ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 4GB HBM Graphics Card Review

The R9 Fury from ASUS, the 2nd most powerful GPU from the red camp under the hood of ASUS’ STRIX AMD line-up.

ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 4GB HBM Graphics Card Review

As with ASUS cards, they carry the signature red and black appearance. The 3-fan cooling system design handles the hot beast underneath.

ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 4GB HBM Graphics Card Review

The shroud on the DirectCU III system lights up as the card is powered on, 2x 8-pin PCI-E indicates the card is capable of drawing up to 375W.

ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 4GB HBM Graphics Card Review

At the bottom the heatpipes are visible, stretching from front to back.

ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 4GB HBM Graphics Card Review

Being an ASUS STRIX model, the graphics card comes with a beautiful backplate with the STRIX emblem on it.

ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 4GB HBM Graphics Card Review

The unit comes with the following output –
1x DVI
1x HDMI
3x DisplayPort

ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 4GB HBM Graphics Card Review

Below is the GPU-Z for the card.

ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 4GB HBM Graphics Card Review

More details at the official product page.

Test Setup

Processor Intel Core i7-5960X
RAM HyperX Savage 2x 8GB DDR4 3000Mhz
Motherboard ASRock X99 OC Formula
Power Supply Cooler Master V850
Operating System Windows 10 64bit

Benchmarks

Unigine Heaven 4.0

Heaven 4.0
*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.

Card 1080p (avg) 4K UHD (avg)
ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 63 19
ASUS STRIX GTX 980 Ti 95 25
GALAX GeForce GTX 970 BLACK EXOC SNIPER 57 N/A
PowerColor R9 390 8GB 56 N/A

Metro Last Light

Heaven 4.0

Card 1080p (avg) 4K UHD (avg)
ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 96.5 36
ASUS STRIX GTX 980 Ti 132 50
GALAX GeForce GTX 970 BLACK EXOC SNIPER 90 N/A
PowerColor R9 390 8GB 78 N/A

Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock Infinite
Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – FullHD / 4K

Card 1080p (avg) 4K UHD (avg)
ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 136 50
ASUS STRIX GTX 980 Ti 172 63
GALAX GeForce GTX 970 BLACK EXOC SNIPER 110 N/A
PowerColor R9 390 8GB 111 N/A

Shadow of Mordor

Heaven 4.0
Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync off.

Card 1080p (avg) 4K UHD (avg)
ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 105 45
ASUS STRIX GTX 980 Ti 138 56
GALAX GeForce GTX 970 BLACK EXOC SNIPER 80 N/A
PowerColor R9 390 8GB 92 N/A

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V
Settings : Every option to the MAX setting available.

Card 1080p (avg) 4K UHD (avg)
ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 41 21
ASUS STRIX GTX 980 Ti 65 47
GALAX GeForce GTX 970 BLACK EXOC SNIPER 41 N/A
PowerColor R9 390 8GB 39 N/A

The Division

The Division
Settings : Set to ULTRA, V-sync OFF.

Card 1080p (avg) 4K UHD (avg)
ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 77 32
GALAX GeForce GTX 970 BLACK EXOC SNIPER 64 N/A

Temperature

Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.

Card Idle(°C) Load (°C)
ASUS STRIX R9 Fury 55 80
ASUS STRIX R9 Fury (Full RPM) 30 60

The fan hovers at 19% which is very, and running near silent and doesn’t budget as long as the temperature doesn’t hit the 80s. I noted that the fan only started to move one it hit 83°C of which it eventually increases RPM until 46% and maintain the temperature at 80°C.

Power Consumption

The stress was done with Furmark Burn-in Test. Power consumption reading was taken from the watt-meter, actual power draw by the entire system from the wall point. I’m using an Cooler Master V850 with around 90% efficiency and the estimated system power draw (CPU, not including GPU) during Furmark test is 80w.

Card ASUS STRIX R9 Fury
Furmark Burn-in 352
Estimated Actual System Draw 317
Estimated Card Power Draw 237

While capable of 375W, the card on full load seems to run at only 237W as the entire system doesn’t even cross 400W wall draw.

The Verdict

The ASUS R9 Fury STRIX Graphics Card retails at around RM 3,000 – while the card is excellent, it’s not worth the price considering the performance is closer to that of an R9 390 card. I believe an R9 390X card could match the performance easily and those cards costs just around RM 2,200 range. The R9 390 in the benchmarks here costs far less, at around RM 1,800 range.

If you have intention to be powered by the red camp (AMD) GPUs then my take is you should look at R9 390 / R9 390X cards. They’re one of the best performers at that price range, with memory capacity advantage over Nvidia’s GTX 980 cards too.