AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Video Card Review @ [H]

Quartz-1 said:
So, Fury = Fail, eh? Okay, that's a bit harsh; the card just about matches the competition.

I hope that when you come to testing overclocking (I expect you didn't have time), you will also test it against a 980 Ti or TX with a fluid cooler like EVGA's.
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Historically in the quickly changing world of the computer/technology industry in order to have a "win" against your competition your product must tick at least one of the following boxes:
  • Earlier
  • Faster
  • Cheaper
Which of those boxes does the Fury X tick?
 
I'm pleased that the 4GB HBM gamble looks to have paid off. But honestly, reading various reviews (not just this one) I consider the Fury X a failure. If it was the same price as the 980Ti and had a regular air cooler that performed adequately, it'd be OK, but to be the same price, have the nuisance of needing a water system and still be slower, only people who are buying one for the sake of buying one, or who need AMD-specific features should really be buying this. If this is the full-fat Fury X, no way is the regular air-cooled fury going to match the 980Ti. Very disappointing.

If, however, they cut the prices, I'm listening :)
 
I gave [H] some flak last year for giving out silver and gold awards to some decent but unimpressive hardware. It's really nice to see you dropping the hammer on a product that doesn't live up to it's billing.

Too bad, about the Fury X, I really liked the idea of a factory water cooled card. Not terribly surprising though, same old 28nm process, we didn't hear any boasting about architecture improvements, just HBM...and AMD has been using much wider memory buses than NV for generations, so yawn. It's been beaten to death, but 4GB VRAM on a card 'designed for 4k', someone simply doesn't know what they're doing.
 
An honest, if sobering, review. As usual [H] pulls no punches.

Lisa Su and Co. have a lot of soul searching ahead of them in terms of next moves.
 
mgulbran said:
If you see it as a $450 card it delivers +$100 AIO cooler = $550. Not too shabby when the EVGA Hybrids are +$100.

Not 'cheap' by any means (I do see your point though). It is all a matter of when the cards drop. If this dropped next to the 980 instead of 980ti it would be been a hit.

This is all nothing new - we've seen this back and forth and close misses for over 15 years now.
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After perusing benchmarks, I see an air-cooled Fury X as a $500 card and not a single red cent more.
Based on AMD's history I could almost see it down to $450.

You're almost better off with a GTX 980 @ max OC.
 
It's crazy reading other reviews eg TPU has Civ V, Dead Rising 3 on it and shows Fury X trouncing 980Ti in those as two examples be it stock benchies but it's curious. And other ones had games like Bioshock and Metro doing well yada yada.

Someone give H Moar monies so we can get more games included. I play none of the ones used, where's the Skyrim & Civ V benchies :D

I'm not sure if it's as DOA as made out to be, the 980Ti compared to it is pumping out some room heating air, where's all the guys claiming to live in Florida now and needing the coldest possible card.
 
x3sphere said:
Complete flop, and I was genuinely hoping this was competitive. The way AMD slowly fed us info to build up hype makes this even more disappointing.
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To be fair, AMD didn't have to say much - the internet rumor mill does a fine job of making up bullshit hype all by itself. If you invest no time in that crap you'll set yourself up for a lot less disappointment.

All I really knew going into this launch was new HBM architecture tied with a beefed-up tonga a decent bit past the 290x - and that's about the performance it delivered, so I don't consider it a flop - just not the screamer some people were hoping for. Anyone expecting a miracle out of AMD this late into 28nm have their head in the clouds.
 
If you look out your window today and see bodies falling out of the sky, don't worry....just another fanboy getting his wings. :D

Glad to see another unbiased review; one of the best things about [H]. No BS. Meanwhile people who prayed to the red god are shitting themselves today because the product does not deliver the hype as promised.

I wanted AMD to hit a home run....in the end, they got a SAC fly. :rolleyes:
nVidia gets to stay where they are not really doing much "new"...I wish AMD would sell the GPU division to Samsung and let them actually do something with it instead of AMD just cross-infecting it with the same issues their CPU division has.
 
Imhotep said:
So, this is even more of an indication that the card's performance is slow because of immature drivers.
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And that's the same excuse they have been using since 2900XT. Fact is, roy@amd started the whole "coming soon" thing after the 970 launched, late October. Everyone thought somehting was coming in January/Feb. Then came the little leaks here and there. 8 months later and only one type of Fury? (yes I know Fury Pro in July, and if AMD still exists, Nano in the fall, but who is going to care?)

