Introduction

About a month ago, just two weeks after its flagship Radeon R9 Fury X launch, AMD launched its little sibling, the R9 Fury positioned as a big money-maker for the "Fiji" silicon. To say AMD is at the forefront of new technology is an understatement. The company rigorously pursues and in many cases introduces new technology into the PC consumer-graphics space. AMD's past two memorable technological breakthroughs in this space were Graphics CoreNext, a powerful new number-crunching machinery for the GPU, which made not just AMD but also a lot of crypto-currency enthusiasts a lot of money, and GDDR5 memory in their giant-killing Radeon HD 4870. The past year hasn't been kind to AMD in terms of GPU-market share, which is partly because the company didn't introduce anything major since 2013—all due to competition from NVIDIA with its "Maxwell" architecture and probably also because the company is focusing on high-volume ISV deals, such as new-generation game consoles, and the development of the chip that drives the card we're reviewing today, the Radeon R9 Fury.



Unlike the R9 Fury X, this SKU doesn't have a defined reference-design. AMD is allowing its board partners to go to town with it. To make it as affordable as possible, conventional air-based cooling solutions are used. At this time, there are only three board partners who offer this card, ASUS, whose card we reviewed on launch day, and Sapphire, whose we are reviewing today. There is also a card from PowerColor we may look at in the future.

The card we're reviewing today is the Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury Tri-X OC. It features the company's latest triple-fan, triple-slot cooling solution, comes overclocked out of the box, and has a dual-BIOS that lets you increase the board's power limit.

While AMD has announced an MSRP of $549, none of the cards currently available are retailing at that price. The current going rate for both cards is $570 instead.

Please note that there is a Sapphire R9 Fury Tri-X and a Fury Tri-X OC. The version without "OC" comes at reference design clocks of 1000 MHz and the OC version we are reviewing today is clocked at 1040 MHz on the GPU.