AMD Radeon R9 Fury X High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) Video Card Review

AMD's Radeon R9 Fury X features High Bandwidth Memory, an exciting next-gen DRAM tech that allowed for one of the shortest flagship video cards ever.

Published
Updated
Manufacturer: AMD
9 minutes & 33 seconds read time
TweakTown's Rating: 86%

The Bottom Line

AMD is back in the game somewhat with the Radeon R9 Fury X, with HBM being a true highlight at 4K. But the appalling use of HDMI 1.4a and the radiator and watercooler really bring down something that could've truly been great.

Introduction, Quick Specs and Availability & Price

Introduction - Excitement Awaits

I have been a fan of all things computers, technology and games for as long as I can remember. I remember as far back as my Dad getting his tax return when I was a kid, and walking through the door with a gigantic box that said "Amiga 500" on the side and that was the start of my technology obsession with PCs.

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I remember a few highlights over the years of massive technology innovations and market shifters, where for me it started with 3DFX and the original Voodoo. It heralded in a gigantic shift in the way we looked at video cards and gaming, with the company very quickly rising to the top, and falling even faster. From there, the next card that really pushed things for me was the original GeForce 256 from NVIDIA.

It provided an insane jump in performance with its new choice between SDR and DDR RAM, with the DDR option offering close to double the performance. After that, the Radeon 9700 from AMD completely changed everything. But from there, the technical innovation and jumps have just been iterations, or new architectures that have excited I'm sure not just me, but many enthusiasts around the world.

NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture was one of those massive jumps, with NVIDIA being able to consume less power on its GTX 900 series over the GTX 700 series, while offering either similar, if not improved performance - especially when it comes to the GeForce GTX 980 Ti that they unveiled earlier this month. But... it is the new High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) that has me excited more than anything in the last five or so years, and that is saying something. I have played with so much hardware over the years that nothing really has me salivating in excitement - but the change that HBM is going to deliver over the years is going to be transformative.

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AMD is on the forefront of HBM, with the company enjoying the prestige of being the first to market with a HBM-powered video card in the form of the new flagship Radeon R9 Fury X. The Fury X isn't the only card that will be powered by High Bandwidth Memory, as there will be other members in the Fury family. We have the R9 Fury and R9 Nano that will be joining the ranks, as well as a yet unnamed dual-GPU that we suspect will be called the R9 Fury X2.

HBM is a super exciting new memory standard that sees memory chips being stacked on top of one another, instead of next to each other. These chips are then placed right next to the GPU die itself on an Interposer, which saves a massive chunk of space surrounding the GPU that would normally see GDDR5 chips taking up precious space on the PCB.

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This means that there's less VRAM chips on the board, so less power required, meaning that the VRMs that power the RAM and associated bits and pieces around it don't need to be there. This move by AMD to adopt HBM means that they have the smallest flagship video card on the market, and one of the smallest video cards ever released - even with all of its power.

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But you're here to see the performance on the new Radeon R9 Fury X... with the size of it not being a big deal, right? Wrong. The engineering that AMD has put into the Fury X is nothing short of astounding. But it's not all speed and new technologies... but we'll go into that in another article. For now, let's introduce to you, the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X.

Quick Specs

AMD has one of the most technologically advanced video cards on the market, mostly thanks to the use of High Bandwidth Memory. But other than that, it's just like any other card with the same stream processors, ROPs, TMUs and all of that jazz.

The company has deployed its updated GCN architecture into the Fury X, with it being the third iteration of the Graphics Core Next architecture. The last time we saw a big change with GCN was with the Tonga GPU, and before that back in October of 2013 with the Hawaii architecture powering the Radeon R9 290X and many other cards in the 200 series.

Availability & Price

AMD has the new Radeon R9 Fury X available as of today, June 24, in most countries - with no word on how many of these will be out in the wild. Check with your retailer, but you should be able to find stock - but we warn you - be quick. As for pricing, the Radeon R9 Fury X has an MSRP of $649.

Packaging & Detailed Look

The Packaging

AMD provides the new Radeon R9 Fury X in a beast of a box, but I don't think it's a good representation of what's inside. I really would've preferred to have something truly unique, like the metal briefcase that the R9 295X2 came in. Heck, I would've liked a box that the reference GTX 900 series comes in, as that case is actually pretty damn nice.

But, packaging isn't everything, right? Let's take a look at the card itself.

