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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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?