AMD R9 Fury X 4GB Graphics Card Crossfire Review

Final Thoughts

Price

Due to the extremely limited availability of the graphics card, prices are set to fluctuate massively in the coming weeks. Currently you can pre-order an XFX model from Scan.co.uk for £546.62, however, in stock prices are as high as £649.99. In the US, prices start at $649.99 from Newegg.com. Obviously, a pair of these cards is double the price, not cheap, but you get a lot of performance for your money.

Overview

So today I had the pleasure to testing two of AMD’s most powerful graphics cards, the R9 Fury X. Overall AMD have done a great job with the cards and drivers, everything works as expected and the HBM memory has completely blown me away. Generally in Crossfire reviews, we see the VRAM becoming a limiting factor at 4K resolution. If this was the case, the 4GB provided by the Fury X duo should have had worse scaling, possibly to around 70%; however, with near 100% scaling in most of the tests, this has proven to not be the case. In our future testing, 12K resolution will be used so we can start to see how much VRAM is required. Throughout all of the Crossfire tests, I monitored the VRAM usage in the background and it confirmed that in some games, it was well above the 4GB capacity.

The performance provided by these cards is simply amazing. We all had the prenotion in our minds that NVIDIA are the best graphics card manufacturers and even though they still hold the top spot with the Titan X and GTX 980Ti; the Fury X really puts up a good fight. In Crossfire, it is cemented that this is a serious graphics card and an excellent combination. Thanks to the addition of the AIO liquid coolers, temperatures and noises have been kept as low as possible, but they do remove a lot of heat; so make sure they have adequate air flow; otherwise you could have a seriously hot PC case.

These cards are brand new and with them comes a brand new technology; HBM. This means that they have a higher than normal price due to this new technology. As we have seen since launch, stock levels have been depleted at many retailers, while any units still in stock have rocketed in price; some as high as £650. Along with that, as these are so new, drivers are yet fully optimised, so some games could very well see a performance boost in the next Catalyst driver release. The only real issue I can see with the cards themselves is the space required to host not only two radiators, but the four water pipes and the four PCI power leads required for the cards.

Pros

• Outstanding performance
• Silent operation at low load levels
• Almost 100% scaling in several tests
• 4GB is definitely not a limiting factor

Cons

• Drivers proved problematic in some games
• Early adopter premium

“This crossfire set-up isn’t for those with a small budget or small case or small power supply, but it is a seriously good option is you want to go 4K and take on a brand new technology with it.”

AMD R9 Fury X 4GB Graphics Card Crossfire Review