Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury 4GB Graphics Card Review

Introduction Something that we don't really get much of a buzz from is the 'second best' graphics card, Okay the R9 390 is good, but we all want to know about the R9 390X; so why has the hype kept momentum even after the R9 Fury X launch, ready for the R9 Fury? The main reason is likely the fact that it's water cooled from the factory, even though most people want water cooling, it can be problematic or even just too large to fit inside some cases. Those who held off buying the Fury X are now in for a treat thanks to AMD allowing sub-vendors the ability to customise the R9 Fury. Sapphire is one of the manufacturers who take the reference card and just make it better without over-complicating the process, which pushes the price up. By using the reference PCB, Sapphire has tweaked components and the legendary Tri-X cooler to make the Tri-X R9 Fury as good as it could possibly be. Sapphire are undoubtedly the largest AMD graphics card supplier in the world and that shines through to the products. All of the cards have support for the likes of Liquid VR, FreeSync, Eyefinity, and VSR technologies, which really give them the edge against the competition. Liquid VR is AMD's take on the VR support, providing the most comfortable and realistic experience possible through compatible headsets and graphics cards. VSR is one of the newer technologies, standing for Virtual Super Resolution, the graphics card renders the detail of a higher resolution screen and displays that detail on your current monitor. For more information, please consult the AMD Catalyst 15.7 driver release notes. Looking at the R9 Fury, it is essentially a cutback R9 Fury X, by reducing the shader units and TMU's, AMD was able to decrease the overall performance by around 10%, however this card is roughly 25% cheaper; so what gives? AMD released the R9 Fury X to compete with the Titan X and GTX 980Ti; which it did. So the only competition left was the GTX 980 and 970, which are priced around the £450 mark. AMD decided to cut back on performance to enable the R9 Fury to compete not only on performance but price also. Let's just jump into the testing to see if the wait has been worth it. Sapphire has taken a slightly different turn with the new Tri-X box styling. The R9 390X followed the same style of the R9 290X, where this seems to resemble the R9 390 Nitro box with a window cut out for a sneak peak of the card itself. Inside the box, we find the usual array of manuals and leaflets, along with a 1.8m HDMi cable and DisplayPort - DVI adapter cable. The card is the same length as the R9 390X Tri-X thanks to the Tri-X cooling shroud, however, this one is more aesthetically pleasing. Around the back, we can see the absolutely huge heatsink. The PCB is very small, the same size as the R9 Fury X. Focusing on the Power connectors, 2x 8pin PCIe allow the Fiji GPU to get all of its power. On the opposite side of the ports, we see the trademark Fury load LED's. Unlike the Fury X, these are blue when under load, which could be a differentiating feature or maybe a Sapphire special. Turning the card over, we see the full length of the card vs the PCB length. This card would have been perfect for the R9 380 Nitro cooling shroud due to the length, but that would have detracted from the premium Tri-X branding. The backplate is very nice, thankfully Sapphire has taken note and added one to this high-end card. At the business end of the card, we have 3x DisplayPort and 1x HDMi ports. Sapphire has taken the new Tri-X cooling design as seen on the R9 390X and improved it. I liked that the new design was understated, but this design is even better. Side by side you can see what has changed between the two cards. Sapphire has held back on the colour of the Sapphire logos and added more detail around the fans. Turning the cards over, you can see that the R9 Fury Tri-X edition has more heat pipes and a much larger heatsink. Fiji Architecture and High Bandwidth Memory Fiji is the newest architecture released by AMD in around 2 years. Based on the most recent GCN 1.2 and 28nm process, it aims to bring 'revolutionary' performance to the end-user. A close look at the package, we can see the GPU core surrounded by 4 HBM stacks. These stacks are extremely compact, measuring just 5mm x 7mm footprint. The advantages of moving the memory from the PCB to the Interposer is the decreased distance for communications, which increases bandwidth and decreases power and overall reduces the footprint of the PCB; enabling a high-end graphics option to be used in ITX size computer cases. With the integration of the memory chips, it means extra components such as VRMs no longer need to be included on the PCB, again reducing the overall size of the PCB. This is great for the graphics