Detailed Look

The Radeon R9 Fury X is definitely the best reference card AMD has ever released - at least in my eyes. The company has used an industrial design, which they call "professional, elegant, simple and modern", and I wholeheartedly agree.

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It features a beautiful full metal construction, with the shroud using multiple pieces of aluminum die cast finished in both black nickel mirror gloss, and a unique soft touch black. The front of the Fury X is removable, with four hex screws that can be removed to unveil everything beneath. AMD has made the Fiji-based Fury X this way so that it allows customers to have the option of 3D printing, or CNC an alternate plate onto the card, giving it a totally custom look.

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Another unique part of the card is something that we've seen on ASUS cards, is what AMD calls the 'GPU Tach'. The GPU Tach is a series of LEDs on the back of the card next to the two 8-pin PCIe power connectors that alert you to the power consumption of the Fury X at any given time. If the card is in idle, a single green LED will be lit, but as the power consumption of the card increases, as do the number of LEDs.

Another LED illuminated part of the card is something NVIDIA has been doing for quite a while with its GeForce cards, with AMD now illuminating with a glowing red "RADEON" logo on the top of the card for the entire time the card is in operation.

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For power, the Fury X requires two 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

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For display connectivity, we have three DisplayPort outputs and a single HDMI - which unfortunately, is only HDMI 1.4a - which is capable of just 4K at 30Hz, unlike HDMI 2.0 which can pump out 4K at 60Hz.

Card Specifications & Cooling Setup

Card Specifications

AMD has built the new Radeon R9 Fury X around its new Fiji architecture, with AMD still on the same 28nm process that all of NVIDIA's current cards are made on. The Fury X has 4096 stream processors, 256 Texture Units, and 64 ROPs. We have 4GB of HBM spread out on a huge 4096-bit memory bus providing 512GB/sec of memory bandwidth.

The Fury X has an Engine Clock of up to 1050MHz, while its 4GB of HBM is clocked at 500MHz. The card is powered by two 8-pin PCIe power connectors, consuming up to 275W. We have support for FreeSync, Virtual Super Resolution and Frame Rate Targeting Control - which we're going to look at in a future article, as this is an excellent new feature that will save your card from pushing countless frames per second, and precious power.

Only 4GB of VRAM

Sure, the new Radeon R9 Fury X features that spiffy new High Bandwidth Memory, but with yields reportedly very low on the next-gen RAM, the Radeon R9 Fury X only features 4GB of it. If you remember a few months ago, NVIDIA had some troubles with the marketing of its GeForce GTX 970 and the 4GB of RAM that it included, where the '3.5GB of VRAM on GTX 970' troubles started.

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AMD's marketing was quicker than I've ever seen jumping on it, saying that their Radeon R9 290X actually had the 'full 4GB'. Now that the refreshed and rehashed R9 290X is here under the guise of the 390X, I'm quite disappointed that AMD's ultra flagship video card only features 4GB of RAM.

While 4GB of VRAM is enough for most games, AMD has painted itself into a corner here. The Radeon R9 390X features 8GB of GDDR5... while the twice-as-expensive, next-generation R9 Fury X only features 4GB, but of the special HBM. There is a good jump in memory bandwidth, but additional memory bandwidth doesn't just automatically equal increased performance, which we hope to show you a sneak peak at in this review, and some follow up articles on Fury X.

The point I'm making is: 4GB of HBM is not enough for a flagship card. Not in the second half of 2015, and not when this is the card that is meant to be swinging AMD around from losing double-digit GPU market share in the last eight months to NVIDIA and it's Maxwell-powered GTX 900 series of cards that just continue to sell units like mad.

At the unveiling event of the Fury X in Sydney, Australia, I personally asked AMD if it was an architectural limit of the Fiji (or GCN architecture) that was limiting the Fury X to 4GB of HBM, but before Richard Huddy could answer, he was cut off from finishing the answer. I think the yields on HBM are super low, as we exclusively reported not too long ago, and there are technological limits on HBM1 which only allow 4GB maximum.

HBM2 is coming in 2016, where we will see 8GB introduced, as well as the bandwidth to double from the maximum of 512GB/sec to around 1TB/sec (or 1024GB/sec). This, mixed with the shift to the 16nm process, is going to be one of the most exciting times for technology, ever. Mental note - prepare a new pair of pants for the first HBM2-based video cards.

Cooling Setup

Now this is where AMD has gone down a very different road when it comes to NVIDIA. NVIDIA's flagship video card, the GeForce GTX Titan X, features a normal reference air cooler from NVIDIA. But, the new AMD Radeon R9 Fury X uses a full liquid cooler, which cools nearly every part of the card. This isn't a first, as the Radeon R9 295X2 donned a closed loop cooling solution.

