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

Would be nice to see mantle performance numbers in games that support it. No way I'd go back to DX11 for BF4.

There's still a ~40% increase over the previous generation. Not too shabby at all. And this is with beta/immature drivers.

A mild ($50) price drop would make it more competitive against the 980 ti.
 
Where are you getting 40% over the 290x? There was like one gaming bench that showed over 40%. Some were in the 30's, and some as low as 17% I believe.....

To boot, the 290x was competing with the 780Ti. The FuryX is not even as fast as the 980Ti........ A mild price drop will do nothing IMO. If I had to choose 980TI @ $670 or FuryX @ $600, Id go NV all day long especially because 980Ti overclocks like a beast.
 
Gameworks?

PC gamers receiving shit port jobs should be getting more attention.
Maybe both companies should stop paying devs to port games or enable advanced PC features.

Let's see where that get's us.
 
madgun said:
how do you explain GTA V bechmarks. With many sites reporting a 15 to 20% advantage for 980 Ti.

Just look at the [H] review more some insight.
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spot on, GTA V has been the most neutral AAA title so far this year and the game I was most looking forward to see benchmarked, sad to see such a wide performance gap versus the 980ti :(

just wish AMD would release a GDDR5 8gb version of the Fury on air at $500 or less, these benchmarks prove memory bandwith was not a bottleneck and I'm betting the performance would have been almost indistinguishable from HBM while gaming.
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Ummm no. If you are spending this kind of coin you are likely building your own rig. And if you are building your own rig, you are going to chose a good case with at least one 120mm fan port. In fact just about all 3rd party ATX case designs I know of have a 120mm out the back.
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The problem is going to be people with AIO already for their cpu may have difficulty fitting both in their case. You run into cable and tube length issues that being said this is a top end product one does expect you didn't shove 2k+ worth of hardware in a 50 dollar case or something. It also negates the whole short card thing as the card is still large you gotta mount the rad somewhere and play the hoses.
MisterHipster said:
Indeed. After the drivers mature things will be different. I believe that is the biggest point missing from this review. Other than that, a good review, and a disappointing initial showing from AMD.

I'm pretty sure this is going to be a non-issue overall though, because the Fury X is sold out all across NewEgg. Clearly, people want to buy it. Just wait for better drivers. A situation anyone buying cutting edge hardware should be familiar with.
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Diver optimization is such a misleading belief circulated by people now of days. Most of the time you're talking a few percent better for most games. Granted that will put it in more direct competition with the 980ti but the 980ti can still be had for cheaper and no waiting for drivers to "mature". More mature drivers don't deliver consistently 20% more performance; more often than not it delivers a few percent and that percent isn't on every setup/configuration. Meaning the avg user doesn't see much.
Brent_Justice said:
So your solution is to ignore and not use common, popular games gamers are playing right now on the PC? Just weed out and ignore and cherry pick games based on features they support?

That to me, spells bias
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It is, your game choice since you use a more limited set up should be based on popular games of the past few months/right now that video cards don't run easily on. After all not much of a point to test it in a game that every video card hits like 200fps on maxed out.

After all I'm not boycotting games just because they may run better or worse on an AMD/Nvidia card. I'm still playing those games I'd like to know how cards do in those games.

People seem to be looking at reviews as a place to protest/politize stuff when it should just be able about the product.
WorldExclusive said:
Gameworks?

PC gamers receiving shit port jobs should be getting more attention.
Maybe both companies should stop paying devs to port games or enable advanced PC features.

Let's see where that get's us.
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Yup Gameworks isn't gimping the new Batman Game it's the developer's half assed PC port. Which clearly was way more polished for ps4 and xbox.
 
Brent_Justice said:
To all the people claiming GameWorks is the problem.

Why are you buying video cards? Do you play PC games?

Are you goingn to ignore a game and simply not play it because it has GW features? Do you just not enjoy doing a lot of PC gaming?

I'm trying to understand what you want us to do, cause it sounds like you want us to cherry pick games based on features and ignore one brands features, thus creating a bias, and thus not evaluating new, common, popular games people are playing on the PC today.
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There is nothing wrong with testing gameworks games so long as it's not ONLY gameworks games. BF4 was not such a game and it still got beat by the 980ti so that told people useful info. Gameworks being harmful performance distorting bullshit and nvidia having a better performing card need not be mutually exclusive. As a person who favors amd I can still hold both ideas, I'm not prime/joker.
 
...and not even the original studio did the port. It was some 3rd (4th 5th?) party studio that got the contract to port it.