card market, with HBM v2 introduced more widely in the next generation of cards, but we could also see designs like this enter the CPU market, mobile phones or any other device that currently has separate core and RAM modules. Test Systems and Procedures Before we delve into any testing we would like to take this opportunity to overview our test system. Test System Motherboard - Gigabyte X99-Gaming G1 WiFi LGA 2011-3 Motherboard Processor - Intel Core i7 5820K at Stock 3.3GHz RAM - 16GB (4 X 4GB) Crucial Ballistix Sport DDR4 2400MHz CPU Cooler - Thermaltake Water 3.0 with Gelid GC-Extreme Power Supply - BeQuiet Dark Power Pro 11 1200w Main Storage Drive - Crucial M550 512GB Chassis - Lian Li T80 Test Bench Displays - AOC U2868PQU 4K Operating System - Windows 8.1 Pro 64 Bit Driver Details Hardware Used "Killawatt” style electricity usage meter wall plug Precision Gold N05CC Decibel meter Games Used Batman Arkham Knight Battlefield 4 Bioshock Infinite Grand Theft Auto V Hitman Absolution Metro Last Light Tomb Raider Benchmarks Used 3DMark Unigine Valley Other Software Used Unigine Heaven CPU-ID HWMonitor TechPowerUp GPU-Z Luxmark 3DMark "The new 3DMark includes everything you need to benchmark your hardware. With three all new tests you can bench everything from smartphones and tablets, to notebooks and home PCs, to the latest high-end, multi-GPU gaming desktops. And it's not just for Windows. With 3DMark you can compare your scores with Android and iOS devices too. It's the most powerful and flexible 3DMark we've ever created." From Futuremark.com Knowing that the R9 Fury core is roughly 10% less of the full fat R9 Fury X Fiji core, we would expect performance to be around 10% less. So far, FireStrike has proven this. Batman: Arkham Knight "Batman: Arkham Knight is an action-adventure video game developed by Rocksteady Studios and published byWarner Bros. Interactive Entertainment for Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. Based on the DC Comics superhero Batman, it is the successor to Warner Bros. Games Montréal's 2013 video game Batman: Arkham Origins, and the fourth and final installment in the Batman: Arkham series, and the first Arkham game to receive an M rating by the ESRB. Arkham Knight was released worldwide on June 23, 2015." From Wikipedia. We understand that Batman: Arkham Knight is a little broken, however, our tests have given good performance indicators through the games benchmark tool. Here we see around 10% less performance than the R9 Fury X again. Battlefield 4 "Battlefield 4 is coming to PC, powered by the advanced technology of DICE’s proprietary Frostbite 3 engine. Blur the line between game and glory in Battlefield 4. With dynamic destructable environments, vehicular combat, and the chaos of all-out-war with 64 players, Battlefield 4 on PC will be an unmatched interactive experience. In addition to its hallmark multiplayer, Battlefield 4 features an intense, dramatic character-driven campaign that starts with the evacuation of American VIPs from Shanghai and follows your squad's struggle to find its way home. There is no comparison. Immerse yourself in the glorious chaos of all-out war, found only in Battlefield." From Battlefield.com Performance is a lot closer in BattleField, let's hope AMD have done what NVIDIA had with the Titan X and GTX 980Ti. Bioshock Infinite "BioShock Infinite is a first-person shooter like you’ve never seen. Just ask the judges from E3 2011, where the Irrational Games title won over 85 editorial awards, including the Game Critics Awards’ Best of Show. Set in 1912, players assume the role of former Pinkerton agent Booker DeWitt, sent to the flying city of Columbia on a rescue mission. His target? Elizabeth, imprisoned since childhood. During their daring escape, Booker and Elizabeth form a powerful bond -- one that lets Booker augment his own abilities with her world-altering control over the environment. Together, they fight from high-speed Sky-Lines, in the streets and houses of Columbia, on giant zeppelins, and in the clouds, all while learning to harness an expanding arsenal of weapons and abilities, and immersing players in a story that is not only steeped in profound thrills and surprises, but also invests its characters with what Game Informer called “An amazing experience from beginning to end." From Bioshockinfinite.com Performance again within 10% of each other. Grand Theft Auto V “Grand Theft Auto V is an open world, an action-adventure video game developed by Rockstar North and published by Rockstar Games. It was released on 17 September 2013 for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. An enhanced version of the game was released on 18 November 2014 for the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and 14 April 2015 for Microsoft Windows. The game is the first main entry in