AMD Radeon R9 Fury X 4 GB

[newbsandwich]

Nice write up W1zzard, thank you for the candid review. I think if this card was priced at 500 or $550, it would do good, but it cost too much for the performance given the competition.
Which of the 980Ti variants would you recommend over the stock design? I read both your Gigabyte and EVGA reviews and they both seem similar.

 

[SonicZap]

This is disappointing. They learned from Hawaii's mistakes and solved the noise and throttling, but otherwise, this is much worse than Hawaii at the time. I guess it's going to receive a price drop to 599$ soon.

They better improve a lot next year with Arctic Islands or it'll be like Intel vs AMD in the GPU space.

 

[haswrong]

Great review as allways, shame on AMD for the price point and lacklustre results.
On another note over 600 people reading Wizz's review TPU rocks!

i started with http://www.hardwareluxx.de , because they have compute measurements and minimum framerate in game benchmarks, but they didnt have the witcher 3 test, so thats why i jumped here.. anyway.. im quite disappointed with the results.. 20W in idle and noisy pump could be offset by better than nvidia performance. apparently, amd decided to go the r9 290(x) route, with underwhelmed performance. so now we have to wait one or two years until amd decides to update the firmware or drivers and turn fury into a better fury, like they turned 290(x) into 390(x). what can i say? i wont upgrade my graphics for longer than i expected.. *sad exhausted face*

 

[W1zzard]

Which of the 980Ti variants would you recommend over the stock design? I read both your Gigabyte and EVGA reviews and they both seem similar.

I'm waiting for ASUS, which should arrive in the next weeks. MSI arrives Monday, was stuck in customs.

 

[Caring1]

What will Windows 10 change for, say, Battlefield 4?

It's not enough that you have Windows 10 / DX12, you need every test in our review replaced with ones that actually use DX12.

Happy waiting.

I'm a patient man, and in no rush to buy the latest and greatest, but I do like reading great reviews

 

[redko]

Still using R9 270, its bring me enough for the money. So, Fury of what? - This card has been overestimated from the cradle. Yes, its small, yes its cool, yes it performs not bad at all, but is not extraordinary. Unfortunately, 980ti wins.

 

[RCoon]

AMD cards have performed worse in Crysis 3 since it was released.
FuryX does better in Civilization beyond earth:

Civ BE is a CPU bound title. Other games in that entire review show AMD has worse frametimes overall:

 

[haswrong]

well had already decided on 980ti and was just waiting to see how fury does to get 100% sure. stuck between G1 and amp extreme . the extra 100$ for amp extreme is a bummer but the thought of more OC headroom over that already massive Factory OC is quite tempting !

dunno man.. id save the 100 for an extra heatspreader or watercooling block and take the g1. i think zotacs bios is more limited than gigabytes.. you should check that before a purchase. or if you intend to uplad custom bios, than check the robustness of the pcb. isnt msi going to make lightning version this time around? that could be a nice piece of hardware. unless evga classified beats it of course..

 

[GhostRyder]

Well we finally have the review we wanted of the Fury X. Honestly I am not disappointed in the card as it seems to be around what was expected (Matching GTX 980ti performance). Personally I see this card as a pretty good product, low noise (Pump noise in a case will be inaudible though coil whine does worry me), no throttling (Unless I missed that part), and good performance in the reviews phase. I won't be buying one, but its still a great card considering it comes with a water pump reference and matches the price/performance (Mostly 1440p+) of the GTX 980ti. Besides the disappointing overclocking which probably put the GTX 980ti a bit ahead (time will only tell on that) its a great card.

Bear in mind 2 things of course:
1: NVidia cards with boost 2.0 all differ and some boost at stock speeds well beyond the clocks (not saying this one was just pointing it out).
2: AMD cards always (At least in the last 2 generations) have gotten much better with time while NVidia get worse (Just look at reviews from the past till now, they eventually start beating out GTX 780ti).

I am not defending this as being the greatest thing since sliced bread, however I think we all blew our expectations to astronomical levels which is causing everyone to only look at this disappointingly instead of that its a great stock card alternative to the GTX 980ti. Each has their advantage so we have to just expect that, the only major disappointment was this was supposed to completely dethrone GTX Titan X in which it did not.

 

[Nihilus]

The hype is over. The only new card apart from rebrandeon to come out from AMD since October 2013 is, surprise, not the fastest single card on the planet. Otherwise it looks good but it doesn't have the right price.

If someone from NV would've come up to JHH with this expensive cooling solution for an average overclocking chip while affecting the almighty profit margins he would have fired him on the spot.

YES! Judging by the reviews from the other sites, this thing could have easily been cooled by a normal aircooler - it is NOT the 295x. They would have save $50 or so on the card.

 

[GreiverBlade]

well my 290 is still worth it ... ahah will wait a bit more before upgrade (as they still are valid counterpart to a 970 )

 

[Rowsol]

So disappointed.