Back on topic...does it seem odd that AMD is actually discouraging people from upgrading to a Fury X if they run at less than 4k?
 
doz said:
Where are you getting 40% over the 290x? There was like one gaming bench that showed over 40%. Some were in the 30's, and some as low as 17% I believe.....

To boot, the 290x was competing with the 780Ti. The FuryX is not even as fast as the 980Ti........ A mild price drop will do nothing IMO. If I had to choose 980TI @ $670 or FuryX @ $600, Id go NV all day long especially because 980Ti overclocks like a beast.
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The apples to apples 4k page:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/24/amd_radeon_r9_fury_x_video_card_review/9#.VYspS0Zuxrg

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: The Fury X is 36% faster than the Radeon R9 290X.
GTAV: R9 Fury X is 45% faster than the R9 290X.
Dying Light: R9 Fury X is 27% faster than R9 290X.
Far Cry 4: The R9 Fury X is 38% faster than R9 290X.
BF4: R9 Fury X is 38% faster than the R9 290X.

Based on these titles, 36.4% faster on average. By ~40% I meant I was just approximating based on a cursory glance.
 
Semantics said:
Yup Gameworks isn't gimping the new Batman Game it's the developer's half assed PC port. Which clearly was way more polished for ps4 and xbox.
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Here's a mock dev scenario:

Dev says we need a PC version to maximize revenue. Calls up a Port Studio.
Devs says we need money to pay Port Studio, let's see if Nvidia or AMD will pay.

Nvidia gladly pays for a popular AAA title and gives the Port Studio the tools (Gameworks) to make porting easier.

Nvidia then advertise the game as a Gameworks title and promises an awesome gaming experience.

Port Studio isn't equipped enough to handle a AAA port and drops the ball.

Dev and Port Studio deliver a shit experience, even on Nvidia hardware with 30fps caps, missing advanced features etc.

Nvidia or AMD takes the blame. Dev counts money.

Rinse and repeat.
 
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With only 4GB but packing 4096 cores, this card only had one job, be faster if 4GB was enough.
 
xorbe said:
With only 4GB but packing 4096 cores, this card only had one job, be faster if 4GB was enough.
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You're still not considering that the ROP count is quite lower than the 980 Ti - 64 ROPs vs. 96 ROPs. That will hurt in AA / AF performance quite a bit at high resolutions.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Hmm. Will be interested to see if overclocking 980TI vs FuryX brings any changes in the competition.

Overall though, sad for gamers everywhere. Not sure why some laugh/take pleasure in this, we all lose when there aren't at least two very competitive players pushing one another.

The one positive I see is they really got the efficiency numbers up this time around. Up to what was it, 70% increase over the 290x, and less power? Fingers crossed they can figure out some way to eke more performance out of this.
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People take pleasure/laugh not so much at the performance of the card as at the failure of the rabid fanboys who almost militantly proclaim AMD's superiority, along with AMD's marketing lies and bullshit. While I've laughed at the fanboys and marketing myself, I personally think we needed an AMD card that delivered what they promised in order to drive performance and technologies. Unfortunately, as seems to be par for the course for AMD lately, what they promised compared to what was delivered when it actually became a product, it turned out to be nothing but hot air. Don't get me wrong, it's not a terrible card, but for the current price, and the performance that was promised and not delivered, it's an absolute fail.
 
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WorldExclusive said:
Here's a mock dev scenario:

Dev says we need a PC version to maximize revenue. Calls up a Port Studio.
Devs says we need money to pay Port Studio, let's see if Nvidia or AMD will pay.

Nvidia gladly pays for a popular AAA title and gives the Port Studio the tools (Gameworks) to make porting easier.

Nvidia then advertise the game as a Gameworks title and promises an awesome gaming experience.

Port Studio isn't equipped enough to handle a AAA port and drops the ball.

Dev and Port Studio deliver a shit experience, even on Nvidia hardware with 30fps caps, missing advanced features etc.

Nvidia or AMD takes the blame. Dev counts money.

Rinse and repeat.
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This could all be self resolved if more gamers had patience or self discipline and QUIT buying games day one and then getting on the forums to whine about how bad it is. Gamers enable bad games as a result because most of the debs and publishers care less so long as the gravy train keeps flowing. The only games I buy day one are the Forza games for Xbox because of their track record of being solid day one.
 