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The Radeon R9 Fury X and its radiator in full glory.

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The Fury X's cooling system keeps all of the essential parts of the card under water, with the ASIC, VRM, and DRAM all cooled with its included and very much built-in 120mm radiator. While this is an incredibly bulky cooler that I don't like, it does keep the card incredibly cool and quiet - with AMD reporting that it keeps the GPU at under 50C, and the noise from the fan itself at less than 32dBA.

I really would've preferred to have had AMD make a larger card that featured a standard cooler, like the much smaller R9 Nano does, but this is an enthusiast card.

Testing Method & Test System Configuration

Testing Method

I've played Battlefield 4 on a 64-player server to provide some real-world performance numbers. I've found this is one of the best ways to provide the most realistic performance numbers, as it involves actual gameplay in a large server that really strains most setups.

For now, I'm going to be using the same suite of benchmarks I've been using on my Tweakipedia articles, which uses a mix of synthetic benchmarks with Futuremark's 3DMark and Unigine Heaven. After that, we have a bunch of titles with built-in benchmarks (which does not represent actual in-game performance) but they are repeatable for you at home to gauge the performance of your PC or GPU.

Over time, I will be adding in new benchmarks and a new section that will concentrate solely on real-time gaming benchmarks. This will take more time per review, as I'll have to invest time into actually physically playing the games, but it'll be worth it in the long run. For now, let's get right into the synthetic benchmarks and see how this AMD Radeon R9 Fury X performs.

Test System Configuration

We only recently built our new X99-powered system, something you can read about here. As for the detailed specifications, this is what we're running:

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  • CPU: Intel Core i7 5820K processor w/Corsair H110 cooler
  • Motherboard: GIGABYTE X99 Gaming G1 Wi-Fi
  • RAM: 16GB Corsair Vengeance 2666MHz DDR4
  • Storage: 240GB SanDisk Extreme II and 480GB SanDisk Extreme II
  • Chassis: Lian Li T60 Pit Stop
  • PSU: Corsair AX1200i digital PSU
  • Software: Windows 7 Ultimate x64
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We're running the system at stock CPU speeds, which will provide more of a 'real-world' feel to our benchmarks. Sure, this isn't an i7-5960X at 5GHz, but what person is going to team up an incredibly expensive CPU with a mid-range GPU? Not many.

Our GPU tests are changing, shifting toward more of a real-world feel. But don't worry, we will be doing some crazy balls-to-the-wall tests that will see serious overclocks, Extreme Edition processors, and much more in the coming months. For the most part, we will be doing more real-world testing by teaming up the right processor with the right GPU in its price category.

Benchmarks - Synthetic

3DMark Fire Strike - 1080p

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3DMark Fire Strike Extreme - 1440p

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3DMark Fire Strike Ultra - 4K

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Heaven - 1080p

Unigine Heaven benchmark

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Heaven - 1440p

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Heaven - 4K

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Synthetic benchmarks is where AMD will battle best for the moment, until there are some new optimized drivers for the Fury X. Starting off with the 1080p benchmark in 3DMark, we see the Fury X being equal to the GTX 980 Ti. At 1440p, the Fury X loses to the GTX 980 Ti, and at 4K the Fury X gets close to the GTX 980 Ti, but still falls short.

Moving over to Heaven at 1080p, the Fury X falls quite short of the GTX 980 Ti, with the 1440p results not being any better at all. At 4K, the Fury X does much better, getting within striking distance of the GTX 980 Ti.

Benchmarks - 1080p

Battlefield 4

This is one game that we did differently, as it does not feature a built-in benchmarking feature. When it comes to Battlefield 4, there are countless ways you can benchmark it. Some find a spot in the single player campaign which is easily repeatable, and use that. For our testing, we've chosen to use a 64-player online multiplayer server for real-time performance statistics.

We joined a 64-player map and played for five minutes using FRAPS, pulling our minimum/average and maximum FPS. We did this for each test, we run the game for 5 minutes at 1080p/1440p and 4K two times each. One time with Medium settings, and another with a custom Ultra preset (disabling AA). It's time consuming, but it gives us a perfect look into true real-world performance.

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And again, this time with the Ultra preset.

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Grand Theft Auto V

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GRID Autosport

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Metro: Last Light

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Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

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Thief

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Tomb Raider

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BioShock Infinite

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You can find our performance summary of all of our gaming tests later in the review.

