The AMD Fury X Graphics Card – Elegance and Style
Much of the hype and excitement about the launch of the AMD Fury X was lifted last week. At the E3 conference, the company officially showed the card for the first time and, before that, several leaks had conspired to really give us a nearly completely picture of the flagship AMD graphics card before today's review. Still, the design that AMD and its engineering team have implemented is excellent. Though everyone's opinion and style differs, I think you'd be crazy not to think that the Fury X is an improvement over anything AMD has done in the past.
Two things stand out immediately if this is your first time looking at the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X graphics card. First, it's small. Second, it has a water cooler.
AMD has gone with a self contained water cooler for the design on the Fury X, a decision made likely due to power consumption and thermal constraints, but one that pays dividends in other areas. The radiator is a 120mm mount, but it is thicker than the standard "single" cooler you see used on CPUs. The fan is incredibly quiet in my testing and is actually inset some on the radiator design, making the fan and rad combination appear as a single unit.
The tubing from the card to the rad is sleeved and actually pretty long, allowing for more options when it comes time to install the card in your system. Because you will require a spot to mount the 120mm radiator and fan, you should be able to reach the top of your case, the standard back exhaust location and probably even the front intake as well. For users that already have (or plan to use) a self-contained cooler for the CPU in their rig, you will have to find a second location for the Fury X cooler. It's definitely an extra step for installation, but users that are buying a $650 graphics card will likely be more than willing to go the extra step for the card they fall in love with.
The second thing I mentioned above was size: the card and its PCB itself are quite small. Measuring about 6.5-inches long, the Fury X is four full inches shorter than the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. Of course, you have to include the radiator as part of the design, so that's not completely accurate but it helps when comparing the technical capability of design.
From a build quality stand point, the R9 Fury X is, again, a huge step beyond anything AMD has done before. Built out of several pieces of aluminum and then being coated in a soft-touch plastic in many areas, the card looks both elegant and high tech. It doesn't have the sharp lines and angles that would insinuate aggression, a trope that many enthusiast companies adhere to, and I can really appreciate it. It's clean, understated, and above all else, unique. You aren't going to mistake this card for a Radeon R9 290, that's for sure.
The Radeon logo up top illuminates in a bright red and will stand out immediately in any case with a side window. A pair of 8-pin power connectors is visible up top.
Right above the "E" in Radeon there is an opening that has a single dipswitch used to change between the default VBIOS and a write-protected BIOS in case you… well, screw it all up. There are no other changes other than that though so don't expect any kind of "uber" mode or high voltage settings when moving that switch around.
Display connectivity requires some attention. The Fury X includes three full-size DisplayPort 1.2a connections and a single HDMI 1.4a port. That's right, not HDMI 2.0. That's a big let down in my eyes as being able to support HDMI 2.0 and the 4K / 60 Hz resolutions that many TVs are shipping with today means the Fury X is not going to be ideal for a home theater PC for gamers. Sure, you can still run HDMI 1.4a and get 30 Hz on 4K resolution panels (no thanks) or run with 1080p / 60 Hz, and that might be enough for many users' current TV setup. As Fury X sells through 2015 though it might become a stronger knock against the Fiji GPU.
Also worth noting: there are no DVI ports on this card! Be prepared to use those HDMI to DVI adaptors for 1080p monitors or getting a DisplayPort to dual-link DVI adapter for those of you with 2560×1600 / 2560×1440 legacy monitors.
The back of the Fury X is covered by a back plate with a lining of soft-touch plastic. It would have been nice to see some kind of design on this section for windowed PCs but I am sure most gamers are just glad to see AMD included the plate at all.
Let's look again at the pair of 8-pin power connectors on the Fury X. Even though the card has a TDP of just 275 watts, the power connections can support 375 watts without breaking specification so users, in theory at least, have a lot of headroom for overclocking and power draw. Overclocking wasn't very successful in my tests though, so I am not sure how that advantage will pan out.
Under the power connections are a set of LED lights that are used to indicate the GPU load, dubbed GPU Tach by AMD. The more load the GPU is under, the more lights will illuminate. In my testing though, only during level loading did they start to drop below full usage. The lights can actually be either red, blue or red and blue, depending on your selection on the two smaller dipswitches on the right hand side. One singular light will illuminate green when the card enters ZeroPower mode – idle at Windows.
