GPU Comparisons and Testing Setup
Testing Configuration
The specifications for our testing system haven't changed.
Test System Setup | |
CPU | Intel Core i7-3960X Sandy Bridge-E |
Motherboard | ASUS P9X79 Deluxe |
Memory | Corsair Dominator DDR3-1600 16GB |
Hard Drive | OCZ Agility 4 256GB SSD |
Sound Card | On-board |
Graphics Card | AMD Radeon R9 Fury X 4GB AMD Radeon R9 295X2 8GB AMD Radeon R9 290X 4GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan X 12GB |
Graphics Drivers | AMD: 15.15 beta NVIDIA: 352.90 |
Power Supply | Corsair AX1200i |
Operating System | Windows 8.1 Pro x64 |
Note that GPU-Z still has the ROP count incorrect on this card as of our use.
What you should be watching for
- Fury X vs GTX 980 Ti – This is the real battle, the one that both NVIDIA and AMD are watching the most closely. Can the new Radeon R9 Fury X, with HBM and its water cooler, best the flagship NVIDIA single GPU offering?
- Fury X vs R9 290X – For those of us curious about the architectural changes that AMD has been able to make with Fiji over Hawaii, this is where to look. How much faster is the Fury X knowing that power consumption is actually LOWER than the R9 290X?
- Fury X vs R9 295X2 – For the crazy among us – can the Fury X beat out the performance of the R9 295X2, still selling for about the same price we expect to see Fiji retail for?
If you don't need the example graphs and explanations below, you can jump straight to the benchmark results now!!
Frame Rating: Our Testing Process
If you aren't familiar with it, you should probably do a little research into our testing methodology as it is quite different than others you may see online. Rather than using FRAPS to measure frame rates or frame times, we are using an secondary PC to capture the output from the tested graphics card directly and then use post processing on the resulting video to determine frame rates, frame times, frame variance and much more.
This amount of data can be pretty confusing if you are attempting to read it without proper background, but I strongly believe that the results we present paint a much more thorough picture of performance than other options. So please, read up on the full discussion about our Frame Rating methods before moving forward!!
While there are literally dozens of file created for each “run” of benchmarks, there are several resulting graphs that FCAT produces, as well as several more that we are generating with additional code of our own.
If you don't need the example graphs and explanations below, you can jump straight to the benchmark results now!!
The PCPER FRAPS File
Example data, not from this review.
While the graphs above are produced by the default version of the scripts from NVIDIA, I have modified and added to them in a few ways to produce additional data for our readers. The first file shows a sub-set of the data from the RUN file above, the average frame rate over time as defined by FRAPS, though we are combining all of the GPUs we are comparing into a single graph. This will basically emulate the data we have been showing you for the past several years.
The PCPER Observed FPS File
Example data, not from this review.
This graph takes a different subset of data points and plots them similarly to the FRAPS file above, but this time we are look at the “observed” average frame rates, shown previously as the blue bars in the RUN file above. This takes out the dropped and runts frames, giving you the performance metrics that actually matter – how many frames are being shown to the gamer to improve the animation sequences.
As you’ll see in our full results on the coming pages, seeing a big difference between the FRAPS FPS graphic and the Observed FPS will indicate cases where it is likely the gamer is not getting the full benefit of the hardware investment in their PC.
The PLOT File
Example data, not from this review.
The primary file that is generated from the extracted data is a plot of calculated frame times including runts. The numbers here represent the amount of time that frames appear on the screen for the user, a “thinner” line across the time span represents frame times that are consistent and thus should produce the smoothest animation to the gamer. A “wider” line or one with a lot of peaks and valleys indicates a lot more variance and is likely caused by a lot of runts being displayed.
The RUN File
While the two graphs above show combined results for a set of cards being compared, the RUN file will show you the results from a single card on that particular result. It is in this graph that you can see interesting data about runts, drops, average frame rate and the actual frame rate of your gaming experience.
Example data, not from this review.
For tests that show no runts or drops, the data is pretty clean. This is the standard frame rate per second over a span of time graph that has become the standard for performance evaluation on graphics cards.
Example data, not from this review.
A test that does have runts and drops will look much different. The black bar labeled FRAPS indicates the average frame rate over time that traditional testing would show if you counted the drops and runts in the equation – as FRAPS FPS measurement does. Any area in red is a dropped frame – the wider the amount of red you see, the more colored bars from our overlay were missing in the captured video file, indicating the gamer never saw those frames in any form.
The wide yellow area is the representation of runts, the thin bands of color in our captured video, that we have determined do not add to the animation of the image on the screen. The larger the area of yellow the more often those runts are appearing.
Finally, the blue line is the measured FPS over each second after removing the runts and drops. We are going to be calling this metric the “observed frame rate” as it measures the actual speed of the animation that the gamer experiences.
The PERcentile File
Example data, not from this review.
Scott introduced the idea of frame time percentiles months ago but now that we have some different data using direct capture as opposed to FRAPS, the results might be even more telling. In this case, FCAT is showing percentiles not by frame time but instead by instantaneous FPS. This will tell you the minimum frame rate that will appear on the screen at any given percent of time during our benchmark run. The 50th percentile should be very close to the average total frame rate of the benchmark but as we creep closer to the 100% we see how the frame rate will be affected.
The closer this line is to being perfectly flat the better as that would mean we are running at a constant frame rate the entire time. A steep decline on the right hand side tells us that frame times are varying more and more frequently and might indicate potential stutter in the animation.
The PCPER Frame Time Variance File
Of all the data we are presenting, this is probably the one that needs the most discussion. In an attempt to create a new metric for gaming and graphics performance, I wanted to try to find a way to define stutter based on the data sets we had collected. As I mentioned earlier, we can define a single stutter as a variance level between t_game and t_display. This variance can be introduced in t_game, t_display, or on both levels. Since we can currently only reliably test the t_display rate, how can we create a definition of stutter that makes sense and that can be applied across multiple games and platforms?
We define a single frame variance as the difference between the current frame time and the previous frame time – how consistent the two frames presented to the gamer. However, as I found in my testing plotting the value of this frame variance is nearly a perfect match to the data presented by the minimum FPS (PER) file created by FCAT. To be more specific, stutter is only perceived when there is a break from the previous animation frame rates.
Our current running theory for a stutter evaluation is this: find the current frame time variance by comparing the current frame time to the running average of the frame times of the previous 20 frames. Then, by sorting these frame times and plotting them in a percentile form we can get an interesting look at potential stutter. Comparing the frame times to a running average rather than just to the previous frame should prevent potential problems from legitimate performance peaks or valleys found when moving from a highly compute intensive scene to a lower one.
Example data, not from this review.
While we are still trying to figure out if this is the best way to visualize stutter in a game, we have seen enough evidence in our game play testing and by comparing the above graphic to other data generated through our Frame rating system to be reasonably confident in our assertions. So much in fact that I am going to going this data the PCPER ISU, which beer fans will appreciate the acronym of International Stutter Units.
To compare these results you want to see a line that is as close the 0ms mark as possible indicating very little frame rate variance when compared to a running average of previous frames. There will be some inevitable incline as we reach the 90+ percentile but that is expected with any game play sequence that varies from scene to scene. What we do not want to see is a sharper line up that would indicate higher frame variance (ISU) and could be an indication that the game sees microstuttering and hitching problems.
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.