The AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review, Feat. Sapphire & ASUS
by Ryan Smith on July 10, 2015 9:00 AM ESTOverclocking
Finally, no review of a high-end video card would be complete without a look at overclocking performance.
As was the case with the R9 Fury X two weeks ago, overclockers looking at out of the box overclocking performance are going to come away disappointed with the R9 Fury cards. While cooling and power delivery are overbuilt on both the Asus and Sapphire cards, the R9 Fury is still very restricted when it comes to overclocking. There is no voltage control at this time (even unofficial) 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.
| Radeon R9 Fury Series Overclocking | |||||
| Ref. R9 Fury X | ASUS R9 Fury | Sapphire R9 Fury OC | |||
| Boost Clock | 1125MHz | 1075MHz | 1100MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 1Gbps (500MHz DDR) | 1.1Gbps (550MHz DDR) | 1.1Gbps (550MHz DDR) | ||
| Power Limit | 100% | 115% | 100% | ||
| Max Voltage | 1.212v | 1.169v | 1.212v | ||
Neither R9 Fury card is able to overclock as well as our R9 Fury X, indicating that these are likely lower quality (or lower headroom) chips. Ultimately we’re able to get another 75MHz out of the ASUS, for 1075MHz, and another 60MHz out of the Sapphire, for 1100MHz.
Meanwhile with unofficial memory overclocking support now attainable via MSI Afterburner, we’ve also tried our hand at memory overclocking. There’s not a ton of headroom here before artifacting sets in, but we were able to get another 10% (50MHz) out of both R9 Fury cards.
Using our highest clocking card as a reference point, the Sapphire card, the actual performance gains are in the 7-10% range, with an average right up the middle at 8% over a reference clocked R9 Fury. This is actually a bit better than the R9 Fury X and its 5% performance gains, however it’s still not going to provide a huge difference in performance. We’d need to be able to overclock to better than 1100MHz to see any major overclocking gains on the R9 Fury cards.
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CiccioB - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
For a GPU that was expected to beat Titan X hands down, just being faster than 980 is quite a fail.Also due to the high cost technology involved in producing it.
Be happy for that, and just wait or DX12 to have some hope to gain few FPS with respect to the competitor.
I just think DX12 is not going to change anything (whatever these cards will gain will be the same for nvidia cards) and few FPS more or less is not what we expected from this top ties class (expensive) GPU.
Despite the great steps ahead made by AMD in power consumption, it still is a fail.
Large, expensive, still consuming more, and badly scaling.
Hope that with the new 16nm FinFet PP things will change radically, or we will witness a 2 year dominance again by nvidia with high prices.
superjim - Monday, July 13, 2015 - link
Used 290's are going for sub-$200 (new for $250). Crossfire those and you get better performance for much less.P39Airacobra - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
Ok compared to the Fury X, The Regular R9 Fury makes a bit more sense than the X model. It is priced better (But still priced a bit too much) And it has almost even performance with the X model. However the power consumption is still insane and unreasonable for todays standards! And the temps are way too high for a triple fan card! With a 70c temp running triple fans I doubt there is any room at all for overclocking! I do respect this card's performance! But it is just not worth it for the price you have to pay for a hefty PSU, And the very loud and expensive cooling setup you will have to put inside your case! To be honest: If I was stuck with a old GTX 660 Ti, And someone offered me a R9 Fury for even trade, I would not do it!ES_Revenge - Tuesday, July 14, 2015 - link
The power consumption is not insane or unreasonable for "today's standards". Only the GTX 960, 970, 980, Titan X are better. So it's unreasonable for Nvidia's new standard but it's actually an improvement over Hawaii, etc. of the past.Compared to current Nvidia offerings, it's bad yeah but we can't really established standards on their cards alone. R9 390/X, 380, etc. are still power hungry for their performance and they are still "today's" cards, like it or not.
Don't get me wrong I agree they really need to start focusing on power/heat reduction, but we're not going to see that from AMD until their next gen cards (if they make it that far, lol).
Gunbuster - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
AMD thread with no Chizow comments? My world is falling apart :POxford Guy - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
I'm sure this person has more than one alias.FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
We'd know him by his words, his many lengthy words with links and facts up the wazoo, and he is so proud he would not hide with another name, like a lousy, incorrect, uninformed, amd fanboy failure.FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Just think about placing your bare hand on 3 plugged in 100 Watt light bulbs ... that's AMD's housefire for you !My god you could cook a steak on the thing.
3X 100 watter light bulbs frying everything in your computer case... awesome job amd.
Oxford Guy - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Because the GTX 480 was quieter, had better performance per watt, and was a fully-enabled chip.FlushedBubblyJock - Thursday, July 16, 2015 - link
So the 480 being hot makes this heated furnace ok ?What exactly is the logic there ?
Are you a problematic fanboy for amd ?