The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Aiming For the Top
by Ryan Smith on July 2, 2015 11:15 AM EST
Almost 7 years ago to this day, AMD formally announced their “small die strategy.” Embarked upon in the aftermath of the company’s struggles with the Radeon HD 2900 XT, AMD opted against continuing to try beat NVIDIA at their own game. Rather than chase NVIDIA to absurd die sizes and the risks that come with it, the company would focus on smaller GPUs for the larger sub-$300 market. Meanwhile to compete in the high-end markets, AMD would instead turn to multi-GPU technology – CrossFire – to offer even better performance at a total cost competitive with NVIDIA’s flagship cards.
AMD’s early efforts were highly successful; though they couldn’t take the crown from NVIDIA, products like the Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 5870 were massive spoilers, offering a great deal of NVIDIA’s flagship performance with smaller GPUs, manufactured at a lower cost, and drawing less power. Officially the small die strategy was put to rest earlier this decade, however even informally this strategy has continued to guide AMD GPU designs for quite some time. At 438mm2, Hawaii was AMD’s largest die as of 2013, still more than 100mm2 smaller than NVIDIA’s flagship GK110.
AMD's 2013 Flagship: Radeon R9 290X, Powered By Hawaii
Catching up to the present, this month marks an important occasion for AMD with the launch of their new flagship GPU, Fiji, and the flagship video card based on it, the Radeon R9 Fury X. For AMD the launch of Fiji is not just another high-end GPU launch (their 3rd on the 28nm process), but it marks a significant shift for the company. Fiji is first and foremost a performance play, but it’s also new memory technology, new power optimization technologies, and more. In short it may be the last of the 28nm GPUs, but boy if it isn’t among the most important.
With the recent launch of the Fiji GPU I bring up the small die strategy not just because Fiji is anything but small – AMD has gone right to the reticle limit – but because it highlights how the GPU market has changed in the last seven years and how AMD has needed to respond. Since 2008 NVIDIA has continued to push big dies, but they’ve gotten smarter about it as well, producing increasingly efficient GPUs that have made it harder for a scrappy AMD to undercut NVIDIA. At the same time alternate frame rendering, the cornerstone of CrossFire and SLI, has become increasingly problematic as rendering techniques get less and less AFR-friendly, making dual GPU cards less viable than they once were. And finally, on the business side of matters, AMD’s market share of discrete GPUs is lower than it has been in over a decade, with AMD’s GPU plus APU sales now being estimated as being below just NVIDIA’s GPU sales.
AMD's Fiji GPU
Which is not to say I’m looking to paint a poor picture of the company – AMD Is nothing if not the perennial underdog who constantly manages to surprise us with what they can do with less – but this context is important in understanding why AMD is where they stand today, and why Fiji is in many ways such a monumental GPU for the company. The small die strategy is truly dead, and now AMD is gunning for NVIDIA’s flagship with the biggest, gamiest GPU they could possibly make. The goal? To recapture the performance crown that has been in NVIDIA’s hands for far too long, and to offer a flagship card of their own that doesn’t play second-fiddle to NVIDIA’s.
To get there AMD needs to face down several challenges. There is no getting around the fact that NVIDIA’s Maxwell 2 GPUs are very well done, very performant, and very efficient, and that between GM204 and GM200 AMD has their work cut out for them. Performance, power consumption, form factors; these all matter, and these are all issues that AMD is facing head-on with Fiji and the R9 Fury X.
At the same time however the playing field has never been more equal. We’re now in the 4th year of TSMC’s 28nm process and have a good chunk of another year left to go. AMD and NVIDIA have had an unprecedented amount of time to tweak their wares around what is now a very mature process, and that means that any kind of advantages for being a first-mover or being more aggressive are gone. As the end of the 28nm process’s reign at the top, NVIDIA and AMD now have to rely on their engineers and their architectures to see who can build the best GPU against the very limits of the 28nm process.
Overall, with GPU manufacturing technology having stagnated on the 28nm node, it’s very hard to talk about the GPU situation without talking about the manufacturing situation. For as much as the market situation has forced an evolution in AMD’s business practices, there is no escaping the fact that the current situation on the manufacturing process side has had an incredible, unprecedented effect on the evolution of discrete GPUs from a technology and architectural standpoint. So for AMD Fiji not only represents a shift towards large GPUs that can compete with NVIDIA’s best, but it represents the extensive efforts AMD has gone through to continue improving performance in the face of manufacturing limitations.
