Video Cards & GPUs News - Page 318

One of the key features of the new Radeon 300 and R9 Fury series of cards was something that AMD introduced as 'Frame Rate Target Control', which effectively limits how many frames per second that your card renders, which in turn has some serious power savings and limits the total heat output of your card - great, huh?

Jason Evangelho, a contributor for PCWorld has played around with it with some great results. He reports that there's a limited of between 55FPS and 95FPS for most DX10- and DX11-based games. The benefits of FRTC is reduced power consumption, heat output, and fan noise. In games where your new Radeon R9 390X or Radeon R9 Fury X might not be doing much work - in something like League of Legends - the power savings could be immense.

Instead of pushing 200FPS+, you can limit your AMD GPU to your monitor's refresh of 60Hz (for example) and have your card doing one-third the work. But what are the benefits like? Let's start with GPU temperatures:

It wasn't more than 12 hours ago that we reported on what the Radeon R9 Fury will have in store for us, but now we're seeing that the pricing on the upcoming ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX video card.

The ASUS Radeon R9 Fury STRIX will include the 3584 stream processors that will come on the Fiji PRO based GPU, 4GB of HBM, and the awesome STRIX cooler from ASUS. We should expect the ASUS made R9 Fury STRIX to be priced at around $700, which is really jumping into the GeForce GTX 980 Ti territory.

Now we have to hope that ASUS is able to do something with the clocks on the card, because the SP count is down from the Fury X, which is only toe-to-toe and not a total GTX 980 Ti beater. If the R9 Fury can't beat the GTX 980 Ti, this pricing might be far too high for most people.

World exclusive: AMD launched the Radeon R9 Fury X not too long ago, and while it was a great card for 4K gaming, the requirement of a radiator and watercooling setup stopped it from greatness. But, the Radeon R9 Fury is the card that will really see AMD fight back at NVIDIA, but the specs have been kept under wraps, until now.

We were the first to bring you news of AMD calling its next generation video card the Fury X, and here we are again with the first official specs on the Fury. According to our industry insiders, the Radeon R9 Fury will feature 3584 Stream Processors, down from the 4096 on the full Fury X. The Fiji-based GPU will be clocked at 1050MHz, which is identical to that of the Fury X. We have 4GB of High Bandwidth Memory that provides the same 512GB/sec of bandwidth, clocked at 500MHz (1GHz effective). We are being told to expect temperatures of the Fiji PRO-based R9 Fury to be less than 75C, which is considerably higher than the 50C or so from the watercooled Fury X.

The biggest difference between the Fury and Fury X is that the Fury is air-cooled, with AIB partners able to put on their respective coolers onto the card. The other big difference is that the Fiji PRO GPU is what is powering the Fury, with 512 less Stream Processors. We shouldn't expect performance to be that much less, probably 10-15% less than Fury X. But, without that huge radiator and pump, we're going to have an impressive card to combat the GeForce GTX 980 and GTX 980 Ti.

After a week with the new AMD Radeon R9 Fury X, one of the things that has annoyed me was the very loud noise coming from the pump. It sounds like coil whine, and under heavy stress, the Fury X really begins to sound quite loud.

But it looks like a member of the AnandTech has noticed that AMD is shipping an updated version of the radiator with the latest batches of the Fury X. It looks like the first batch that mostly went to selected press and a handful floating out into the world is the only one effected, with the second batch and hopefully beyond including a radiator that isn't as noisy.

The unit that the news of the revised radiator was from SAPPHIRE, so we should expect other AIB partners to use the revised pump as soon as possible.

Forbes' Jason Evangelho has kicked one of the most awesome things I've ever seen for video cards, where he started off by posting a picture of himself on his Facebook cuddled up to the HBM-powered AMD Radeon R9 Fury X.

