The AMD Radeon R9 Fury Review, Feat. Sapphire & ASUS
by Ryan Smith on July 10, 2015 9:00 AM ESTBattlefield 4
Kicking off our benchmark suite is Battlefield 4, DICE’s 2013 multiplayer military shooter. After a rocky start, Battlefield 4 has since become a challenging game in its own right and a showcase title for low-level graphics APIs. As these benchmarks are from single player mode, based on our experiences our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, which means a card needs to be able to average at least 60fps if it’s to be able to hold up in multiplayer.
When the R9 Fury X launched, one of the games it struggled with was Battlefield 4, where the GTX 980 Ti took a clear lead. However for the launch of the R9 Fury, things are much more in AMD’s favor. The two R9 Fury cards have a lead just shy of 10% over the GTX 980, roughly in-line with their price tag difference. As a result of that difference AMD needs to win in more or less every game by 10% to justify the R9 Fury’s higher price, and we’re starting things off exactly where AMD needs to be for price/performance parity.
Looking at the absolute numbers, we’re going to see AMD promote the R9 Fury as a 4K card, but even with Battlefield 4 I feel this is a good example of why it’s better suited for high quality 1440p gaming. The only way the R9 Fury can maintain an average framerate over 50fps (and thereby reasonable minimums) with a 4K resolution is to drop to a lower quality setting. Otherwise at just over 60fps, it’s in great shape for a 1440p card.
As for the R9 Fury X comparison, it’s interesting how close the R9 Fury gets. The cut-down card is never more than 7% behind the R9 Fury X. Make no mistake, the R9 Fury X is meaningfully faster, but scenarios such as these question whether it’s worth the extra $100.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
288 Comments
View All Comments
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
They can't even supply the dang cores properly, that's why you ONLY SEE SAPPHIRE.Hell you can't even buy them (furyx) at newegg.
So profit would require actual valid production instead of paperlaunched vape.
bill.rookard - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
I'm betting that they can, but the problem is not the 980 which they could match, but as noted in the review, the Fury X. It's a similar issue with the 980ti vs Titan. The 980ti is 60% of the price, but 90+% of the performance. At that point, the ONLY reason to get a Titan is if you need it for FP64 compute.In this case, if they took it to the $500 price point, you'd be in the same boat. 75% of the price for 93% of the performance, and it would really cannibalize the Fury X. Keeping it at $550 makes it an 85% of the price for 93% performance. And, since it does outperform the 980, it should be a bit more expensive.
xenol - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Honestly though, I think AMD should be undercutting themselves a bit to win more of the market share. If I compare the GTX 980 and the R9 Fury, the only problem I see is I take a 10% or so cut to 1080p performance. If the R9 Fury is the same price, then I can forgive the higher power consumption in exchange for better performance at the same price point.I don't think a lot of people consider the top tier cards anyway (not including the Titan, which is ridiculous in and of itself for most consumers).
FlushedBubblyJock - Wednesday, July 15, 2015 - link
Most people are at 1080P, that's WHY NVIDIA optimizes for it.But, the fickle insanity of all the reviewers requires unplayable "compromises" on image quality and frame rates, and the stupid as dog doo fanboy base goes along for the autistic ride.
NVIDIA knows better, there are sane persons such as myself - when spending multiple hundreds on a video card I don't want to "cut doown on settings" and fiddle with the dang thing day and night then test for "playability".
I don't want to waste my life screwing around.
I game 980Ti at 1920x 1200 and it's BARELY ENOUGH to not worry about any settings I want to use, in any game whatsoever - which is of course the most enjoyable thing !
No crashing, no haggling, no constant attempts at optimizing, no cutting down eye candy, no limiting !
Now maybe for someone who wants to hassle with 2 or 3 or 4 cards, a gagggle of cables, likely custom water cooling, a monstruous noise constantly going, then a huge 3k or triplet monitors - then THEY STILL HAVE TO SHUT OFF EYE CANDY AND SETTINGS TO GET A DECENT PLAYABLE FRAME RATE.... THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS YET INADEQUATE.
Sorry, not this gamer. No way, not ever.
extide - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Except the Titan X has crappy FP64 compute, so even that isnt a reason.Hxx - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
completely agree but value wise does not beat the 980 unfortunately which can be had for much less than $500 once you flip the crap batman game.Archie2085 - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Hey Ryan..Wondering how much the drop in power consumption is when setting the fan to max speed. Is lekage power significant when making the card run cooler say 65 degs or so? if it can be tested
Thanks
HighTech4US - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
What a worthless review.You use the Reference GTX 980 and don't overclock it or even use one of the many many factory overclocked models available yet there in all your charts is the Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury OC.
I thought the previous review was brown nosing AMD but this one even out does that one.
HighTech4US - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
EVGA 04G-P4-2983-KR GeForce GTX 980 Superclocked ACX 2.0 4GB 256-Bit GDDR5 PCI Express 3.0 x16 SLI Support Video CardCore Clock: 1266MHz
Boost Clock: 1367MHz
Available today for $507.99 or 487.99 after $20 rebate card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
K_Space - Friday, July 10, 2015 - link
Nonesense. I'm not sure what review you glossed over but this was a fantastic read. I'm oggling over the Sapphire's noise results, quite phenomenomal.RE: OC versus stock cards. This seem to be a ?policy ?protocol of many review sites and not just Anandtech. If you been on the site long enough you'd know it doesn't it apply to this review only: flick back to the 980 and 980Ti reviews you'll see the OC'd card under review tested against stock counterparts. It's not Anandtech either. Hexus does exactly the same (they OC'd the alraedy overclocked phenomenal 980 Ti G1 from Gigabyte versus stock models; it trashed the 295x2). It's annoying to keep flicking in between to check all the oc'd results but to bash the whole review is unfair to say the least.