The AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review, Feat. Sapphire & ASUS
by Ryan Smith on July 10, 2015 9:00 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 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.
Closing out our gaming benchmarks, the R9 Fury is once again in the lead, besting the GTX 980 by as much as 15%. However GTA V also serves as a reminder that the R9 Fury doesn’t have quite enough power to game at 4K without compromises. And if we do shift back to 1440p, a more comfortable resolution for this card, AMD’s lead is down to just 5%. At that point the R9 Fury isn’t quite covering its price advantage.
Meanwhile compared to the R9 Fury X, we close out roughly where we started. The R9 Fury trails the more powerful R9 Fury X by 5-7% depending on the resolution, a difference that has more to do with GPU clockspeeds than the cut-down CU count. Overall the gap between the two cards has been remarkably consistent and surprisingly narrow.
99th percentile framerates however are simply not in AMD’s favor here. Despite AMD’s driver optimizations and the fact that the GTX 980 only has 4GB of VRAM, the R9 Fury X could not pull ahead of the GTX 980, so the R9 Fury understandably fares worse. Even at 1440p the R9 Fury cards can’t quite muster 30fps, though in all fairness even the GTX 980 falls just short of this mark as well.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
288 Comments
View All Comments
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
i'VE ALREADY SEEN A DOZEN REFUSE TO BUY FURY BECAUSE OF IT.They have a 4k TV, they say, that requires the hdmi 2.0...
SO ALL YOUR PATHETIC EXCUSES MEAN EXACTLY NOTHING. THOSE WITH 4K READY SCREENS ARE BAILING TO NVIDIA ONLY !
YOU DENYING REALITY WILL ONLY MAKE IT WORSE FOR AMD.
They can screw off longer with enough pinheads blabbering bs.
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
It's such a massive failure, and so big a fat obtuse lie, it's embarrassing to even bring up, spoiling the party that is fun if you pretend and fantasize enough, and ignore just how evil amd is.hdmi 2.0 - nope ! way to go what a great 4k gaming card ! 4gb ram - suddenly that is more than enough and future proof !
ROFL - ONLY AMD FANBOYS
dave1231 - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
That's with HBM? Lol.medi03 - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
With all respect, 300 vs 360 watt at load and 72 vs 75 watt idle doesn't deserve "consumes MUCH more power", Ryan, and that even if it wasn't a faster card.Socius - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
For total system power draw? Yeah it does....because the power usage gap percentage is lessened by the addition of the system power usage (minus the cards) in the total figure. So if the numbers were 240W vs 300W, for example, that's 25% more power usage. And that's with a 20-30W reduction in power usage by using HBM. So it shows how inefficient the GPU design actually is, even when asking it with HBM power reduction and the addition of total system power draw instead of calculating it by card.mdriftmeyer - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
Personally, I have an RM 1000W Corsair Power Supply. Sorry, but if you're using < 850W supply units I suggest you buck up and upgrade.Socius - Sunday, July 12, 2015 - link
I think you replied to the wrong person here. I have 2 PSUs in my PC. A 6-rail 1600W unit and a single rail 1250W unit.Peichen - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
The fail that’s AMD’s Fury series makes my MSI Gaming 4G GTX980 looks even better. I only paid $430 for it and it gets to 1490/1504 boosted at stock voltage. Essentially it means I got a card as fast as Fury OC at $100+ cheaper, uses far less power and in my system for months earlier.I am very glad I went Nvidia after 5 year with AMD/ATI graphics and didn’t wait months for Fiji.
FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
There we have it, and it's still the better deal. It's STILL THE BETTER DEAL AND IT'S AVAILABLE.But we're supposed to believe amd is cheap and faster... and just as good in everything else...
I seriously can't think of a single thing amd isn't behind on.
MobiusPizza - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
"The R9 Fury will be launching with an MSRP of $549, $100 below the R9 Fury X. This price puts the R9 Fury up against much different completion* than its older sibling; "It's competition not completion