AMD Fury X Reviews

[utahraptor]

Tom's Hardware has good reporting on the frame time as well.

 

[RussianSensation]

Quick glance at Gigabyte G1 980Ti review at TPU shows 20-22% lead when pro-rating benchmarks against the Fury X both at 1440p and 4K. Fury X looks to max out at 1150mhz on most sites which is easily negated by another 12-13% overclock on the G1 (to 1512mhz). That means at 1440p, the 1.5Ghz 980Ti OC should be beating Fury X OC by 18-20% or more. You also get extra VRAM as a bonus and a stock G1 980Ti uses just 293W of power at TPU for 18% more performance over a reference 980Ti that Fury barely matches at 1440p.

Hugely disappointed to be honest. Granted I did expect 980Ti to lead on many GW titles but Fury X's worse overclocking and less VRAM for a similar price makes no sense to me. Also, nearly every UE4 game I've seen has Maxwell doing really well.

I think AMD needed to either polish the drivers more or priced this card at $579. Right now a $670-680 after-market 980Ti OC is looking to be 18-20% faster. Sooner or later with rebates these NV cards will be $650. AMD could have gotten away with this pricing against a hot and loud reference Titan X / 980Ti, but not against after-market custom 980Tis. We haven't even seen Classy, HOF or MSI Lightning 980Ti cards.

What AMD needs is a $549 fully unlocked Fury Pro with after-market cards clocked 1100-1150mhz out of the box. Then, it will shake up the market against a $650 980Ti.

I will probably wait until 14/16nm HBM2 gen or until prices drops. If Maxwell is this good with old-tech GDDR5 and measly 336GB/sec of bandwith on 28nm, I can't wait to see what a 16nm 700GB/sec-1TB/sec Big Daddy Pascal will bring. Plus 8-16GB of HBM2 will be a huge increase in capacity over today's HBM1. I feel like AMD had a good run with GCN but it's a bit worrying that their 596mm2 GCN chip couldn't even beat a 601mm2 Maxwell considering 438mm2 290X did so well against a 561mm2 780Ti. It looks like Maxwell's 35-40% increase in IPC has finally started to make GCN 1.2 look rather aged. AMD needs GCN 2.0 or a new radical architecture if they even think they can keep up with Pascal.

Right now I feel easy overclocking and extra VRAM as a bonus make a custom 980Ti the easy pick. The horrible GPU scaling from 390X at TPU is something to watch though. Is it a driver issue or a hardware bottleneck in Fury X?

 

[DiogoDX]

The scaling is way lower that I expected comparing with a 290X. Maybe the 64ROPs killed the card or its drivers.

 

[Dribble]

The scaling is way lower that I expected comparing with a 290X. Maybe the 64ROPs killed the card or its drivers.

It does look that way. It seems while they got HBM into the card they cut too many corners with the work done to the gpu one of which was not scaling up the number of rops as they increased core count and memory bandwidth.

 

[utahraptor]

Quick glance at Gigabyte G1 980Ti review at TPU shows 20-22% lead when pro-rating benchmarks against the Fury X both at 1440p and 4K. Fury X looks to max out at 1150mhz on most sites which is easily negated by another 12-13% overclock on the G1 (to 1512mhz). That means at 1440p, the 1.5Ghz 980Ti OC should be beating Fury X OC by 18-20% or more. You also get extra VRAM as a bonus and a stock G1 980Ti uses just 293W of power at TPU for 18% more performance over a reference 980Ti that Fury barely matches at 1440p.

Hugely disappointed to be honest. Granted I did expect 980Ti to lead on many GW titles but Fury X's worse overclocking and less VRAM for a similar price makes no sense to me. Also, nearly every UE4 game I've seen has Maxwell doing really well.

I think AMD needed to either polish the drivers more or prices this card at $579. Right now a $670 after-market 980Ti OC is looking to be 18-20% faster. AMD could have gotten away with this pricing against a hot and loud reference Titan X / 980Ti, but not against after-market custom 980Tis. We haven't even seen Classy, HOF or MSI Lightning 980Ti cards.