The top cover of the Fury X can be removed to reveal the cooling inside, powered by Cooler Master. This water cooler is not just cooling the GPU ASIC itself – both the memory, which is co-resident with the GPU on the interposer setup, and the VRM hardware is being cooled by water as well. This is why AMD can get away with not having any air heatsink at all on the card itself, unlike the Radeon R9 295X2 from last generation that needed both the water cooler and an on-board fan.
I know opinions will differ on the overall design of the Fury X, but I came away from this story really liking the industrial design, the build quality, and even the little touches like the GPU Tach and soft touch plastic insets. But enough about how it looks, how does it perform?
Dear Ryan
I can’t find a
Dear Ryan
I can’t find a driver version.
15.15-180612a-18565BE or
15.15-150611a-185358E
The PostRant about 4 posts
The PostRant about 4 posts back up with the link to some forbs site. Made me almost piss my self.HahahahaLOL.
I know right. As an AMD fan,
I know right. As an AMD fan, I am embarrassed.
is it me or the best
is it me or the best frametimes come from crossfire?
I think the actual Fiji is
I think the actual Fiji is just a preview on what is coming next year. 16 or 14 nm production and the new HBM memory in a wider variety of the cards. With the new production it should be even more efficient.
What about anti-aliasing,
What about anti-aliasing, with such an enormous memory bandwith, some over the top AA modes should come almost free ? 3Dmark Firestrike with some custom AA would test this fine ?
A person asked why are we
A person asked why are we dissapointed, let me summarize:
1. It is 9 months behind Maxwell
2. It is water cooled and has HBM
Even with that lead time, and hardware wise improvements, it is I would say, 1-2% behind the 980 Ti stock. And Fury
has absolutely no overclocking headroom. The 980 Ti can
overclock like a champ. Often getting 5-10% on air, which then makes it 5-10% faster then Fury at the same price point.
Amd can’t sell this for under $650 – not now. Because it has supply issues – and there is enough people willing to pay $650 for the scarce supply there is. I expect a price drop once supply stabilizes and they see that the market share they lost to Maxwell is not coming back. Not with this product.
Also, HBM is a new tech, and the water cooling looks is top notch, and the card has 8.9 billion transistors… I am pretty sure this card is expensive to make [maybe 10-20% more expensive than the 980 Ti]. And Amd needs more cash than Nvidia, so they really cannot price it too low, not now
I’d go for a 980 Gtx, they are hitting $450-500 now, and they can overclock 15% and its cool and quiet. Same performance as Fury.
Or better yet, we have been on 28 nm for 3 generations of cards, and HBM 2.0 is along the way and Nvidia is adopting it. Let’s wait for pascal 14/16 nm and HBM 2.0 on Nvidia’s superior architecture.
Sounds like I suck green goblin dick. And I really wish Amd delivered. But all that hype they always build before product launch and then flop [even tho they did reach some parity]. Hopefully driver optimizations will make it 3-7% faster which then puts it right on parity with an overclocked TI.
I agree with you for the most
I agree with you for the most part. AMD had an opportunity here to do one of three things to get a “win”. Performance 5-10% higher than 980ti, bundle a couple good upcoming games, or sell the card at $550. almost any one of those would have persuaded a bunch of people and two out of three would have won the show.
Instead and sadly, there was a large group of people on the fence and considering adopting red, but the fact that 980ti slightly outperforms Fury X TODAY for the same price, they have upgraded to the 980ti.
Sure some drivers and what not will definitely help the Fury X and probably have it surpass the 980ti but at some point you need to operate a company in the present and not a projected future.
With that said, ill enjoy my R9 290 a little while longer as it still does great on my 1080p monitor.
Almost another 2900XTX,AMD
Almost another 2900XTX,AMD needs a small die which can compete with 980 but only $299.
wow i dont think ive seen so
wow i dont think ive seen so many comments n arguments on a post like this b4 lol
Ehh the gsync freesync
Ehh the gsync freesync comments section is far worse.
oh really, i dont get the
oh really, i dont get the tribe mentality etc, it just get the best product for my budget
oh really, i dont get the
oh really, i dont get the tribe mentality etc, it just get the best product for my budget
I don’t want to nitpick too
I don’t want to nitpick too much here as an AMD fan. I get that 980ti has the win, but I think people need more knowledge on tweaking for AMD cards. For instance you used 4x MSAA in GTA-V which was well known to be a huge performance hit for AMD cards.
AMD fans need to take all reviews of video cards with a grain of salt because of the proprietary gameworks offerings. I’ll admit gameworks makes games look better but for whatever reason AMD doesn’t seem to address them until a week or so after a game comes out…or not at all. Things like MSAA aren’t super pretty anyways so they are usually replaced with another form of AA.