So in fact AMD should have been working on drivers for the last year almost since this card had to have taped out 6-9 months ago. So the whole "immature" drivers thing is debunked. Why is it people with AMD cards had to wait last year when a game launched two weeks after to get a driver for a game? That was for the R9 200 series. How long for drivers for Fury now??
Since the launch of the Maxwell chips, have we really seen HUGE or even some what big performance gains on the new architecture? Nope. Just stability drivers from Nvidia. AMD hyped Fury X to death, almost literally. I am highly disappointed as all they did today was drop a fart in the wind. :mad:
 
Wow, underwhelmed for the price... I agree with this should have been priced lower, I guess being a WC'd card, they can't really go much lower, If the aircooled version is $100 cheaper and performs the same, then I'd be interested.

though the power usage and temps are awesome! I didn't expect it to use the same / less than a 290x.
 
mgulbran said:
If you see it as a $450 card it delivers +$100 AIO cooler = $550. Not too shabby when the EVGA Hybrids are +$100.

Not 'cheap' by any means (I do see your point though). It is all a matter of when the cards drop. If this dropped next to the 980 instead of 980ti it would be been a hit.

This is all nothing new - we've seen this back and forth and close misses for over 15 years now.
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It is shabby though, the only reason the card has a $100 cooler is because it can't function without one. A cooler is really a means to an end, getting an expensive one for free isn't much of a gift if it's a necessity to run the card in the first place ;)
 
shad0w4life said:
It's crazy reading other reviews eg TPU has Civ V, Dead Rising 3 on it and shows Fury X trouncing 980Ti in those as two examples be it stock benchies but it's curious. And other ones had games like Bioshock and Metro doing well yada yada.

Someone give H Moar monies so we can get more games included. I play none of the ones used, where's the Skyrim & Civ V benchies :D

I'm not sure if it's as DOA as made out to be, the 980Ti compared to it is pumping out some room heating air, where's all the guys claiming to live in Florida now and needing the coldest possible card.
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You can play those games at 4K Max. Fury X/980Ti are absolutely 4K capable, it just depends on what games you play. So yeah, I don't agree that these cards are not 4K capable at all. I'm pretty sure they will blow through Fallout4, etc. easily at 4K as Bethesda games are not graphical intensive.
 
Underwhelmed by AMD as always. Now 4th year in a row.
Can't even begin to explain how fast I am losing faith in this company.

Should have priced it at 550 bucks and called it a day.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Our gaming suite has been recently all replaced, now with new games. These are new games, popular games, games people are playing now. My only regret was not having enough time to also include Batman or Project Cars.
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Sounds like the 980 Ti wrecks Fury X at 4k in Project Cars.

I cannot believe that AMD guy got up on stage at E3 and said that Fury was an overclocking monster with a straight face.
 
Kyle, are you going to swap your 980s out or ride them to Pascal?

samuelmorris said:
It is shabby though, the only reason the card has a $100 cooler is because it can't function without one. A cooler is really a means to an end, getting an expensive one for free isn't much of a gift if it's a necessity to run the card in the first place ;)
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Yeah... this card is going to throttle hard on an OEM air cooler even if AMD's new blower is equal to nVidia's. I bet the air version was delayed so OEMs could get aftermarket air coolers ready to avoid what happened with the 290X at launch. It's likely going to remove the card's size advantage too considering the amount of heat that needs to be dissipated.
 
MrMike said:
Kyle, are you going to swap your 980s out or ride them to Pascal?
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I have two Titan X cards sitting here ready to go in. Just been playing through more games to see the true gaming differences before the switch.
 
With a big 3-fan cooler like Gigabyte, Asus etc. use, I'm sure the Fury X can be tamed - the power consumption's not that much higher than the GTX980Ti - it's less than the HD7990 for example, but still, the card itself's going to have to come down in price before they're worth it, and how long is it going to be before partner companies completely redo the PCB so it's long enough to fit such a cooler? Several months I'd have thought.
AMD seemed to be pitching here that for once they wouldn't be selling the 'slightly slower cards at slightly lower prices' but the first half of that has come true. Unless the second half does, I'd be surprised if they sell anything.
People also need to realise that just because the waterblock makes the GPU run cool, doesn't mean any less of that 300-odd watts is going to end up in your room. If anything it's more, as there'll be more heat in your room and less in your case. Also, crossfire's not going to be too easy with all these water pipes going here, there and everywhere. A Fury X CF setup is going to look laughable compared to the drop-in-and-go of a pair of GTX980Tis, that might well still be faster, even with SLI's lower scaling.
 
The review says 4GB isn't enough and is a bottleneck.. But there isn't anything that shows VRAM is what is keeping performance down?
 
TechLarry said:
I feel more better about my $232 R9 290x purchase every day :) It's about 36% faster than my old 7970. Decent upgrade to bridge me until they get their shit together.
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You honestly can't lose by buying last-gen's top card for cheap. Unless you're one of those people who upgrade constantly just to say they have the newest thing.
 
...wasn't Fury X presented as a overclockers card !?!?!

What's up with its pathetic overclockability !?!?!?!

:mad:
 
Hm, i did not expect this. I thought that Fury will be a bit faster than Ti in most benchmarks, but not by much. Oh well, i'm glad i made a right decision for once and did not wait for this. Great review again guys.
 