Benchmarks - 1440p

Battlefield 4

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GRID Autosport

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Metro: Last Light

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Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

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Thief

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Tomb Raider

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BioShock Infinite

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You can find our performance summary of all of our gaming tests later in the review.

Benchmarks - 4K

Battlefield 4

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Grand Theft Auto V

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GRID Autosport

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Metro: Last Light

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Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor

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Thief

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Tomb Raider

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BioShock Infinite

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You can find our performance summary of all of our gaming tests later in the review.

Performance Summary

How Does the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Stack Up?

I only had a few hours with the card, so we will be writing some follow up pieces on the Fury X with some GPU battles against a bunch of other cards we have here. This will include the 390X, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti and Titan X - and then all over again in CrossFire and SLI.

For now, let's see how it compares with the Hawaii-based Radeon R9 390X, and NVIDIA's full array of GTX 900 series cards in the form of the GeForce GTX 960, GTX 980, GTX 980 Ti and Titan X.

Performance at 1080p

Starting with Battlefield 4 performance at 1920x1080 and the Medium preset, the Fury X is beating the GTX 980, but loses to the GTX 980 Ti. Moving up to the Ultra preset (minus AA), we see the HBM-powered card losing to the GTX 980 Ti by a considerable margin.

Moving over to GRID: Autosport, the Radeon R9 Fury X doesn't do too well at 1080p, where it can't beat the GTX 980. But things improve as the HBM climbs up to higher resolutions. In games where memory bandwidth is made to good use, HBM shows its true colors - starting with Metro: Last Light beating the GTX 980, but losing to the GTX 980 Ti by just 2FPS.

Shadow of Mordor performance is impressive on the Fury X, with 112FPS, losing to the GTX 980 Ti again by just 2FPS. In Thief, the Fury X beats the GTX 980, and loses to the GTX 980 Ti by 10FPS, or around 10%.

Performance at 1440p

I was expecting so much more out of the Fury X in Battlefield 4 at 1440p, but it loses quite badly to the GTX 980 Ti on the Medium preset. At 2560x1440, the Fury X begins to stretch its legs with GRID: Autosport - but it ultimately falls short of the GTX 970, 980 and every other high-end NVIDIA offering. But holy Metro: Last Light benchmark, Batman - where the Fury X demolishes everything else on our charts.

Shadow of Mordor continues that, with 86FPS against the GTX 980 Ti and its 83FPS, but loses to the Titan X and its 91FPS. Thief performance on the Fury X at 1440p was great, with 70FPS, against the GTX 980 Ti and its 72FPS and Titan X with 73FPS.

Performance at 4K

This is why we're all here - so strap yourselves in and prepare for 4K on Fury X. Battlefield 4 on the Medium preset at 4K sees the Fury X losing to the reference GTX 980, which is just sad. The GTX 980 Ti is out and ahead with close to 50% more frames per second. The Fury X does a little better with the Ultra preset, but it manages the same average performance as the R9 390X... let alone beginning to compete with the GTX 980 Ti. Shifting to Metro: Last Light, the Fury X scales right up to the heights of the GTX 980 Ti, but falls just 2FPS short once again, and 4FPS short of the Titan X.

But Shadow of Mordor takes the cake, with 78FPS compared to 65FPS on the GTX 980 Ti and 70FPS on the Titan X. On Thief, the Fury X, GTX 980 Ti and Titan X are all equal - with 48FPS.

Overclocking, Power Consumption and Sound Testing

Overclocking - Let's See How Far We Can Go

We had absolutely no time to overclock our Fury X, so we're going to concentrate on this in a follow up article.

Power Consumption

One of the interesting parts of the new Radeon R9 Fury X is its power consumption, which is something we were interested in seeing from the get-go. We were impressed with the results, which you can see below.

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With our entire system consuming 375W, this puts the R9 Fury X at 15W more power consumption than the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

Sound Testing

We were running right down to the wire to deliver this review, and didn't have enough time for proper audio testing. We will talk about this in a future article, but from our benchmarking sessions, we didn't notice the card and its massive radiator and cooling making any additional noise - which is great.

AMD rates the Radeon R9 Fury X at 32dBa, making it one of the quietest flagship video cards on the market.

What's Hot, What's Not & Final Thoughts

This is where you can fast forward to the final section of the review, and get a quick recap and points on the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X.

