The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Aiming For the Top
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2015 11:15 AM ESTMiddle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Our next benchmark is Monolith’s popular open-world action game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. One of our current-gen console multiplatform titles, Shadow of Mordor is plenty punishing on its own, and at Ultra settings it absolutely devours VRAM, showcasing the knock-on effect of current-gen consoles have on VRAM requirements.
With Shadow of Mordor things finally start looking up for AMD, as the R9 Fury X scores its first win. Okay, it’s more of a tie than a win, but it’s farther than the R9 Fury X has made it so far.
At 4K with Ultra settings the R9 Fury X manages an average of 48.3fps, a virtual tie with the GTX 980 Ti and its 47.9fps. Dropping down to Very High quality does see AMD pull back just a bit, but with a difference between the two cards of just 0.7fps, it’s hardly worth worrying about. Even 2560 looks good for AMD here, trailing the GTX 980 Ti by just over 1fps, at an average framerate of over 80fps. Overall the R9 Fury X delivers 98% to 101% of the performance of the GTX 980 Ti, more or less tying the direct competitor to AMD’s latest card.
Meanwhile compared to the R9 290X, the R9 Fury X doesn’t see quite the same gains. Performance is a fairly consistent 26-28% ahead of the R9 290X, less than what we’ve seen elsewhere. Earlier we discussed how the R9 Fury X’s performance gains will depend on which part of the GPU is getting stressed the most; tasks that stress the shaders show the most gains, and tasks that stress geometry or the ROPs potentially show the lowest gains. In the case of SoM, I believe we’re seeing at least a partial case of being geometry/ROP influenced.
Unfortunately for AMD, the minimum framerate situation isn’t quite as good as the averages. These framerates aren’t bad – the R9 Fury X is always over 30fps – but even accounting for the higher variability of minimum framerates, they’re trailing the GTX 980 Ti by 13-15% with Ultra quality settings. Interestingly at 4K with Very High quality settings the minimum framerate gap is just 3%, in which case what we are most likely seeing is the impact of running Ultra settings with only 4GB of VRAM. The 4GB cards don’t get punished too much for it, but for R9 Fury X and its 4GB of HBM, it is beginning to crack under the pressure of what is admittedly one of our more VRAM-demanding games.
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nader_21007 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
As an analyst , I Guarantee AMD’s Success by taking the following simple steps:1. To Stop wasting money on R&D investments altogether at once.
2. To employ a bunch of marketers like Chizow, N7, AMDesperate, . . . to Spread Rumors and bash best products of the competition, constantly.
3. To Invest saved money (R&D wasted money on new techs like HBM, Low level API Mantle, Premium water cooler, etc, etc) in Hardware Review sites to Magnify your products Strengths and the competition’s Weaknesses.
(Note: Consumers won’t judge your product against the competition in practice, They just accept what they see in Hardware Review sites & Forums)
I just gave these advices to some companies in the past, and believe me, one have the best CPU out there, and the other make the best GPU. Innovation is not an R&D’s fruth, it’s a Marketing FRUTH.
Please contact me for more details, Regards.
Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Astroturfing got Samsung smacked with a penalty, but a smart company would hire astroturfers who are good at disguising their bias, not obvious trolls.SanX - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
AMD only hope left is that company with better lithography like Samsung for example buy it entirely. You're welcome, Samsung. Hope you will not forget my as always brilliant advices.amro12 - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Why no 970? 290? At least a 970, it's better than that 290x up there...Oxford Guy - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
Perhaps because the 970 should have been withdrawn from the market for fraud? It should have been relabeled the 965 and consumers who bought one should have been offered more than just a refund.Innokentij - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
To be from Oxford u seem to lack logical thinking.Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
I'm logical enough to see a comment with no substance to it.chizow - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
Of course this is nonsense, if the 970 launched at its corrected specs, would you have a problem with its product placement? Of course not. But let's all act as if this is the first and last time a cut down ASIC is sold at a lower price:performance segment nonetheless!Oxford Guy - Thursday, July 9, 2015 - link
Your post in no way rebuts what I wrote.Hxx - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
right because that 0.5 partition really hindered its performance lol. Lets face it , the 970 is an excellent performer with more vram than last gen nvidia's top dog (870 ti) and performing within 15% from nvidia's top tier gtx 980 for $200 less...what more there is to say?