I picked settings for these
I picked settings for these games independent of any particular GPU, which is what you SHOULD when comparing apples to apples.
There is no Gameworks technology enabled in any of the games we used…?
Why do none of the reviewers
Why do none of the reviewers use MSI Afterburner? The Catalyst overclocking solution is terrible and always has been. Once you can unlock voltage, this card will hit 1250 core easily if not more. A true enthusiast would find a way to make this card pump out as many frames as possible. All these reviews seem biased so far, and quite frankly for all the talk nVidia fanboys spouted about heat and noise for AMD cards, this card is far cooler and far quieter than a 980 Ti.
Oh, you know the Fury X would
Oh, you know the Fury X would hit 1250 MHz, huh? Nice.
"Once I can unlock the voltage…" Totally agree. We actually need that to happen first before we can test it.
Spoken like a true AMD
Spoken like a true AMD fanboy, suuuure we believe you. Your words are so true and factual. lol
Ryan, quick question, do you
Ryan, quick question, do you think that this would mean that the ideal gaming experience would be 2x 980Ti in SLI?
I’m thinking that because when you did your 980 3 and 4 way SLI review, the frame timings were pretty bad for 3 and 4 way scaling – even if you discounted the idea that the third and fourth GPU did not offer much improvement in the way of frame rates.
For the Fury X, the weaknesses that I see are that:
– AMD’s Crossfire does scale better but, the problem is, it has only 4GB of VRAM
– Although the card does do better relative to the 980Ti at 4k, that’s where the extra VRAM is most needed
– Price is too high at $650 USD; $550 USD would be fair
– The 290X did not have as much OC headroom as the 980Ti, even with voltage you’d still be in the 1250-1300 MHz zone tops on the core and the 980Ti can do over 1500 MHz
In terms of design:
– It isn’t as power efficient due to the FP64
– They should have shipped this with 96 not 64 ROPs
– A second variant with 8GB would be needed
I think that if AMD addressed these 3 concerns, they’d have a strong card.
Thanks for the review.
Good comment here, solid
Good comment here, solid information and views.
As for the "best" gaming solution today, yeah, I would probably pick GTX 980 Ti SLI.
Another consideration is that
Another consideration is that there are already confirmations that 3 cards are coming out:
– MSI 980Ti Lightning (released on their Facebook page)
– EVGA 980Ti Classified
– Galax 980Ti HOF (already on sale on their website)
Considering how well cards like the Lightning have historically done, it might open up the possibility of even more OC headroom and overtake the Titan X.
Sadly AMD has confirmed no custom PCBs this round.
This sounds huge, a small
This sounds huge, a small difference in driver version and Fury is competetive against 980 Ti. Should this be confirmed http://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/3b2ep8/fury_x_possibly_reviewed_with_incorrect_drivers/
This is just FUD as far as I
This is just FUD as far as I can tell. If there was a driver that would improve the Fury X performance by any amount today, AMD would be beating down our doors to get it tested again.
Hi Ryan, You might find the
Hi Ryan, You might find the below interesting?
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ixbt.com%2Fvideo3%2Ffiji-part3.shtml
on that Fiji soundly beats the Ti/X, they speak about ta driver dated 18th.
Quote”
The accelerator AMD Radeon R9 Fury X 4096 MB 4096-bit HBM PCI-E – the most productive solution for today uniprocessor a top class game. Yes, just three weeks ago, we were talking about the same thing to the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti, but now it is clear that the former king from NVIDIA lost his throne. It is equally important that the release of Fury, AMD has begun a new architecture using HBM-memory, which (architecture) will be applied not only in the GPU, but in the APU, making the built-in graphics are more powerful by increasing memory bandwidth and lack of need for using common memory. Yes, while locally installed only 4 gigabytes of memory, but the trouble started dashing. Already known plans to release a second generation – heirs of Fiji with increased memory. In the meantime, we see that the “first ball” came out very successful.”
http://www.ixbt.com/video3/fiji-part3.shtml
AMD Matt already debunked
AMD Matt already debunked that claim of an updated driver saying it doesn’t match their nomenclature. Which makes you wonder if that site’s results are valid at all. Probably some guy trolling AMD fanboys for site hits as its clearly an outlier that has results that fall way outside the norm.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?p=28230087#post28230087
I am personally just waiting for Xbitlabs results in favor of Fury X and the Russian website revival will be complete.