What's Hot

High Bandwidth Memory: This is the one of the most exciting technologies to ever be put on a video card, or any product, period. HBM is the future - plain and simple. It allows for smaller video cards, less power consumption and in the future some seriously high memory bandwidth that we should see topple 1TB/sec in 2016 with HBM2.

AMD's Industrial Design: The Fury X is AMD's best looking card to date; it is just hands down gorgeous. The soft touch, short video card and style is just great. AMD needs a good pat on the back here.

Super Small - Thanks To HBM: This is the shortest flagship video card we've ever seen. The R9 Nano will change this, but until then, people are going to be quite shocked at how powerful a tiny little card like the Fury X can be.

Impressive 4K Performance: This is where AMD needed to battle the hardest, and we're happy to say that the 4K performance was impressive. It is neck and neck with the GTX 980 Ti and Titan X in most of our benchmarks, with NVIDIA winning some, and losing some to the Fury X.

What's Not

Fiji Doesn't Really Bring Anything New to the Table: Where NVIDIA's Maxwell architecture really delivered some big changes, the Fiji architecture doesn't stand out. I've personally said to NVIDIA that people actually know 'what' Maxwell is, where most people don't refer to the Fury X as 'Fiji'. The Radeon R9 Fury X is still powered by the Graphics Core Next 1.2 architecture, but we're with the second update on the third iteration of GCN. It's not technically GCN 1.3, as I'm guessing AMD might be saving that for 2016 with the shrink to 16nm and the use of HBM2.

$649 Pricing: This is the one part of the Fury X strategy I don't think AMD had planned with the GTX 980 Ti in mind. At $649, it's good value for money, but not great value for money. At this price, you really have to weigh up your decisions, as the GTX 980 Ti can be had for the same price, without the need of the cumbersome radiator and water cooling nuisance.

Only 4GB of VRAM - WTF, AMD!: Really? Just 4GB of HBM? This isn't AMD's fault... but a limitation of HBM1. HBM2 will allow 8GB+ of VRAM, but for now AMD is stuck at 4GB. So their flagship video card has 4GB of VRAM, while their new refreshed 290X in the form of the 390X features 8GB of VRAM... yeah.

HDMI 1.4a, Not HDMI 2.0!: This might not sound like a lot, but it's a huge omission from a new iteration of the GCN architecture. HDMI 1.4a is limited to 4K at 30Hz, but HDMI 2.0 has support for 4K at 60Hz. It's not a big deal, but for some people who are buying big 4K TVs or HDMI-based monitors with 4K 60Hz support... this sucks.

Stock Water Cooling SUCKS: This could just be me, but I hate watercooled GPUs. The installation of the Fury X takes time, it requires that you have a large enough space to mount the radiator (which is quite thick). This can really play around with your configuration, especially in smaller cases. So where the benefits of a smaller card come in, they are quickly outweighed by a hefty-sized radiator.

Final Thoughts

So there you have it: our review on the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. Are you surprised? Shocked? Impressed? Disappointed? Excited? With this being the first flagship single GPU the company has released in over 18 months, I have to admit that I expected more. With the gigantic lead up to the Fury X, I was hoping for the Fury X to be a clear Titan X killer. What we do have is the Fury X being a card that competes against the GTX 980 Ti, which I think NVIDIA surprised AMD with when they released it. The GTX 980 Ti is a cut down Titan X that manages to equal the price of the Fury X, and battle with the new HBM-powered card at 4K.

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But you know what? We're not done with Fury X... not in the slightest. We're going to follow up on this review with an avalanche of Fury X content, where we're going to do some serious GPU showdowns against the Hawaii-based R9 390X, 390X in CrossFire, 290X, 290X in CrossFire and that's just the AMD side of things.

We're going to see how the Fury X stands up against the GTX 980, GTX 980 SLI, GTX 980 Ti, GTX 980 Ti SLI, Titan X and of course, Titan X SLI. I plan to bring the world the absolute bleeding edge of GPU content, with the Fury X being the star of this show. The HBM-powered card is going to be the centerpiece of some interesting GPU battles, of which we're going to kick off on the weekend and continue into the weeks coming. 1920x1080, 2560x1440, 3440x1440, 3840x2160 and 11520x2160 are all going to be tested - with all of our video cards about to be thrashed, keep your eyes peeled here at TweakTown for the latest and greatest video card content on the planet.

