The AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review, Feat. Sapphire & ASUS
by Ryan Smith on July 10, 2015 9:00 AM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
As one of the few games that can hit 60fps on the R9 Fury at 4K with everything turned up, it’s interesting to see how resolution impacts all of our cards with Civilization. At 4K the R9 Fury is well ahead of the GTX 980, surpassing it by 17%. Yet at 1440p that lead becomes a very slight loss, with the Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury’s mild factory overclock giving it just enough of a boost to stay ahead of the GTX 980.
Meanwhile the Fury/Fury X gap widens ever so slightly here. The R9 Fury is now a full 10% behind the full-fledged Fury.
The minimum framerate situation for Civilization is very nearly a mirror of the averages. The R9 Fury does relatively well at 4K, but at 1440p it’s now neck-and-neck with the GTX 980 once again.
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refin3d - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
This is exactly what I was thinking... A few months ago when the 980 was launched I recall the 290X not being able to compete with it, and now they are trading blows. Shows some good work by the driver's team.Maybe AMD's cards are like a fine wine; you have to give them time to age before they reach their maximum potential haha.
jann5s - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Making driver improvements is nice, and shows commitment from AMD, but it could also mean the original state of the drivers was not so good, and there was indeed a lot to improve. I hope this is not the case, but I'm not sure.Asomething - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Amd drivers weren't as good, its one of the reasons they switched to GCN in the 1st place, their drivers got a lot better since those days apparently.FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Apparently not, as most games don't run even for the reviewers on GCN "release day".The endless fantasies in amd fanboy minds though, those run, run their course, are debunked, go into schizoid mode and necromance themselves, then of course we are treated to the lying again.
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
SO FOR 2 FULL YEARS AMD 290 290X 290 UBER OWNERS GOT SCREWED " by the drivers that are just as good as Nvidia's as that problem amd had was 4 years ago or more" !!???I get it amd fanboy ... it's all you have left after the constant amd failures and whippings they've taken from nVidia - the fantasy about "amd drivers" TWO AND A HALF YEARS AFTER RELEASE.
Oxford Guy - Saturday, July 11, 2015 - link
A conspiracy theory is that Nvidia has purposefully hampered performance for Kepler.Cellar Door - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
Look at 780Ti - at launch 290X could not touch it. Where is the 780Ti now?!?!? - what a crappy investment was that for anyone that got one.
CiccioB - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
You may be over excited to have noted that in the review there's a GTX780, not a 780Ti. Seen the difference between the cards, if some improvements have been created, they are quite marginal.It's really funny to see these sort of myth raise from time to time without a real study on the thing. All impressions, not a single number reported as a proof of anything.
Yet, continue to believe in what you want. Unfortunately for you the market doesn't really care.
Cellar Door - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
You should check out the techpowerup review - they have a 780TI in it. Then you will understand what you here are calling a myth. 780TI is positioned just before a 290X, hahah, pretty sad to be honest.CiccioB - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
You can look at Anandtech reviews. The only game that was in benchmark suite as today is Crisis 3.Look what are the changes between the 290X and the 780 (not Ti).
Here the two boards when on par at 290X presentation, and they still are on par today.
You can see the difference are the same and we are speaking for 1FPS change for both GPUs. Yes, miraculous drivers. Come on, return on Earth with your fantasies.