AMD Matt already debunked
AMD Matt already debunked that claim of an updated driver saying it doesn’t match their nomenclature. Which makes you wonder if that site’s results are valid at all. Probably some guy trolling AMD fanboys for site hits as its clearly an outlier that has results that fall way outside the norm.
AMDMatt:
“Yep, no.
For reference on what driver strings mean by the way:
15.15-150611a-185358E (This is the real driver we provided)
15.15 – is the branch
150611 – is the date of the build, YY/MM/DD
185358 – is the build request from our system to create this driver based off the information above
In this case the review is suggesting a driver dated from June 12th 2018 and the build request that has a letter instead of a number for its last digit so it’s either a lot of typos or someone being misleading on purpose. ”
I am personally just waiting for Xbitlabs results in favor of Fury X and the Russian website revival will be complete.
@Ryan lol exactly, if there
@Ryan lol exactly, if there was any validity to this claim AMD would have been screaming to stop the presses for these launch reviews.
Personally I am surprised they didn’t insist you guys turn off AF for all reviews as they did for their internal benchmarks. Because that wasn’t a huge red flag or anything! 😀
Grasping at any staws these
Grasping at any staws these fanboys, just wow…..poor plebs
I wish to see the same test
I wish to see the same test with Windows 10. Because the new WDDM 2.0 driver model, here things got really better with my 7970, not placebo effect.
You know how nVidia knew
You know how nVidia knew exactly how to position the 980ti? Because they have made a 4GB HBM card in house and tested the thing and knew the 980ti would best it by this amount. And they also could see the 4k writing on the wall.
I just hope this doesn’t mark the beginning of the end for AMD (of course if they do end up folding/ restructuring again/selling, the beginning of the end will said to have begun over a year ago).
Thanks to the Ryan for another great review. I basically don’t by hardware until it’s reviewed here and at HardOCP.
Yup bought myself a 980 Ti
Yup bought myself a 980 Ti for my 1440p gsync monitor and couldn’t be happier. Well worth every penny saved for it =D
Why would anyone listen to
Why would anyone listen to RooseBolton?! You back stabbing murderer! lol
But seriously, there is no way in hell NV did that. 🙂
Red Wedding baby! lol. The
Red Wedding baby! lol. The north remembers! oh, uh I guess that’s not good for me that the north remembers. Doh!
Ignorance is bliss. nvidia is
Ignorance is bliss. nvidia is a long way for getting HBM even running in any prototype form.
And nvidia simulation show a benefit going HBM, and thats why their next gen architecture , in 2016, will be HBM.
The 980 ti is louder & hotter then the Fury X, and not always faster.
Also outside of gaming the 980 ti is a dud… check compute benchmark, AMD architecture is absolute state of the art. (thats why Apple is currently using GCN in their highest end workstation products)
What else you got ?
It’s over man just give
It’s over man just give up….making yourself and other AMD fanboys look extremely ridiculous now. So sad….
GTX980 Ti is better than Fury X in ALL situations.
No one cares anymore
could this card work on a
could this card work on a 500w gold psu with 40A on a 12v rail?
I would like to see the
I would like to see the various iterations of the Fury X from manufacturers like MSI and Gigabyte, etc. These cards, as usual, feature better clocks and some tweaks, over the REFERENCE model. I guess the first generation of HBM limits them to 4GB,???, apparently folks are saying the next gen HBM2 will feature 8gb or whatever. If I were a gpu designer, I’d push for everything we can feasibly do at this point in time. I think sometimes they want to come out in increments that literally come up shorter than they need to. I would have pushed the architects to come up with a way to increase the memory available. I thought, as maybe they did, that the HBM would allow much faster throughput and the amount of memory would not be an issue.
Why don’t they compare the new 390X in these benchmarks???
a bit late to ask. Ryan what
a bit late to ask. Ryan what is Fiji DP rated at?
Not a horrible part, but as
Not a horrible part, but as usual AMD overpromises and underdelivers while their fanboys overhype and underwhelm.
Why people bash and complain?
Why people bash and complain? 650 dollars for card with water cooling solution, sounds great to me.
If you dont want water cooled card wait for Fury which will be cheaper for sure.
Yet everyone talk 980ti beat Fury X, how overhyped Fury X is and so on while Fury X is not even for public sale yet, its freaking 2 weeks old card without tuned drivers.
Get your (sheet) together already and wait before making conclusion ffs.
This nVidiaPerspective.com seems way too nvidia biased to me especialy in this article.