PowerColor R9 FURY X 4GB HBM Graphic Card Review

This is the second Fury X unit to arrive in my lab and I’ll just go ahead and tell you that it performs no differently from the previous Fury X but there’s certainly more to talk of the PowerColor R9 Fury X.

So here it is, I’ll just skip the description of the pictures – basically it’s a short card and it’s based on AMD’s reference for Fury X and the only difference between this PowerColor model and other brands is the sticker.

PowerColor R9 FURY X 4GB HBM Graphic Card Review

PowerColor R9 FURY X 4GB HBM Graphic Card Review

PowerColor R9 FURY X 4GB HBM Graphic Card Review

PowerColor R9 FURY X 4GB HBM Graphic Card Review

Test Setup & Overclocking

Processor Intel Core i5-4670K
RAM AVEXIR Blitz 2x4GB 1600Mhz
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z97X Gaming 3
Cooler NZXT Kraken X31
Monitor Dell UP3214Q Monitor
Power Supply FSP AURUM S 700W
Casing NZXT S340
Operating System Windows 10 64bit

Here’s the GPU-Z capture.

PowerColor R9 FURY X 4GB HBM Graphic Card Review

And this time around I managed to overclock it by an additional 5% but the performance gap was just too little to be worth the effort of benchmarking.

PowerColor R9 FURY X 4GB HBM Graphic Card Review

Unlike the Sapphire model that I reviewed that happens to be one of the earlier batch, this new batch of R9 Fury X happens to be one that does not have a noisy cooling system. Thumbs up to AMD for having this issue settled.

Benchmarks

Unigine Heaven 4.0

Heaven 4.0
*NOTE : Details are set to maximum.
*NOTE : AA disabled in 4K test.

Card 1080p (avg) 4K (avg)
PowerColor R9 Fury 68.3 20.6
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC 90.7 24

Metro Last Light

Heaven 4.0

Card 1080p (avg) 4K (avg)
PowerColor R9 Fury 90.0 38.5
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC 97.7 45.3

Bioshock Infinite

Settings are at
2 – UltraDX11_DDOF | 2 – Custom | 1 – 16:9 | 4 – 1920×1080
*NO 4K test on this one. Just figured out how to get it to work on 4K after the 980Ti left the lab. Will update when possible.

Card 1080p (avg) 4K (avg)
PowerColor R9 Fury 141.0 53.5
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC 151.4 59.9

Shadow of Mordor

Shadow of Mordor

Card 1080p (avg) 4K (avg)
PowerColor R9 Fury 109.4 48.9
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC 128.7 52.1

Grand Theft Auto V

Grand Theft Auto V
Settings : Every option to the MAX setting available. 8xAA on Full HD. No AA on 4K.

Card 1080p (avg) 4K (avg)
PowerColor R9 Fury 44.9 37.4
EVGA GTX 980 Ti SC 63.8 43.4

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)
PowerColor Fury X 31 61
PowerColor Fury X Full RPM 31 45

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 FSP Aurum S 700W with 90% efficiency and the estimated system power draw (CPU, not including GPU) during Furmark test is 60w.

Card PowerColor Fury X
Furmark Burn-in 336
Estimated Actual System Draw 302
Estimated Card Power Draw 242

The Verdict

The PowerColor R9 FURY X 4GB HBM Graphic Card retails at RM 2,799 while providing anywhere between 66% to 90% of the performance of Nvidia camp’s GTX 980 Ti that often costs a lot more, except for certain brands that retail at sub RM 3,000. So basically you’re paying around 80% the price of a GTX 980 Ti to get a card that’s silent and cool, and providing 66% to 90% its performance.

Not a bad trade-off actually, well we do know that the card is hot but it’s just that the cooling is so good that it exhausts all the heat via the radiator unit and keeping the casing cool and quiet.

goldfries recommended