the Grand Theft Auto series since 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV. Set within the fictional state of San Andreas (based on Southern California), the single-player story follows three criminals and their efforts to commit heists while under pressure from a government agency. The open world design lets players freely roam San Andreas, which includes open countryside and the fictional city of Los Santos (based on Los Angeles).” From Wikipedia. Similar story again, just behind the Fury X, not bad! Hitman Absolution "Hitman: Absolution is the fifth title in the Hitman series by producer, IO Interactive, published by Square Enix and co-published by Eidos. The game was released for thePlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows on November 20, 2012. Hitman: Absolution runs on IO Interactive's proprietary Glacier 2 game engine, combining classic Hitman game mechanics with new mechanics." From hitman.wikia.com Performance lacking at 4K, falling way down behind the GTX 980, but very good results at 1440p. Metro Last Light "Metro: Last Light (formerly Metro 2034) is a first-person shooter and horror video game developed by Ukrainian studio 4A Games and published by Deep Silver for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It was released in May 2013. The game is set in a post-apocalyptic world and features a mixture of action-oriented and stealth gameplay. The game exists in the universe of the novel, Metro 2033, and its sequels, written by Russian author, Dmitry Glukhovsky, but does not follow any direct storylines from the books. Metro:Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the canonical ending from the novel, ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones.Metro: Last Light features technology which boasts of lighting effects and improved physics claimed to set a new graphical benchmark on the PC and consoles." From Wikipedia.org Well that was unexpected, not only is the Fury X faster here, but the R9 Fury even puts up the fight for second place. Tomb Raider "On 5 March 2013, Square Enix released Tomb Raider, billed as a reboot of the franchise. In Tomb Raider, the player is confronted with a much younger Lara Croft who is shipwrecked and finds herself stranded on a mysterious island rife with danger, both natural and human. In contrast to the earlier games Croft is portrayed as vulnerable, acting out of necessity, desperation and sheer survival rather than for a greater cause or personal gain." From Wikipedia.org Back to normal in Tomb Raider, just lagging behind the GTX 980Ti. Unigine Valley "Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user." From Unigine.com. Unigine Valley really puts the cards under pressure, showing all potential weaknesses and strengths. Here we can see exactly what we predicted happening again. Compute Performance LuxMark is a OpenCL benchmark tool. The idea for the program was conceived in 2009 by Jean-Francois ‘Jromang’ Romang. The idea was quite simple, wrap SLG inside an easy to use graphical user interface and use it as a benchmark for OpenCL. From LuxRender.net. Compute performance comes directly from the core, so being roughly a 10% reduction from the Fury X, we should expect to see near 10% loss; which we do here. Overclocking and Overclocked Performance Sadly, the Fiji cores are locked pretty tight with any voltage tweaking throwing the card off. I did manage an overclock of 1148MHz core, however this proved unstable in FireStrike Ultra. 3DMark Fire Strike Giving this card an overclock gives it a nice boost, pushing it just above the R9 Fury X by a small margin. Noise, Power Consumption and Temperatures Noise Everyone has their own reasonable noise level when it comes to comes to components in a computer. Some can handle all fans at 100% load to keep temperatures down, some want a completely silent computer. The cooling design on the Tri-x branded card is simply amazing and thanks to the new passive features implemented in the R9 300 series, this card can run passively under 71°c. Power Consumption With electricity becoming increasingly expensive across most parts of the world the need for computer components to become power efficient has never been more relevant. Graphics cards are often the most power-hungry components inside a desktop system so having an efficient graphics card is very important to keeping power bills under control. Power is often correlated to heat and so lower power consumption means a graphics card is likely to run slightly cooler and put out less heat into your system meaning your other components will run cooler with improved longevity. AMD and Nvidia have both made power consumption an integral part of the way graphics cards dynamically overclock so the need for graphics card vendors to use efficient VRM and PCB designs is becoming important to