And with that we dive in to today’s review of the Radeon R9 Fury X. Launching this month is AMD’s new flagship card, backed by the full force of the Fiji GPU.
| AMD GPU Specification Comparison | ||||||
| AMD Radeon R9 Fury X | AMD Radeon R9 Fury | AMD Radeon R9 290X | AMD Radeon R9 290 | |||
| Stream Processors | 4096 | (Fewer) | 2816 | 2560 | ||
| Texture Units | 256 | (How much) | 176 | 160 | ||
| ROPs | 64 | (Depends) | 64 | 64 | ||
| Boost Clock | 1050MHz | (On Yields) | 1000MHz | 947MHz | ||
| Memory Clock | 1Gbps HBM | (Memory Too) | 5Gbps GDDR5 | 5Gbps GDDR5 | ||
| Memory Bus Width | 4096-bit | 4096-bit | 512-bit | 512-bit | ||
| VRAM | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB | 4GB | ||
| FP64 | 1/16 | 1/16 | 1/8 | 1/8 | ||
| TrueAudio | Y | Y | Y | Y | ||
| Transistor Count | 8.9B | 8.9B | 6.2B | 6.2B | ||
| Typical Board Power | 275W | (High) | 250W | 250W | ||
| Manufacturing Process | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | TSMC 28nm | ||
| Architecture | GCN 1.2 | GCN 1.2 | GCN 1.1 | GCN 1.1 | ||
| GPU | Fiji | Fiji | Hawaii | Hawaii | ||
| Launch Date | 06/24/15 | 07/14/15 | 10/24/13 | 11/05/13 | ||
| Launch Price | $649 | $549 | $549 | $399 | ||
With 4096 SPs and coupled with the first implementation of High Bandwidth Memory, the R9 Fury X aims for the top. Over the coming pages we’ll get in to a deeper discussion on the architectural and other features found in the card, but the important point to take away right now it that it packs a lot of shaders, even more memory bandwidth, and is meant to offer AMD’s best performance yet. R9 Fury X will eventually be joined by 3 other Fiji-based parts in the coming months, but this month it’s all about AMD’s flagship card.
The R9 Fury X is launching at $649, which happens to be the same price as the card’s primary competition, the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. Launched at the end of May, the GTX 980 Ti is essentially a preemptive attack on the R9 Fury X from NVIDIA, offering performance close enough to NVIDIA’s GTX Titan X flagship that the difference is arguably immaterial. For AMD this means that while beating GTX Titan X would be nice, they really only need a win against the GTX 980 Ti, and as we’ll see the Fury X will make a good run at it, making this the closest AMD has come to an NVIDIA flagship card in quite some time.
Finally, from a market perspective, AMD will be going after a few different categories with the R9 Fury X. As competition for the GTX 980 Ti, AMD is focusing on 4K resolution gaming, based on a combination of the fact that 4K monitors are becoming increasingly affordable, 4K Freesync monitors are finally available, and relative to NVIDIA’s wares, AMD fares the best at 4K. Expect to see AMD also significantly play up the VR possibilities of the R9 Fury X, though the major VR headset, the Oculus Rift, won’t ship until Q1 of 2016. Finally, it has now been over three years since the launch of the original Radeon HD 7970, so for buyers looking for an update AMD’s first 28nm card, Fury X is in a good position to offer the kind of generational performance improvements that typically justify an upgrade.
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chizow - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
No silverblue, you contributed just as much to the unrealistic expectations during the Rebrandeon run-up along with unrealistic expectations for HBM and Fury X. But in the end it doesn't really matter, AMD failed to meet their goal even though Nvidia handed it to them on a silver platter by launching the 980Ti 3 weeks ahead of AMD.And spate of returns for the 970 memory fiasco? Have any proof of that? Because I have plenty of proof that shows Nvidia rode the strength of the 970 to record revenues, near-record market share, and a 3:1 ownership ratio on Steam compared to the entire R9 200 series.