 

[Luka KLLP]

Sure, it's a fine card, but I don't see any reason to buy this over a nice custom design GTX 980 Ti

 

[TheGuruStud]

Well we finally have the review we wanted of the Fury X. Honestly I am not disappointed in the card as it seems to be around what was expected (Matching GTX 980ti performance). Personally I see this card as a pretty good product, low noise (Pump noise in a case will be inaudible though coil whine does worry me), no throttling (Unless I missed that part), and good performance in the reviews phase. I won't be buying one, but its still a great card considering it comes with a water pump reference and matches the price/performance (Mostly 1440p+) of the GTX 980ti. Besides the disappointing overclocking which probably put the GTX 980ti a bit ahead (time will only tell on that) its a great card.

Bear in mind 2 things of course:
1: NVidia cards with boost 2.0 all differ and some boost at stock speeds well beyond the clocks (not saying this one was just pointing it out).
2: AMD cards always (At least in the last 2 generations) have gotten much better with time while NVidia get worse (Just look at reviews from the past till now, they eventually start beating out GTX 780ti).

I am not defending this as being the greatest thing since sliced bread, however I think we all blew our expectations to astronomical levels which is causing everyone to only look at this disappointingly instead of that its a great stock card alternative to the GTX 980ti. Each has their advantage so we have to just expect that, the only major disappointment was this was supposed to completely dethrone GTX Titan X in which it did not.

It's a disaster. There's no sugar coating it. These will be sitting on shelfs as paper weights when volume ramps. The driver must be written by a 5th grader and gameworks' cheat....optimization finishes it off.

This isn't even an upgrade over my 290x. It's dog shit.

 

[bpgt64]

Considering the immaturity of the drivers, I would like to see what other OEM's will do with Custom cooling. The cooling solution looks a little rushed.

 

[Vulpesveritas]

I.. Can't believe just how much of a fail this is. By specs and everything else, this thing should be so much better. My inner AMD Fanboy is screaming right now.

Well, I guess I'll just wait a few months and see if the Nano is really better than a 390X and get whichever of them as planned anyhow. I'm only gaming at 1080p so as much of a stab from the hype this is from AMD, yeah..

 

[mirakul]

Sure, it's a fine card, but I don't see any reason to buy this over a nice custom design GTX 980 Ti

A big reason is 'I hate Mr. Huang's face'
nVidia has more money>Buying dev>More Gameworks title>More won bench>More customer>More money, the vicious cycle continues. I doubt that 980Ti still has that lead when Gameworks titles are excluded from test bench http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-r9-fury-x,4196-5.html

 

[mroofie]

So yeah, GTX 980 Ti FTW.

Solid card regardless, I'm sure the peeps here that only go red will lap it up.

 

[haswrong]

I'll wait to see results using Win 10, then decide which is better, the 980Ti or the FuryX

is there any directx12 game out there?

 

[GreiverBlade]

It's a disaster. There's no sugar coating it. These will be sitting on shelfs as paper weights when volume ramps. The driver must be written by a 5th grader and gameworks' cheat....optimization finishes it off.

a disaster ... funny

AMD done fucked it up. So disappointed.

not really...

Sure, it's a fine card, but I don't see any reason to buy this over a nice custom design GTX 980 Ti

well i can see some, altho i would be tied between the 2 or ... just go for a 980 or a 390X if i need to replace my 290 ... who knows

as for me i am not really disappointed, remember all the rumor and funny post ... true or not
the card is good, no doubt and the Titan X is untouched (who care ... it cost 400$ MSRP more than a F-X or a 980Ti)
the brand new arch of nvidia is still kept in check by a set of 2yrs cards and 1 new sku, for me it's enough.

if it line up with the 980Ti in price and in performance (2% under??? a big gap indeed) then all is technically right no? if it was priced like a Titan X it would be different

I.. Can't believe just how much of a fail this is. By specs and everything else, this thing should be so much better. My inner AMD Fanboy is screaming right now.

Well, I guess I'll just wait a few months and see if the Nano is really better than a 390X and get whichever of them as planned anyhow. I'm only gaming at 1080p so as much of a stab from the hype this is from AMD, yeah..

a fail ... oh ... yes it's a fail ... and a big one indeed

 

[Vayra86]

GCN is actually showing more and more to be a jack of all trades and master of none.

I think that is the real culprit here. It is not efficient, and that limits the whole potential of GPU offerings with AMD. They are still just scaling up the die further and further like they did since the 7970, and Tonga was not enough to limit the inefficiency of this arch. With Tonga XL (Fiji) they are hitting limits, shader count brings no 1:1 performance increase anymore, which is also why overclocking yields virtually nothing.

This spells doom for any future AMD gpu unless they start fresh or totally revamp GCN. I even think a node shrink won't help them enough.

The difference in overclockability of Maxwell and Tonga/GCN is staggering. Maxwell is much more versatile, I think the comparison between a motorcycle and a fast car is the best one: Maxwell being the motorcycle that can accelerate faster than any car possibly could, even if they put a 4096 HP engine in that car.

 

[mab1376]

BF4 performance with MANTLE?

 

[Joss]

It's a disaster. There's no sugar coating it.

This.

 

[TRWOV]

I think that the increased shader count per CU isn't doing them any favors.... I'm having a VLIW5 vs VLIW4 dejavu.

AMD should have priced this about $50 lower but I guess that the cooling solution didn't leave them with much wiggle room. Hopefully air cooled versions will be cheaper.

 

[Luka KLLP]

or ... just go for a 980 or a 390X

That's what I'm gonna do