I'm looking very seriously at upgrading my 970 to a 980Ti now. Trouble is, I'm rather hoping AMD have fixed their issues with MST (wishful thinking perhaps), because I know that nvidia haven't.
 
On the Battlefield 4 page
Note that all three cards are being played in D3D 11 mode.
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I'm curious why no Mantle? Not that I expect the results to change.

Great review of an underwhelming card.
 
Something seems 'off' in this review. I read 5 other reviews out there, and the Fury X typically met or exceeded the 980ti.
 
Ronin said:
...wasn't Fury X presented as a overclockers card !?!?!

What's up with its pathetic overclockability !?!?!?!

:mad:
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AMD cards have always OC'd poorly.
Looking at the 980 Ti's gains from OC I would be blown away if the Fury X matched that out of the box. Sad state of affairs, we expect so little from AMD and they still manage to disappoint.
 
Well damn.. I was hoping AMD would actually show up finally. Looks like they are quickly becoming irrelevant in gpus just like they have been with cpus for 9 years...

I guess the good news is if VR starts pushing/requiring highness GPUs somebody will come out with something to compete with nvidia. Just looking less and less likely that will be amd.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
Where do you see any overclocking results :|?
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^ what Digital Viper said. Why is this being called a complete review if there no OC section, wtf? But hey, I was kinda expecting this underhanded BS from the same guys who give other more favored products like WatchDogs many weeks to "mature" before offering a final write-up *eyeroll*
 
valkrien said:
Something seems 'off' in this review. I read 5 other reviews out there, and the Fury X typically met or exceeded the 980ti.
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Please be specific as to how our real world gaming results are off?
 
MrMike said:
TPU and Guru3D have some.
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Thank you for these, MrMike. I like how other reviews are putting this into perspective, explaining that some functionality is simply not there yet due to driver issues (such as the HBM not being able to be overclocked yet). Will stay tuned for follow-ups
 
Xinmosni said:
^ what Digital Viper said. Why is this being called a complete review if there no OC section, wtf?
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We got our card Saturday morning and felt as though our time was best spent evaluating stock performance of the Fury X.

We discussed adding a small overclocking section, but given the voltage lock on the card, and other information we had on poor overclocking potential at this time we decided not to use our resources on this but rather look more into the 4K performance.

As we have done for years and years now with multiple GPU launches, you will likely see follow-up articles.

As for it being called a "complete review," I am fairly sure that you heard none of that verbiage from HardOCP or its editors. So, stop making shit up?
 
valkrien said:
Something seems 'off' in this review. I read 5 other reviews out there, and the Fury X typically met or exceeded the 980ti.
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AMD has massive driver overhead compared to NVIDIA and [H] is using OC'd 3770K instead of something super expensive like OC'd Haswell-E.

This might explain the poor results in [H] benchmarks. If you are selecting a GPU and have weaker CPU like old Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge then [H] benchmark offers more accurate picture of the performance you would receive from new GPU.
 
Ronin said:
...wasn't Fury X presented as a overclockers card !?!?!

What's up with its pathetic overclockability !?!?!?!

:mad:
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Dude, they don't have a full set of utilities out for it, maybe a voltage tweak changes everything we've seen so far and they are taking it slow to make sure HBM doesn't go boom when OC'ing etc.
So far it has sucked but I'm waiting on some voltage mods since the thing just trounces the heat and noise number test.
 
Rauelius said:
AMD had two options with Fiji. Price it at half($500) the price of the Titan-X, but provide just a little less performance, and make it look like the obvious choice if you were picking between the two (much like the $300 Radeon 4870 vs $650 GTX280). Or try to go head to head with nVidia's number two product in price and offer almost the same performance with some caveats, but come out looking like the loser because at the same price the nVidia card is the better option, a repeat of the Radeon 2900XT vs Geforce 8800GTS.

It's depressing to know that AMD had the chance to increase marketshare and mindshare with a card that at $500 would look like an obvious choice, but at $650 become as irrelevant as it's failed ancestor. AMD had a chance, but instead it seems like they didn't learn anything from the FX-8150 or Radeon 2900XT.
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Or even more recently, the 7970 which was more expensive and slower than the newer 680 (upon release) AMD responded almost right away with a price drop which kept them from losing market share, then responded again with drivers that matched the performance of the 680 and responded again with the GHZ edition which surpassed the performance of the 680.


To make matters worse, back then they were caught off guard. They didn't know where the 680 would be priced at nor did they know it's performance until after NDA was lifted. This time, they had all the cards. They knew exactly where their competition was at in terms of both price and performance yet they still decided to price themselves out of competition.


Jen-Hsun is sitting back in his recliner laughing his ass off right now texting someone at TSMC saying "oh yeah, that 16nm thing... no rush"
 
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