will give us more of an insight in what improvements AMD can give to HBM in the future with regards to power consumption. But I'd be very suprised if they haven't dealt with that during the design phase. After all, power consumption is THE defining limit for graphics performance.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Idle power consumption isn't the defining limit. The article already said that the cooler keeps the temperature low while also keeping noise levels in check. The result of keeping the temperature low is that AMD can more aggressively tune for performance per watt.Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
This is a gaming card, not a card for casuals who spend most of their time with the GPU idling.Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
The other point which wasn't really made in the article is that the idle noise is higher but consider how many GPUs exhaust their heat into the case. That means higher case fan noise which could cancel out the idle noise difference. This card's radiator can be set to exhaust directly out of the case.mdriftmeyer - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
It's an engineering card as much as it is for gaming. It's a great solid modeling card with OpenCL. The way AMD is building its driver foundation will pay off big in the next quarter.Nagorak - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
I don't know that I agree about that. Even people who game a lot probably use their computer for other things and it sucks to be using more watts while idle. That being said, the increase is not a whole lot.Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Gaming is a luxury activity. People who are really concerned about power usage would, at the very least, stick with a low-wattage GPU like a 750 Ti or something and turn down the quality settings. Or, if you really want to be green, don't do 3D gaming at all.MacGyver85 - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
That's not really true. I don't mind my gfx card pulling a lot of power while I'm gaming. But I want it to sip power when it's doing nothing. And since any card spends most of its time idling, idling is actually very important (if not most important) in overal (yearly) power consumption.Btw I never said that idle power consumption is the defining limit, I said power consumption is the defining limit. It's a give that any Watt you save while idling is generally a Watt of extra headroom when running at full power. The lower the baseline load the more room for actual, functional (graphics) power consumption. And as it turns out I was right in my assumption that the actual graphics card minus the cooler pump idle power consumption is competitive with nVidia's.