maximise performance. We take power readings after 5 minutes of two different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load. Here's an interesting graph, with the 10% reduction in performance; we can see a 10% reduction in power consumption also. When overclocked, the power is pushed up just above the Fury X. Temperatures The cooling solution which graphics card vendors choose to implement is one of the main differences that consumers have to contend with when choosing a graphics cards. Apart from their acoustic properties, the thermal properties of graphics card coolers are extremely important. Lower temperatures are always better and with AMD and Nvidia opting to use dynamic overclocking algorithms that take temperature into account it is important that graphics card vendors use high performance cooling solutions in order to maximise performance. The era of graphics cards reaching dangerous temperatures are now in the past but the importance of lower temperatures still remains. Lower temperatures mean better stability, longer component longevity and lower fan speeds .We take temperature readings after 5 minutes of two different load scenarios: desktop idle and Unigine Heaven load. We always record actual temperatures and make a note of the ambient; in the case where more than 1 GPU is used an average is created. This card runs passively under 71°c, but the fans stay on for a little while after a benchmark/ game is turned off to ensure temperatures are brought to a reasonable level. After 5 minutes, the temperatures plateaued at 58°c and topped out at 72°c and 80°c for stock and overclocked respectively. Final Thoughts Price HBM still is a limiting factor when buying a Fury graphics card, however, stock levels are improving. The Sapphire R9 Fury is currently available from OverclockersUK for just £449.99. In the US, it is currently not stocked at one of our recommended stockists, however, prices are expected to be around $549.99. Overview So today I had the pleasure of testing Sapphire's Tri-X version of the R9 Fury. I'm pleased to say that it didn't disappoint. We already knew that it was a cut back version of the R9 Fury X, so we could estimate the performance and it fell straight in line with our expectations. With the launch of this card, AMD has cemented it's place at almost all places in the graphics card market, scoring top end performance with the R9 Fury X, high-end with R9 Fury and mid to low end with the R9 300 series. The R9 Fury in particular, was aimed to directly take on the GTX 980 at a similar price point, which it has happily done in most of our tests. Aesthetically speaking, the card is gorgeous; sharp lines with tasteful splashes of colour AND a backplate. It took a good step with the Tri-X design on the R9 390X and made it even better on this card, the subtle circuit style detailing around the fans ties in with the back plate and the small splashes of colour would now allow the card to fit in with more computer themes. Performance wise, it was as predicted. It sat just below the R9 Fury X and just above the GTX 980 in most of our tests. It is more than capable of dominating 1080p and 1440p, however, it lacks the grunt to perform well at 4K. Although that could be changed with a few simple quality changes in the games settings. Once the price drops below £400 per card, this would make a brilliant Crossfire option. With this graphics card, we saw the introduction of HBM. This has proven that the quantity of VRAM isn't a limiting factor, more of the quality (or bandwidth) of the connection. It has been proven that just 4GB can more than compete on the same level as the 6GB GTX 980Ti and 12GB Titan X. In the next version of HBM, we are keen to see a much higher quantity of VRAM to 6/8/12GB capacities to see what it can really do. The card carries an early adopter premium, but in the next generation of cards, HBM could be introduced within the more mainstream market. Sadly all cards have a downside and with this it is just the sheer size of it; measuring in at just under 31cm, it is enough to put some buyers off. Maybe they could design a new Tri-X cooler with two conventional mounted fans and one on the end to draw cooler air from inside the case? Something like that would really make the R9 Fury nano pop. Choosing an award for this card was difficult, it's obviously not the most powerful nor the cheapest, but then I remembered that for the price it is the most powerful option available. Pros Tri-X cooler keeps everything cool and quiet Sapphire build quality Bundles of features thanks to Catalyst 15.7 drivers Advancement in VRAM technology with HBM More competition at the <£500 market segment Cons Large cooling shroud can limit potential customers "The Sapphire Tri-X R9 Fury is an absolutely storming card, something else to give NVIDIA a real run"