AMD Radeon R9 Fury X Review: Fiji And HBM Put To The Test


Test System and Unigine Heaven v4.0

How We Configured Our Test Systems: We tested the graphics cards in this article on an EVGA X79 Dark motherboard powered by an Intel Core i7-4960X six-core processor and 16GB of Corsair DDR3-1866 RAM. The first thing we did when configuring the test system was enter the system UEFI and set all values to their "high performance" default settings and disable any integrated peripherals that wouldn't be put to use. The memory's X.M.P. profile was enabled to ensure better-than-stock performance and the solid state drive was then formatted and Windows 8.1 Professional x64 was installed. When the installation was complete, we fully updated the OS and installed the latest DirectX redist along with all of the drivers, games, and benchmark tools necessary to complete our tests.

HotHardware's Test System
Intel Core i7 Powered
Hardware Used:
Intel Core i7-4960X
(3.3GHz, Six-Core)
EVGA X79 Dark
(Intel X79 Express)

Radeon R9 Fury X
Radeon R9 390
Radeon R9 290X
Radeon R7 295X2
GeForce GTX 980
GeForce GTX Titan
GeForce GTX Titan X
GeForce GTX 980 Ti

16GB Corsair DDR3-1866
OCZ Vertex 3
Integrated Audio
Integrated Network
Relevant Software:
Windows 8.1 Pro x64
DirectX Redist
AMD Catalyst v15.15 Beta
NVIDIA GeForce Drivers v352.90 / v353.30

Benchmarks Used:
Unigine Heaven v4
3DMark "Fire Strike"
Bioshock Infinite
Hitman: Absolution
Metro Last Light
Sleeping Dogs
Crysis 3
FRAPS

Unigine Heaven v4.0 Benchmark
Pseudo-DirectX 11 Gaming

Unigine's Heaven Benchmark v4.0 is built around the Unigine game engine. Unigine is a cross-platform, real-time 3D engine, with support for DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11 and OpenGL. The Heaven benchmark--when run in DX11 mode--also makes comprehensive use of tessellation technology and advanced SSAO (screen-space ambient occlusion). It also features volumetric cumulonimbus clouds generated by a physically accurate algorithm and a dynamic sky with light scattering.


Unigine Heaven

heav1


heav2

The AMD Radeon R9 Fury X has no trouble dispatching the GeForce GTX 980 and Radeon R9 290X or 390 in the Unigine Heaven benchmark, but it couldn't quite catch the GeForce GTX 980 Ti.

heaven
GeForce GTX 980 Ti Frame Time Data

heaven times
Radeon R9 Fury X Frame Time Data


Though overall performance was roughly in-line with the GeForce GTX 980 Ti, the Fury X showed significantly more variances in frame latency. Notice how consistent the 980 Ti is versus the Fury X.


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