AMD's Roy Taylor kicked in posting his own photo, and then offering $2 to the charity of Jason's choice for every picture, up until $500 is raised for the hashtag #guyscuddlingwithvideocards. Well, I have countless video cards here in my office, so I covered my daughter from head to toe in video cards and snapped the above photo! Great fun!

You can support Jason right here.

Adding to the myriad of announced AMD Radeon R9 Fury X video cards is PowerColor's offering, marking yet another year of AMD manufacturing, continuing since 1997.

Also featuring 4GB of High Bandwitdh Memory, PowerColor has released this card with a core speed of 1050MHz, a memory speed of 500MHz, a HDMI output, three DisplayPort outputs and with DirectX 12 support included.

A 3000RPM fan cools the all-in-one closed loop watercooling unit, a real time eight LED indicator helps keep you informed at all times as to what's going on inside this beast and this 7.5-inch card claims to pack memory into a 94% smaller space than previous renditions. Further supporting Virtual Super Resolution, FreeSync, Liquid VR, and 4K resolution, this card can be researched here.

If you're thinking about upgrading, maybe now is the time as VisionTek announces its launch of a Radeon R9 Fury X card alongside the R9 300 and R7 300 series - all made available from June 24th 2015.

Michael Innes, President of VisionTek is excited for this release, stating in a recent press release that "We are focused on alignment with PC Gamers and are excited to announce the new features embedded in AMD's Fury X design." Also interested in the advancement of Virtual Reality, Innes continued "We believe Virtual Reality will transform the way we experience and interact with our PC. We are embarking on a new universe of entertainment and the new VisionTek AMD powered cards create the required platform for launch."

Offering LiquidVR Technology, Freesync Technology and Virtual Super Resolution, these cards by VisionTek cater towards 1440p and 1080p gaming situations and all feature a similar styling scheme, brandishing a mainly-black color outlay with hints of red.

Soon after the official global announcements came, Club 3D's AMD Radeon Fury X offering has also been unveiled, self-claimed as "the fastest GPU in the world and it's here to take your gaming performance to a completely new dimension."

Boasting High Bandwidth Memory, an all-in-one cooling system, 6K surround capabilities and a marketing spiel tailored towards 4K gaming, the Club 3D 4GB HBM AMD Radeon Fury X seems to be available for purchase immediately, or so as the press release eludes to.

If you're wanting one for yourself, we've been told that websites like Newegg and Amazon should have pricing listed, however after a quick look no results came back positive. Either you're going to have to wait or email them yourselves for a copy of this model.

A few days ago we were in Sydney, Australia for the AMD unveiling event for the new Radeon 300 series and the new Radeon R9 Fury X. During a Q&A session with AMD's Chief Gaming Scientist, Richard Huddy, we asked if the Radeon R9 Fury X could be used in 4-way CrossFire configurations.

Huddy replied saying that you can indeed use the Radeon R9 Fury X in 4-way CrossFire setups, but that the team has already played with 8-way setups under Linux. But, I also asked if it was a problem with the massive radiator that is attached to each Fury X, and that a 4-way CrossFire configuration would be quite hectic, even inside the biggest chassis.

AMD didn't seem to clearly answer the question, but noted that Fury X in 4-way CrossFire has been done before. We have secured ourselves a second Fury X for some CrossFire lovin', so expect some Fury X CrossFire scores in the coming days.

Sure, the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X gets all of the attention, but I think one of the best video cards to be released this year is going to be the Fiji-based Radeon R9 Nano. I think we're going to see an entire new class of Mini-ITX-based PCs that will pack a serious performance punch, made possible by the R9 Nano.

The Radeon R9 Nano is a tiny little card, as long as the x16 PCIe port it goes into, and consumes just 175W of power from its single 8-pin PCIe power connector.

As you can see, it fits in my hand without a problem - which can't be said for any flagship video card on the market right now. Just imagine a super-powered Steam Machine or 4K-capable PC that can sit next to your PC, virtually silent, thanks to the HBM-powered R9 Nano.