If Fury X is an experiment as you claim, it was certainly a bigger failure than what was documented here at a time AMD could least afford it, being the only new GPU they will be launching in 2015 to combat Nvidia's onslaught of Maxwell chips.
mapesdhs - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
A lot of the 970 hate reminded me of the way some people carried on dumping on OCZ long after any trace of their old issues were remotely relevant. Sites did say that the 970 RAM issue made no difference to how it behaved in games, but of course people choose to believe what suits them; I even read comments from some saying they wanted it to be all deliberate as that would more closely match their existing biased opinions of NVIDIA.I would have loved to have seen the Fury X be a proper rival to the 980 Ti, the market needs the competition, but AMD has goofed on this one. It's not as big a fiasco as BD, but it's bad enough given the end goal is to make money and further the tech.
Fan boys will buy the card of course, but they'll never post honestly about CF issues, build issues, VRAM limits, etc.
It's not as if AMD didn't know NV could chuck out a 6GB card, remember NV was originally going to do that with the 780 Ti but didn't bother in the end because they didn't have to. Releasing the 980 Ti before the Fury X was very clever, it completely took the the wind out of AMD's sails. I was expecting it to be at least level with a 980 Ti if it didn't have a price advantage, but it loses on all counts (for all the 4K hype, 1440 is far more relevant atm).
silverblue - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
How about you present proof of such indescretions? I believe my words contained a heavy dose of IF and WAIT AND SEE. Speculation instead of presenting facts when none existed at the time. Didn't you say Tahiti was going to be a part of the 300 series when in fact it never was? I also don't recall saying Fury X would do this or do that, so the burden of proof is indeed upon you.Returns?
http://www.techpowerup.com/209409/perfectly-functi...
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/an...
http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/return-rates-less...
I can provide more if you like. The number of returns wasn't exactly a big issue for NVIDIA, but it still happened. A minor factor which may have resulted in a low number of returns was the readiness for firms such as Amazon and NewEgg to offer 20-30% rebates, though I imagine that wasn't a common occurrence.
Fury X isn't a failure as an experiment, the idea was to integrate a brand new memory architecture into a GPU and that worked, thus paving the way for more cards to incorporate it or something similar in the near future (and showing NVIDIA that they can go ahead with their plans to do the exact same thing). The only failure is marketing it as a 4K card when it clearly isn't. An 8GB card would've been ideal and I'd imagine that the next flagship will correct that, but once the cost drops, throwing 2GB HBM at a mid-range card or an APU could be feasible.
chizow - Sunday, July 5, 2015 - link
I've already posted the links and you clearly state you don't think AMD would Rebrandeon their entire 300 desktop retail series when they clearly did. I'm sure I didn't say anything about Tahiti being rebranded either, since it was obvious Tonga was being rebranded and basically the same thing as Tahiti, but you were clearly skeptical the x90 part would just be a Hawaii rebrand when indeed that became the case.And lmao at your links, you do realize that just corroborates my point the "spate of 970 returns" you claimed was a non-issue right? 5% is within range of typical RMA rates so to claim Nvidia experienced higher than normal return rates due to the 3.5GB memory fiasco is nonsense plain and simple.
And how isn't Fury X a failed experiment when AMD clearly had to make a number of concessions to accommodate HBM, which ultimately led to 4GB limitations on their flagship part that is meant to go up against 6GB and 12GB and even falls short of its own 8GB rebranded siblings?
silverblue - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
No, this is what was said in the comments for http://www.anandtech.com/comments/9241/amd-announc...You: "And what if the desktop line-up follows suit? We can ignore all of them too? No, not a fanboy at all, defend/deflect at all costs!"
Myself: "What if?
Nobody knows yet. Patience, grasshopper."
Dated 15th May. You'll note that this was a month prior to the launch date of the 300 series. Now, unless you had insider information, there wasn't actually any proof of what the 300 series was at that time. You'll also note the "Nobody knows yet." in my post in response to yours. That is an accurate reflection of the situation at that time. I think you're going to need to point out the exact statement that I made. I did say that I expected the 380 to be the 290, which was indeed incorrect, but again without inside information, and without me stating that these would indeed be the retail products, there was no instance of me stating my opinions as fact. I think that should be clear.