What AMD needs is $549 fully unlocked Fury Pro with after-market cards clocked 1150mhz out of the box. Then it will shake up the market.

I will probably wait until 14/16nm HBM2 gen or until price drops. If Maxwell is this good with outdated GDDR5 and measly 336GB/sec of bandwith on 28nm, I can't wait to see what a 16nm 700GB/sec-1TB/sec Big Daddy Pascal will bring. I feel like AMD had a good run with GCN but I it's a bit worrying that their 596mm2 GCN chip couldn't even beat a 601mm2 Maxwell considering 438mm2 290X did so well against a 561mm2 780Ti. It looks like Maxwell's 35-40% increase in IPC has finally started to make GCN 1.2 look rather aged. AMD needs GCN 2.0 or a new radical architecture if they even think they can keep up with Pascal. If 980Ti was.

Agreed, only FOC air cooled furies <$600 can save this :|

 

[Flapdrol1337]

Fury X looks to max out at 1150mhz on most sites

That's largely because voltage is still locked right?

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Trading blows is not great, needed a clear victory.

Though still might get it because 980 Tis are stupidly expensive here, I could get a Fury for like 300 less.

 

[Alatar]

The frametime reports over at guru3d is very impressive. Of course nobody cares about it now lol, was only relevant when certain parties wanted it measured.

Fury X has some bad frame time spikes in GTA V though:

 

[LTC8K6]

That's largely because voltage is still locked right?

Here is GURU3D's take on it:

Overclocking

Overclocking then. 3rd party tools currently do not offer full tweaking support on the Radeon Fury X, it is simply too new a product. Current limitations are voltage adjustment for both GPU and memory, as well as frequency changes on the HBM memory. In the future we'll have to see how support on that will pan out. GPU voltage is going to be trivial here though as we could only mildly tweak the GPU to 1125 MHz (+75 MHz), after that it started to become unstable. Whether or not you need to tweak memory... well with that much bandwidth at hand you have to wonder if it even would make a difference. As always, overclocking results can vary per production batch and your PC infrastructure and cooling.

 

[Udgnim]

using TechPowerUp's performance charts, Fury X is only ~5% faster than GTX 980 @ 1080

~15% @ 1440 & ~25% @ 4K over GTX 980 but I would still expect Fury X to have a bigger performance advantage over GTX 980 @ 1080

I'm guessing the normal Fury is going to be cut down Fiji. at $550, I'm not sure if it's going to be in that great of a spot. GTX 980Ti will be very attractive for $100 more.

GTX 980 will likely be better than cut down Fiji @ 1080 and perform more closely @ 1440. neither card is strong enough for 4K unless going multi gpu.

this does not give me great confidence that AMD will be able to deliver with Zen.

 

[RussianSensation]

Trading blows is not great, needed a clear victory.

Though still might get it because 980 Tis are stupidly expensive here, I could get a Fury for like 300 less.

Oh wow, with a $300 difference, Fury is easily the winner in that context. I did notice very low frame times at Tom's, often better than 980Ti/Titan X. Haven't had a lot of time reading many reviews; will need to catch up over the week.

I am interested to see 980Ti SLi OC vs. Fury X CF OC at 1440p and 4K, and their frame times as well.

I just feel like if AMD priced a 4096 shader air cooled Fury at $549, it could be a better buy. I am hoping Fury PRO is that card but if it's a cut-down 3584 shader card, AMD has a lot of driver work ahead. 4K scaling at TPU is less than 25% against a 390X.

 

[realibrad]

Fury X has some bad frame time spikes in GTA V though:

That does not mean too much right now considering that this is a new card. AMD has been better than Nvidia in frame times for a while now, so I would expect they would resolve this with a future drive update.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Oh wow, with a $300 difference, Fury is easily the winner in that context. I did notice very low frame times at Tom's, often better than 980Ti/Titan X. Haven't had a lot of time reading many reviews; will need to catch up over the week.

I am interested to see 980Ti SLi OC vs. Fury X CF OC at 1440p and 4K, and their frame times as well.

I just feel like if AMD priced a 4096 shader air cooled Fury at $549, it could be a better buy. I am hoping Fury PRO is that card but if it's a cut-down 3584 shader card, AMD has a lot of driver work ahead. 4K scaling at TPU is less than 25% against a 390X.