It's almost too early to tell what the Fury X is going to do in the market. With low stock levels, AMD is going to have a hard time getting these into as many gaming PCs as they want. But, with the new Fury card around the corner on July 14 (or possibly earlier, according to our sources) this could be the card to wait for. The normal Fury will be a card that partners like SAPPHIRE, MSI and HIS can release - without the huge radiator. It will be an air-cooled card, that should be slightly slower than the Fury X at stock, but I'm interested to see what the AIBs can do with the overclocking and cooling solution.

For now, the Radeon R9 Fury X replaces the R9 295X2 in terms of the 'super-ultimate-OMG' enthusiast class video card from AMD, but you know what - the R9 295X2 isn't that far behind the Fury X, and that's really saying something for the Hawaii-based card from last year.

Should you buy a Fury X? Well, that's up to you. If you take away the performance side of the card, AMD has engineered the most impressive card it has ever made. A super-small, powerful card that is next to silent in your PC. It's a marvel to look at, but let's face it - when you're dumping down 649 clams for a flagship card, you want it to beat the rival card in the GTX 980 Ti by a decent margin, right? Especially considering the HBM that this card is packed with.

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The Radeon R9 Fury X is a confusing card... as it seems like AMD needed HBM to one up NVIDIA. Why couldn't AMD build a performance card without the water cooling, and make it longer? I think enthusiasts would've preferred that, especially when looking at 2, 3, and 4-way CrossFire setups. An air-cooled Fury X would've been perfect. But a watercooled Fury X means that serious enthusiasts and multi-monitor gamers are really limited when it comes to multi-GPU with Fury X.

Standing on its own, the Fury X is an impressive card, it really is. But I don't think it's what I expected with all of this lead up and marketing from AMD. I expected something truly special from the use of High Bandwidth Memory, and I'm feeling quite disappointed to be honest. In games where memory bandwidth and VRAM are put to good use, the Fury X really excels, but other than that, there's one fact that needs to be highlighted.

AMD needed High Bandwidth Memory to even compete against NVIDIA and its continued use of GDDR5... so where will that leave us next year when both companies are on equal footing with the use of HBM2? If this is all AMD can manage with HBM1, and NVIDIA can continue to battle the Fury X with its GDDR5-based offerings, what will NVIDIA do to AMD when it moves over to not just HBM2, but the Pascal architecture and 16nm?

It places AMD in a hard position. The Radeon R9 390X is a rebrand, no matter what anyone says. The Fury X is an impressive card for sure, but the forced watercooler is something I do not like, and as a consumer (and someone with 10 years of IT retail experience selling custom PCs), this is something that will not sell well to the general consumer. It's a purely enthusiast orientated card, leaving the rest of the Fiji-based offerings to pick up the pieces. The next card we'll be testing is the Radeon R9 Fury, which we'll be getting very soon - and these cards, in my opinion, will be the exciting ones. Air coolers, and hopefully close to Fury X performance with a lower price.

In closing, the Fury X is a great card. AMD needed a great card to combat NVIDIA, but if the Fury X was released before the GTX 980 Ti and its $649 pricing, I think AMD could've clawed back some of that lost GPU market share, but the Fury X won't do that. At the end of the day, the best card to buy right now is still the GeForce GTX 980 Ti. A great card that beats the Fury X in most situations, with great custom cards from the likes of ZOTAC, EVGA, ASUS and everyone else.

The GTX 980 Ti has a normal air cooler, and not something that requires that you have space at the rear or side of your PC to install the radiator. This is the worst part of the Fury X... the fact that you need to use a massive radiator in your PC. If the Fury X was an air cooled card, I think I would've been happier with the Fury X, but here we are. Bring on the Radeon R9 Fury and Nano, AMD.

Performance (overclocking, power) 90%
Quality (build, design, cooling) 90%
General Features (display outputs, etc) 80%
Bundle, Packaging & Software 90%
Value for Money 80%
Overall 86%

The Bottom Line: AMD is back in the game somewhat with the Radeon R9 Fury X, with HBM being a true highlight at 4K. But the appalling use of HDMI 1.4a and the radiator and watercooler really bring down something that could've truly been great.

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Anthony joined the TweakTown team in 2010 and has since reviewed 100s of graphics cards. Anthony is a long time PC enthusiast with a passion of hate for games built around consoles. FPS gaming since the pre-Quake days, where you were insulted if you used a mouse to aim, he has been addicted to gaming and hardware ever since. Working in IT retail for 10 years gave him great experience with custom-built PCs. His addiction to GPU tech is unwavering and has recently taken a keen interest in artificial intelligence (AI) hardware.

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