Impressive read Kyle. Appreciate the well written review. Has to be the most honest one I've read yet. I was hoping for something better because well , we all need amd to be competitive for the marketplace fairness. In all honesty Nvidia's 980ti in any aftermarket choice is the better deal. If they decide to drop the price of the 980TI by $50 or so ..it will completely bury AMD. Looking at the benchmark comparison of my G1 980ti I gave $650.00 for , it beats the Fury by 20fps or more in every major title except Battlefield hardline (only 8fps there) at 1080p and 4k. (plus it works with my 4k tv with hdmi 2.0 ! W00T)

Thanks again for the great review [H] ! Sealed my deal on buying another G1 980ti . :]
 
All I'm going to say is I love not having a bias.

Thanks [H] for another good review with relevant games.
 
bexamous said:
Dislike the very end of the review:

> In terms of gaming performance, the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X seems like better competition for the GeForce GTX 980 4GB video card, rather than the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. GTX 980 cards are selling for as low at $490 today. This is not a good thing since the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X is priced at $649, the same price as the GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

This seems like a bit of an exageration. There is a pretty big gap between 980 and 980Ti, the FuryX is much closer to the 980Ti than 980. Seems like an unwarrented dig, especially considering 980 was not part of review.
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techreport has probably the most detailed performance data and they show it to be more like a 980, as well.
 
SocratesScrotum said:
Brent and Kyle can continue to claim that the blackbox crippletastic garbage that is Gameworks makes no difference in the results of AMD cards if they so choose. The simple truth is that AMD cannot fully de-cripple the performance of AMD cards in Gameworks games--because they cannot see the code in them to do so--and THAT---3/5 of [H] tested games being GW and 4/5 being TWIMTBP---is the reason the [H] review skews so heavily in the 980Ti's favor versus many other sites which show the Fury X basically on par with the 980Ti/Titan.
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Feel like giving some examples of these mythical reviews you mention? The only benchmarks I've seen showing the Fury X in a good light have come from THG and AMD themselves... hardly what I'd call "reliable sources".
 
Cobalt35 said:
People take pleasure/laugh not so much at the performance of the card as at the failure of the rabid fanboys who almost militantly proclaim AMD's superiority, along with AMD's marketing lies and bullshit. ....
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Most of time I spend arguing over amd cards is not to tout their inherent superiority, it's just to push back against the far greater number of nvidia fans trying to make a case that amd cards are complete garbage.
 
Brent_Justice said:
To all the people claiming GameWorks is the problem.

Why are you buying video cards? Do you play PC games?

Are you goingn to ignore a game and simply not play it because it has GW features? Do you just not enjoy doing a lot of PC gaming?

I'm trying to understand what you want us to do, cause it sounds like you want us to cherry pick games based on features and ignore one brands features, thus creating a bias, and thus not evaluating new, common, popular games people are playing on the PC today.
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This. So much this. Thank you for providing the reviews you do.
 
bexamous said:
Dislike the very end of the review:

> In terms of gaming performance, the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X seems like better competition for the GeForce GTX 980 4GB video card, rather than the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. GTX 980 cards are selling for as low at $490 today. This is not a good thing since the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X is priced at $649, the same price as the GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

This seems like a bit of an exageration. There is a pretty big gap between 980 and 980Ti, the FuryX is much closer to the 980Ti than 980. Seems like an unwarrented dig, especially considering 980 was not part of review.
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Check the frame time results from TR, PCPer. Even though this card is close/matching 980 Ti at 4K the gameplay is not as smooth.

At lower resolutions the difference is in favor of 980 Ti way more often, usually 10-15% and in some cases more.

I dunno but I think that puts it closer to 980 like [H] say.
 
tybert7 said:
Most of time I spend arguing over amd cards is not to tout their inherent superiority, it's just to push back against the far greater number of nvidia fans trying to make a case that amd cards are complete garbage.
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The problem I have seen is that AMD and their fans boast about the killer performance of a CPU or card, and how it's going to destroy Intel or nVidia, long before the hardware is ever released. How long did people go on about the flop that was Bulldozer before it was released? AMD themselves hype things up to frenzy levels, all the while knowing they can't deliver on what they are saying.

I'm critical of Intel and nVidia when they do it too, it just seems to me that AMD do it constantly, constantly, constantly... and then wonder why they get such pushback when their hardware doesn't deliver what they boast it will deliver.
 
SocratesScrotum said:
Can't speak for others, but I personally will not give one cent to purchase or play TWIMTBP/Gameworks games and Nvidia + Intel products because I simply DO NOT condone intentionally gimping a competitor to make your products look better. I DO NOT condone or agree with intentionally gimping testing suites/benchmarks to adversely affect your competitor(s) ala Nvidia and Intel's unethical/monopolistic tricks past and present.

