Reviewed by Chris Noel Hidalgo
It’s been a long time coming for the AMD Radeon R9 Fury X. After leaked renders, specs, and presentation decks, the real thing is finally here. We test what Team Red has to offer gamers with the Fury X’s Sapphire iteration.
Specifications:
- Stream Processors: 4096
- Core Speed: 1050 MHz
- VRAM: 4 GB HBM
- Memory Speed: 1000 MHz
- Memory Bus: 4096-bit
- Memory Bandwidth: 512 GB/s
- Power Requirement: Two 150 W 8-pin PCIe power required; at least 750 W PSU
- Output: 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI
- Cooling: Liquid-cooled with 120 mm fan and radiator
- Others: LiquidVR, FreeSync, Eyefinity, ZeroCore
- Power, and DirectX 12 ready
- Dimensions: Dual slot, 195 x 110 x 40 mm (L x W x D)
Design: 4/5
The Radeon R9 Fury X isn’t the world’s first short graphics card. It isn’t even the world’s first liquid-cooled GPU. But it is the first one to effectively mix the two together for a product that’s impressive to say the least.
The main body is quite hefty owing to its closed aluminum build and glossy nickel overlay. On the top edge are the auxiliary power connectors and LED-enabled Radeon logo; on the front are more branding marques; on the bottom are the PCIE fingers; and on the back are microswitches for the GPU activity indicators near the power plugs. As the Fury X is a water-cooled card, it does away with the rear exhaust beside the display interfaces.
The sleeved water cooling tube and fan power connector extend out of the Fury X’s far end, terminating in the thick heat-dissipation apparatus. If you’re wondering where the pump is, it’s built right into the main card, underneath the glossy shroud.
Overall, its design effectively conveys its wicked graphics power without going over the top.
Hardware: 4/5
All that time on the drawing board allowed AMD to cram a truckload of innovations into the Fury X. At its core is the new Fiji graphics processor with 4096 stream processors and 8.9 billion transistors, knocking the teeth off the brand’s previous king, the 290X. It also hums at a speed of 1050 MHz, all the while putting to rest AMD’s power-hungry reputation with its 275 W base draw.
The company was also able to lay first blood on the brand new high-bandwidth memory technology which trades off GDDR5’s 7 GB/s memory speed for a wider and more efficient 4096-bit-wide memory bus. Though it now struts a lower 1000 MHz memory clock, the breakthrough allows the Fury X to zoom at a whopping memory bandwidth speed of 512 GB/s. That’s more than enough speed for smooth 4K widescreen gaming across three monitors.
Lastly, it boasts of an integrated closed loop liquid cooler from Cooler Master with a 120 mm Scythe Gentle Typhoon fan bearing the Sapphire logo.
User Experience: 4.5/5
I’ll start this off by saying that even though the Fury X’s short body seems perfect for small form factor PCs, the additional bulk added by the new cooling system will challenge those with really tiny cases. I own the 11.5 liter Silverstone SG13 and everything was a tight fit. It’s not a knock against this card, but just something SFF enthusiasts will have to keep in mind.
Moving on, it didn’t surprise me that the R9 Fury X was able to manhandle almost anything I threw at it. Paired to an Intel Core i5 4460, 8 GB of RAM, and a 900p monitor, the frame rates across my benchmark suite—which includes Unigine Valley, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and Counter Strike: Global Offensive—were through the roof. I also took the DirectX 12-ready Ashes of the Singularity out for a spin and I almost forgot that I was supposed to be doing a review. The experience is just that enjoyable, and better yet, the card remained around the 65°C mark with all settings maxed out in each game.
Value: 4/5
If you go to the right stores, you can get the Sapphire Radeon R9 Fury X for as low as PHP 32,000. Though the price seems steep, you’re actually getting a ton of power out of the box, with overclocking sure to make this card a graphics-crunching monster for the foreseeable future and beyond.
What’s Hot:
- Because it’s water-cooled. Get it?
- Powerful
- HBM technology
What’s Not:
- Tubes are a bit rigid
- Pricey
Bottomline:
- I honestly wish that they’d forget to take this review unit back.
Final Score: 16.5/20