RMA return rates: https://www.pugetsystems.com/labs/articles/Video-C...
Fury X may or may not seem like a failed experiment to you - I'm unsure as to what classifies as such in your eyes - but even with the extra RAM on its competitors, the gap between them and Fury X at 4K isn't exactly large, so... does Titan X need 12GB? I doubt it very much, and in my opinion it wouldn't have the horsepower to drive playable performance at that level.
chizow - Monday, July 6, 2015 - link
There's plenty of other posts from you stating similar Silverblue, hinting at tweaks to silicon and GCN level when none of that actually happened. And there was actually plenty of additional proof besides what AMD already provided with their OEM and mobile rebrand stacks. The driver INFs I mentioned have always been a solid indicator of upcoming GPUs and they clearly pointed to a full stack of R300 Rebrandeons.As for RMA rates lol yep, 5% is well within expected RMA return rates, so spate is not only overstated, its inaccurate characterization when most 970 users would not notice or not care to return a card that still functions without issue to this day.
And how do you know the gap between them isn't large? We've already seen numerous reports of lower min FPS, massive frame drops/stutters, and hitching on Fury X as it hits its VRAM limit. Its a gap that will only grow in newer games that use more VRAM or in multi-GPU solutions that haven't been tested yet that allow the end-user to crank up settings even higher. How do you know 12GB is or isn't needed if you haven't tested the hardware yourself? While 1xTitan X isn't enough to drive the settings that will exceed 6GB, 2x in SLI certainly is and already I've seen a number of games such as AC: Unity, GTA5, and SoM use more than 6GB at just 1440p. I fully expect "next-gen" games to pressure VRAM even further.
5150Joker - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
If you visit the Anandtech forums, there's still a few AMD hardcore fanboys like Silverforce and RussianSensation making up excuses for Fury X and AMD. Those guys live in a fantasy land and honestly, the impact of Fury X's failure wouldn't have been as significant if stupid fanboys like the two I mentioned hadn't hyped Fury X so much.To AMD's credit, they did force NVIDIA to price 980 Ti at $650 and release it earlier, I guess that means something to those that wanted Titan X performance for $350 less. Unfortunately for them, their fanboys are more of a cancer than help.
chizow - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
Hahah yeah I don't visit the forums much anymore, mods tried getting all heavy-handed in moderation a few years back with some of the mods being the biggest AMD fanboys/trolls around. They also allowed daily random new accounts to accuse people like myself of shilling and when I retaliated, they again threatened action so yeah, simpler this way. :)I've seen some of RS's postings in the article comments sections though, he used to be a lot more even keeled back then but yeah at some point his mindset turned into best bang for the buck (basically devolving into 2-gen old FS/FT prices) trumping anything new without considering the reality, what he advocates just isn't fast enough for those looking for an UPGRADE. I also got a big chuckle out of his claims 7970 is some kind of god card when it was literally the worst price:perfomance increase in the history of GPUs, causing this entire 28nm price escalation to begin with.
But yeah, can't say I remember Silverforce, not surprising though they overhyped Fury X and the benefits of HBM to the moon, there's a handful of those out there and then they wonder why everyone is down on AMD after none of what they hoped/hyped for actually happens.
mapesdhs - Friday, July 3, 2015 - link
I eventually obtained a couple of 7970s to bench; sure it was quick, but I was shocked how loud the cards were (despite having big aftermarket coolers, really no better than the equivalent 3GB 580s), and the CF issues were a nightmare.D. Lister - Thursday, July 2, 2015 - link
@chizowPersonally I think the reason behind the current FX shortages is that Fury X was originally meant to be air-cooled, trouncing 980 by 5-10 % and priced at $650 - but then NV rather sneakily launched the Ti, a much more potent gpu compared to an air-cooled FX, at the same price, screwing up AMD's plan to launch at Computex. So to reach some performance parity at the given price point, AMD had to hurriedly put CLCs on some of the FXs and then OC the heck out of them (that's why the original "overclockers' dream" is now an OC nightmare - no more headroom left) and push their launch to E3.
So I guess once AMD finish respecing their original air-cooled stock, supplies would gradually improve.