AMD Radeon R9 Fury reviews

It's funny but it almost seems like some sites were 'persuaded' to only compare against only lower priced reference models. I'm glad a few credible sites got it right and included competitor models that compete based on price and non-reference custom design.

Add in that it's more difficult to find a reference gtx 980 than an overclocked one and most of these overclocked models are sell for 500 or less and it is being very generous to AMD.

Particular since most reviewers went to the trouble of switching out their stock r9 290x reference cards to aftermarket and put them back in when it came to the 390x reviews and Fury X reviews.

http://www.computerbase.de/2015-07/sapphire-radeon-r9-fury-tri-x-oc-test/4/

At 1440p and under the overclockedgtx 980 models tie the Fury cards. At 4k, the gtx 980 loses by 9 percent but considering the 200mm size difference, it better win.
 
With a fairly unimpressive OC, Fury is trading blows with 980Ti in digitalfoundry review and getting upto 40% faster than 980 in FC4. It's beyond a heavily overclocked 980's reach much less the aftermarket cards which are like 10% or so faster.

And apparently the 15.7 drivers didn't bring performance improvements, so this can improve further.

As for the big die size, looks like AMD want market share back.
 
I'm pleasantly surprised by the lowered power consumption Asus has been able to achieve on their Strix card seemingly through a combination of lower voltage and max ASIC power setting (and PCB customization?). I was expecting consumption to stay level or go up compared to the Fury X due to the lack of water cooling.

But it seems the biggest spoiler for this card in terms of performance/$ are AMD's own R9 290/390 series.
 
The problem with many reviews, IMHO, is that they put those customs R9 Fury up against reference blower designs for other GPUs. It's kind of a nice gesture towards AMD hehe but it doesn't paint the whole picture. There can be a huge gap between reference designs and custom ones with the GTX 900s. Of course it's really annoying to have to look at 2 designs per GPU and time is limited. But I don't see how you can provide readers with any insightful analysis of the Sapphire/Asus R9 Fury performances by just looking at the reference GTX 980 benchmark numbers.

When i agree with you, we should maybe not compare them who use more or less standard clock with ultra OC retail who had a 40% real turbo clock speed gain over the initial ones.... because even on the 980TI a a G1 OC gaming can boost to 1450+mhz.. h
 
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Frustrating for AMD to know their Fiji chips are at max clock speed at shipping....?

Doubting unlock voltages would help even the overclock for them.
 
Frustrating for AMD to know their Fiji chips are at max clock speed at shipping....?

Doubting unlock voltages would help even the overclock for them.

It will help but power numbers won't be pretty. Still though I rather have 400W TBP card performing 20 to 30% better than be stuck at nearly stock.

Fiji Pro is a nice card and more compelling choice against nVidia than Fury X was but chip is not scaling well enought in most titles compared to Hawaii and therefore biggest competition comes from AMD own products.
 
From a market positioning point of view, it makes some sense to compare the Fury against the 980. From a technical point of view, it's kinda ridiculous to compare a 600mm2 chip against one that's only 400mm2.

You think the manufacturing difference between a Fiji chip and a GM204 is over $50, considering that Fiji Pro is a lower binned part whereas the 980 uses the higher-binned ones?
Because that's the price difference between the cards.
 
Wrong thread, but you think this is the 4GB who is a problem ? i see only 3GB used when there's this stutter. And we cant say that Bullet use a lot of vram lol.
yes, you don't know usage of memory during freeze but you can see much of memory is free after freeze, I also posted video comparing 980oc vs fury vs 980ti and only 980ti did't get any freeze
 

TechReport is hands down the worst review for Fury. HardOCP at least test without nvidia settings to give a picture, TR are starting off with Project Cars.
rolleyes.gif


If Fury stutters more than 980 that is a legitimate point, however their average numbers seem rather different from other reviews as well.

Fury at par or only a fps faster in games where it demolishing 980 in other reviews. So I go looking at the test notes, they are using OCed models of nvidia cards which behooves them to label them as such in the graphs where it looks as if the vanilla versions are being used.
rolleyes.gif


And many games are showing 20% or more advantage for Fury at 4k, so even if it only were to improve 7%, 980 would have trouble matching it in theory much less in practice. Even TR's review numbers look too close for the advantage that Fury has over 980.

TPU's numbers.

Code:
alien iso= 20.8%
unity = 22.7%
batman = 20.4%
bf3 = 24.9%
bf4 = 11%
bioshock = 29.8%
cod aw = -3.5%
civ = 30.3%
crysis 3 = 23%
dead rising 32.4%
da:I = 4.6%
far cry 4 = 29.9%
gta v = 16.5%
metro last light = 12.4%
project cars = -15%
ryse = 18.9%
SoM = 25.6%
Witcher 3 = 16.8%
Tomb Raider = 23.8%
Watch Dogs = 11.6%
Wolfenstein = -10.3%
WoW = -2.6%

edit: Metro Last Light seems off, Tom's and PcPer have it at more than 20% faster. DigitalFoundry have it around 30% faster in Ryse.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ASUS/R9_Fury_Strix/

And apparently the 15.7 driver doesn't give a boost vs. the older drivers, so AMD have allowed us more hope. :p
 
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You think the manufacturing difference between a Fiji chip and a GM204 is over $50, considering that Fiji Pro is a lower binned part whereas the 980 uses the higher-binned ones?
Let's ignore for a moment your incredible but faulty reading between the lines ability, because I never suggested such a thing, because, yes, I actually absolutely do think that the base BOM difference (GPU silicon + memory) is likely to be larger than $50.