In any review that I personally read, Gameworks/TWIMTBP results are discarded because unless and until the codepaths/code are transparent for the world to demonstrate non-trickery by anyone, based on Nvidia and Intel's past and current unethical behavior in this regard, equal footing CANNOT be assumed.

If I personally do not agree with or condone the tactics that Nvidia and Intel choose to perpetrate, I choose not to economically support them in any fashion whatsoever.

Simple.
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Okay... I just don't get why you even care what these companies are doing to their competitors, unless you work for one of the affected companies. This is AMD's problem to deal with, not yours. Trust me, no AMD rep is gonna be white knighting for you. They just want your money, same as Nvidia.

On-topic, Nvidia is simply better at courting developers to use their technology, which they tune to run as fast as possible on their hardware. If that's because Nvidia has more money, oh well! It's not Nvidia's fault that AMD has been bleeding money. If it's because Nvidia offers more or better support, that's also up to AMD to fix.

I supported AMD from the 486DX2-80 right through a Phenom II x4 955 BE. I disapprove of their lack of competitiveness far more than the business practices of companies that aren't them.
 
Cobalt35 said:
The problem I have seen is that AMD and their fans boast about the killer performance of a CPU or card, and how it's going to destroy Intel or nVidia, long before the hardware is ever released. How long did people go on about the flop that was Bulldozer before it was released? AMD themselves hype things up to frenzy levels, all the while knowing they can't deliver on what they are saying.

I'm critical of Intel and nVidia when they do it too, it just seems to me that AMD do it constantly, constantly, constantly... and then wonder why they get such pushback when their hardware doesn't deliver what they boast it will deliver.
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I think AMD's marketing team is out of sync with it's engineering department.

If there are limitations producing a hardware with the necessary buffer and outputs, the marketing team should be more careful in it's assessment of the situation rather than extravagantly boast about the card bring the future of gaming.

According to the rabid fanboys, the Maxwell architecture was the thing of the past.

But once I put a video card in my PC, all I care is how fast it performs and how efficient it is. Maxwell does take the Fury to the cleaners in some of the titles. But Fury fails to do the same in any of the titles.
 
Daroller said:
Feel like giving some examples of these mythical reviews you mention? The only benchmarks I've seen showing the Fury X in a good light have come from THG and AMD themselves... hardly what I'd call "reliable sources".
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Guru3d actually shows it in a pretty good light.
 
amdgamer said:
This could all be self resolved if more gamers had patience or self discipline and QUIT buying games day one and then getting on the forums to whine about how bad it is. Gamers enable bad games as a result because most of the debs and publishers care less so long as the gravy train keeps flowing. The only games I buy day one are the Forza games for Xbox because of their track record of being solid day one.
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Exactly. This isn't a new problem. We've seen this over and over for at least 20 years. At some point, you'd think people would learn. It's not like PC games are scarce. The only games I bought at launch, in the last 20 years, are a few MMO expansions. And eventually I quit buying those at launch.
 
Cobalt35 said:
People take pleasure/laugh not so much at the performance of the card as at the failure of the rabid fanboys who almost militantly proclaim AMD's superiority, along with AMD's marketing lies and bullshit.

While I've laughed at the fanboys and marketing myself, I personally think we needed an AMD card that delivered what they promised in order to drive performance and technologies.
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45WW0wy.gif
 
DigitalGriffin said:
Look, even with uATX and miniITX chasis, if you are relying on your PS fan or a small 80mm to keep high end hardware cool, then you are an idiot.

Big Power = Big Heat. Get a damn case that can handle it.

Here are some choices with 120mm radiator support:
http://us.coolermaster.com/product/Lines/case-120mm.html
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Look, even with my uATX chassis that offers outstanding air flow and plenty of 120-140mm fan mounts, I still have zero desire to mount dedicated GPU radiator(s), especially since I plan to get an AIO for my CPU in the near future. Why should I have to throw out the money for a monster chassis capable of housing a 240-280mm CPU rad and two 120mm GPU rads when the performance offered by the video cards those GPU rads are attached to offer lacking performance and specs for the same price as the competition? And on top of all that, perhaps even spend more money on a larger PSU since the Fury X is more power hungry? Makes ZERO sense.