I think the Fury X needs to be 550 dollars, then it'll be competitive as hell.

Of course I dunno what prices their Nano or Fury pro will be like.

 

[NTMBK]

Well, that was disappointing.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

They're actually available here now, and cost about 250 USD less then the 980 Ti (though both are slightly higher then US prices), I'm ordering one now.

 

[Azix]

Even if they sort this out with updates and a year from now its 10-20% faster than the nvidia cards, the damage would likely be done. They needed a stronger showing.

Did any of these sites check if the card boosts at all? Seems like it's just not fully ready and I don't think it will be ready till windows 10. Resources are likely on the drivers for that and DirectX 12. I'd say they should have launched along with windows 10 but I aint that patient. The pro and nano delay is already bad.

We might see performance change within months but too late imo. These sites will not update the reviews most of the time or even publish articles showing the change

 

[BFG10K]

This product is good for AMD users looking to stay with AMD; not so much for winning over nVidia users.

I've decided to skip this generation and stick with my original Titan a bit longer.

 

[Zstream]

This product is good for AMD users looking to stay with AMD; not so much for winning over nVidia users.

I've decided to skip this generation and stick with my original Titan a bit longer.

Pretty much sums it up.

 

[Elfear]

using TechPowerUp's performance charts, Fury X is only ~5% faster than GTX 980 @ 1080

~15% @ 1440 & ~25% @ 4K over GTX 980 but I would still expect Fury X to have a bigger performance advantage over GTX 980 @ 1080

I'm guessing the normal Fury is going to be cut down Fiji. at $550, I'm not sure if it's going to be in that great of a spot. GTX 980Ti will be very attractive for $100 more.

GTX 980 will likely be better than cut down Fiji @ 1080 and perform more closely @ 1440. neither card is strong enough for 4K unless going multi gpu.

It's rather mind-boggling actually. The 390X and 980 are within a few percent of each other and the 4096-shader Fury-X is only beating the 980 by 5%. I expected much better results.

 

[EvilNodZ]

Its a better reference card compared to Nvidias reference cards, but compared to the Nvidia aftermarket cards i think most people will choose Nvidia even at £100-£200 more expensive with all the nice overclocks if they want the best performance.

AMD really needed it to beat 980Ti by 5-10% and it clearly does not, its a tie at best at 4K and slightly worse than 980Ti at lower resolutions.

The only saving grace for this card will be if AMD can show the card excells in DX12 when it is released, some consistent driver updates like we saw for Hawaii or AMD allowing aftermarket designs in the next few months.

If you have a 295X2, or a 290(x) then i think the best option is wait for arctic islands.

 

[Silverforce11]

This product is good for AMD users looking to stay with AMD; not so much for winning over nVidia users.

I've decided to skip this generation and stick with my original Titan a bit longer.

Maybe, but as an AMD user, this product doesn't even entice me to upgrade.

I'll wait it out for real next-gen stuff.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

No reason for anyone with a r9 290/gtx780 or higher to upgrade to anything in the remainder of the 28nm generation.

Whichever company wins the performance crown once we're off 28nm is going to swallow so much marketshare they will choke.

 

[monstercameron]

When do these cards go up for sale? can't find em on amazon

 

[.vodka]

Considering how well 438mm2 Hawaii did, 596mm2 Fiji surely had to be more impressive considering the extra hardware... I suppose too new a product and driver work needed. GCN did surprise with time, but AMD is short on time at this point... I mean, yes, lots of improvements over the 290x/390x and surely a much more impressive product at high resolutions, yet the card feels like a Titan X / stock 980Ti competitor, not an aftermarket 980Ti competitor.

Lower priced aftermarket cards have to come out and OC tools have to catch up, fast. Fiji being a good overclocker with more voltage is the wildcard here. 1150 MHz avg on stock voltage is already better than Hawaii, at least.

 

[jantjeuh]

[redacted] AMD, this is simply not enough Expect videocards to remain ridiculously overpriced for the time to come.


Profanity isn't allowed in VC&G

-Elfear