Because that's the price difference between the cards.
Even if the difference weren't $50, it'd still be a faulty way of looking at, because jt ignores the markups along the chain.

But let me reiterate my main point: it's stunning that a 400mm2 chip with half the BW manages to perform close to a 600mm2.

Is there any kind of on-chip resource where Fiji (even in cripples form) doesn't blow away gm204? How is it possible that this chip was able to get past the performance modeling stage?
 
Let's ignore for a moment your incredible but faulty reading between the lines ability, because I never suggested such a thing, because, yes, I actually absolutely do think that the base BOM difference (GPU silicon + memory) is likely to be larger than $50.


Even if the difference weren't $50, it'd still be a faulty way of looking at, because jt ignores the markups along the chain.

But let me reiterate my main point: it's stunning that a 400mm2 chip with half the BW manages to perform close to a 600mm2.

Is there any kind of on-chip resource where Fiji (even in cripples form) doesn't blow away gm204? How is it possible that this chip was able to get past the performance modeling stage?

HBM is also very expensive at the moment. Fury has an additional interposer bonding step, I'd expect yields are still improving.

Fury is better positioned in the marketplace, but at this stage AMD needs better profit margins. I don't think they're going to get them from Fiji parts.
 
TechReport is hands down the worst review for Fury. HardOCP at least test without nvidia settings to give a picture, TR are starting off with Project Cars.
rolleyes.gif


If Fury stutters more than 980 that is a legitimate point, however their average numbers seem rather different from other reviews as well.

Fury at par or only a fps faster in games where it demolishing 980 in other reviews. So I go looking at the test notes, they are using OCed models of nvidia cards which behooves them to label them as such in the graphs where it looks as if the vanilla versions are being used.
rolleyes.gif


And many games are showing 20% or more advantage for Fury at 4k, so even if it only were to improve 7%, 980 would have trouble matching it in theory much less in practice. Even TR's review numbers look too close for the advantage that Fury has over 980.
It's not just the Fury review. TR also used OCed cards in the Fury X, 980 Ti, and TITAN X reviews. None of them are marked as OC in the conclusion charts.

Asus Radeon R9 290X
Gigabyte GeForce GTX 980
According to TPU's numbers, the Gigabyte 980 performs 9%-11% better than the regular 980 at 1440p and 2160p, which are the resolutions used in the TR review. (Fury, Gigabyte 980)
Code:
ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX review (stock clocks)
                          1080p  1440p  2160p
                 GTX 980   100%    93%    87%
                 R9 Fury   100%   100%   100%
R9 Fury (w/o Proj. Cars)   101%   102%   101%

Gigabyte GTX 980 G1 Gaming review
                          1080p  1440p  2160p
                 GTX 980    93%    92%    90%
        Gigabyte GTX 980   100%   100%   100%
These two test setups are different, but assuming that they are somewhat comparable, we can estimate the R9 Fury's performance relative to the Gigabyte 980.
Code:
                          1080p  1440p  2160p
        Gigabyte GTX 980   100%   100%   100%
                 R9 Fury    93%    99%   103%
R9 Fury (w/o Proj. Cars)    94%   101%   104%
The 1440p and 2160p numbers are fairly close to each other.
 
Fury at par or only a fps faster in games where it demolishing 980 in other reviews. So I go looking at the test notes, they are using OCed models of nvidia cards which behooves them to label them as such in the graphs where it looks as if the vanilla versions are being used.
rolleyes.gif
Everyone reads the test setup section to find out what cards and drivers are used. Next time you see a 980 performing on par or better than the Fury just realize the review site's GPU comparison is based on price. Fury's price is just too high for what you get. :D

And apparently the 15.7 driver doesn't give a boost vs. the older drivers, so AMD have allowed us more hope. :p
Really! I would never have imagined from the sound of your earlier posts praising how well they performed in some reviews;-). But lets hope you are right ....
 
Let's ignore for a moment your incredible but faulty reading between the lines ability, because I never suggested such a thing, because, yes, I actually absolutely do think that the base BOM difference (GPU silicon + memory) is likely to be larger than $50.


Even if the difference weren't $50, it'd still be a faulty way of looking at, because jt ignores the markups along the chain.

But let me reiterate my main point: it's stunning that a 400mm2 chip with half the BW manages to perform close to a 600mm2.

Is there any kind of on-chip resource where Fiji (even in cripples form) doesn't blow away gm204? How is it possible that this chip was able to get past the performance modeling stage?

What's really striking is how poorly Fiji scales compared to Hawaii, or especially its latest revision, Grenada. The latter is pretty much on par with the GTX 980 (GM204), and slightly ahead at 4K. This is fairly natural, since both chips are approximately the same size, with Grenada being only slightly larger and fitted with significantly more memory bandwidth. Grenada's main (or only) problem is of course its power-consumption.

The Fury Air barely manages to pull ahead of the R9 390X by 10%.
 
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