Do you realize that you are merely arguing semantics about choosing a chassis with superior cooling capability to defend an inferior performing product that doesn't even have a wide enthusiast market scope due to a mandatory AIO (which negates the need for having the amount of chassis airflow vs using air cooled GPUs) with the same price tag as the competition that kills it in every single metric except operating temps?
 
Brent_Justice said:
To all the people claiming GameWorks is the problem.

Why are you buying video cards? Do you play PC games?

Are you goingn to ignore a game and simply not play it because it has GW features? Do you just not enjoy doing a lot of PC gaming?

I'm trying to understand what you want us to do, cause it sounds like you want us to cherry pick games based on features and ignore one brands features, thus creating a bias, and thus not evaluating new, common, popular games people are playing on the PC today.
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GameWorks is a problem. It offers miminal visual gains for the MASSIVE performance hit. Granted, if a popular game has those features set, you have to test it. We need to know if the GPU is up to the task to run those features. Quiet frankly, most cards aren't able to do that.

Regardless, what reviewers should do is test the games with and without GameWorks. That way, we, the gamers get to see the performance hit on BOTH AMD and Nvidia. Doing things like this will help us decide how much of a hit the GPUs are taking because of those features. Would this be more work for the reviewers? yes. But, I'm sure a fine site like H is up to the task. :) This would actually be very helpful and informative.
 
i took the time to go past the " no hdmi 2.0" part and read the rest. the numbers are good/competitive.

I do not agree with the conclusion that Fury X suffers from low VRAM. I saw ZERO proof of that inside the article.

Fiji is not a fail, it is competitive in both price and performance with 980 Ti. it runs cooler and quieter. Comparing it will Bulldozer is totally unfair.

The big letdown is that neither card can beat SLI 970 at 4k:(

Now let us wait for the Dual Fiji card. the 450w 4870x2 was the VGA i gamed on the longest; purchased one on launch and kept it until the 6950 came out. Dual Fiji can repeat the sucess.
 
I bet that the next iteration of this technology, on a smaller node process and with 8GB or 16GB of HBM 2 memory would be awesome... if AMD can stay afloat until then that is...
 
Cobalt35 said:
The problem I have seen is that AMD and their fans boast about the killer performance of a CPU or card, and how it's going to destroy Intel or nVidia, long before the hardware is ever released. How long did people go on about the flop that was Bulldozer before it was released? AMD themselves hype things up to frenzy levels, all the while knowing they can't deliver on what they are saying.

I'm critical of Intel and nVidia when they do it too, it just seems to me that AMD do it constantly, constantly, constantly... and then wonder why they get such pushback when their hardware doesn't deliver what they boast it will deliver.
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People might have been a bit too hopeful about amd cpus pre bulldozer launch, but come on. Ever since then people have been piling on to each and every iteration about how godawful those chips are. Oh wait, the 8350 was a bit less awful for ipc. NO ONE has been saying amd has competitive cpus in ipc for YEARS now. They might have said it does not and will not matter as much in future games, and they may be right if dx12 takes off quickly as the cpu is less of a bottleneck and you can make more effective use than 1 per effing core a or few more if using optimized drivers in dx11 or competent game engine devs like EA with frostbite performance. But that's a different issue.
 
Brent_Justice said:
We don't do tests, we play games and relate that gaming experience between video cards to you. It takes time to play games. We go for quality over quantity. We do all we possibly can. If you want to find out how games perform, this is the place for you, if not, we won't include useless testing.
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Please keep doing what you're doing. There's a reason a lot of us come here; no bullshit, no time demos, no marketing.
 
wolfman3k5 said:
I bet that the next iteration of this technology, on a smaller node process and with 8GB or 16GB of HBM 2 memory would be awesome... if AMD can stay afloat until then that is...
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Don't worry you'll see it on nVidia's Pascal.
 
geok1ng said:
i took the time to go past the " no hdmi 2.0" part and read the rest. the numbers are good/competitive.

I do not agree with the conclusion that Fury X suffers from low VRAM. I saw ZERO proof of that inside the article.

Fiji is not a fail, it is competitive in both price and performance with 980 Ti. it runs cooler and quieter. Comparing it will Bulldozer is totally unfair.

The big letdown is that neither card can beat SLI 970 at 4k:(

Now let us wait for the Dual Fiji card. the 450w 4870x2 was the VGA i gamed on the longest; purchased one on launch and kept it until the 6950 came out. Dual Fiji can repeat the sucess.
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For the VRAM check out the Dying Light 1440p section. Brent wrote a book about it.
 
The pettiness in the write-up made this review seem shallow and even a tad biased. Just saying......
 
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