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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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.