Gigabyte’s WindForce Has The Fury In It: First Custom PCB R9 Fury Revealed

[kcarbotte]

Gigabyte quietly revealed some details about its upcoming R9 Fury with a custom PCB and WindForce 3 cooling solution. The card has a mild overclock, but it appears Gigabyte expects people to push it harder.

Gigabyte’s WindForce Has The Fury In It: First Custom PCB R9 Fury Revealed : Read more

 

[jimmysmitty]

To me the biggest downside to the Fury X is the inability for OEMs to customize it. I think they could easily come up with a superior air solution for a Fury X.

Maybe we will see higher clocked Furys with custom PCBs and coolers but so far even the Sapphire Tri-X Vapor-X design and Asus Strix DCUIII have not pushed it much higher.

 

[derekullo]

Windforce "knocks back" all of the competition.

 

[littleleo]

AMD needs to let board partners make their own version of the Fury X I think they would do a better job then AMD's version. And drive more sales of the Fury X GPUs.

 

[Nuckles_56]

Well, I see a problem with the table, as it says that the card has GDDR5 memory when it actually has HBM

 

[TallestJon96]

The regular Fury is 1 of the few AMD cards that actually makes sense to me. It beats a 980, but is $100 cheaper than the 980 ti. Good for 4K gaming on the cheap, or strong 1440p performance.

 

[Calculatron]

Good things comes to those that wait.

 

[knowom]

The regular Fury is 1 of the few AMD cards that actually makes sense to me. It beats a 980, but is $100 cheaper than the 980 ti. Good for 4K gaming on the cheap, or strong 1440p performance.

Good for 4K except that it doesn't support 4K HDMI TV's and monitors which are the most common 4K display's available at present time.

There is also the fact that AMD's minimum frame rates generally struggle a lot more than NVIDIA which become even more important as you increase resolution.

I won't make sense for a whole lot longer NVIDIA is prepping Micron based GDDR5X for the GTX980 which will double it's bandwidth and might also double it's VRAM capacity.

 

[chumly]

core clock is still 500, btw.

 

[eodeo]

AMD needs to fix video playback power usage. It's 3 years since nvidia did it, that makes it about time AMD starts thinking about it too. They fixed multi monitor power draw with fury, now just video playback and they'll have a usable everyday GPU.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Fiji is not just an every day GPU, it's a gaming card, and whatever small power it uses, be it probably 20W, will not matter. Plus CPU does most of video displaying.

 

[Blueberries]

AMD introduces a card with a focus on small-form factor performance and people do this.

Wtf? Do people just not understand the point of design anymore?

 

[thor220]

Great! Now they just need to start honoring their own warranties! I guess they're really no better than sapphire, who will try to extort you for $30 when you try to use the warranty on your card.

 

[ErikVinoya]

Is there any reason why AMD is not letting partner companies build their own board?

 

[Blueberries]

Is there any reason why AMD is not letting partner companies build their own board?

Because the whole point of the Fury was to showoff the compact design and performance of HBM. Over-sized heatsinks and custom PCBs are the exact opposite of what AMD wanted.

I'm sure AMD is going to release a dual-FIJI board for enthusiasts that want large profiles and maximum performance. This is not that card. It was never supposed to be. It's a demonstration of the GPU's capability.

 

[RedJaron]

I don't understand why so many GPUs have a vertical fin stack. It makes the vent at the back of the card useless and blows half the waste heat directly into your mboard ( and potentially an M.2 SSD underneath the card ). Running the fins front to back means at least some air can escape the back of the card, puts the fins inline with a case front intake fan, and doesn't bake your mboard.

 

[willg95]

First custom PCB? What exactly is the Asus Strix Fury then?

 

[Mac266]

AMD introduces a card with a focus on small-form factor performance and people do this.

Wtf? Do people just not understand the point of design anymore?

This is a Fury, not a Fury Nano. It's confusing, but there is a difference.

 

[salgado18]

I don't understand why so many GPUs have a vertical fin stack. It makes the vent at the back of the card useless and blows half the waste heat directly into your mboard ( and potentially an M.2 SSD underneath the card ). Running the fins front to back means at least some air can escape the back of the card, puts the fins inline with a case front intake fan, and doesn't bake your mboard.

Probably the longer fins would cool worse. A small sideways fin receives cool air and takes it out of the card imediately, a long front-to-back fin would receive hot air from the other parts of the card.

In other words, manufacuters mentality is this: "Well, you want a cool card, don't you? The motherboard is your problem, but the card is super cool and efficient".

 

[getochkn]

I don't understand why so many GPUs have a vertical fin stack. It makes the vent at the back of the card useless and blows half the waste heat directly into your mboard ( and potentially an M.2 SSD underneath the card ). Running the fins front to back means at least some air can escape the back of the card, puts the fins inline with a case front intake fan, and doesn't bake your mboard.

Because you know better than all the card manufacturers and their engineers. They don't do it just because.

Good for 4K except that it doesn't support 4K HDMI TV's and monitors which are the most common 4K display's available at present time.

It can do 4K fine over displayport, which is what most monitors are today for 4K. TV's are HDMI 2.0, but it's a gaming card, made for a gaming monitor, and that's displayport.

 

[Blueberries]

I don't understand why so many GPUs have a vertical fin stack. It makes the vent at the back of the card useless and blows half the waste heat directly into your mboard ( and potentially an M.2 SSD underneath the card ). Running the fins front to back means at least some air can escape the back of the card, puts the fins inline with a case front intake fan, and doesn't bake your mboard.

I'm not sure this would make a difference. Heat rises and any airflow circulating air over the motherboard / M.2 slot could only have a positive effect

 

[RedJaron]

Probably the longer fins would cool worse. A small sideways fin receives cool air and takes it out of the card imediately, a long front-to-back fin would receive hot air from the other parts of the card.

You're treating that as a channel or a ditch. The fin stack doesn't sit right on the PCB, so the air can blow through the fins. Second, except for centrifugal fans, you don't have a single fan blowing down the length of the fin. You have multiple fans all blowing across the fin at different points.

No, a horizontal stack isn't going to magically direct half the exhaust air out the card's vent, but it does help direct the turbulent air bouncing off the PCB to go that way.

In other words, manufacuters mentality is this: "Well, you want a cool card, don't you? The motherboard is your problem, but the card is super cool and efficient".

Explain then how my single-fan, horizontal fin Vapor-X card or any number of reference-cooled NVidia cards perform so well without cooking a mboard.

Because you know better than all the card manufacturers and their engineers. They don't do it just because.

And you're so much smarter than me because you can't explain it? And I guess all those engineers that do occasionally make such a cooler are just so stupid, right?

I'm not sure this would make a difference. Heat rises and any airflow circulating air over the motherboard / M.2 slot could only have a positive effect

This doesn't make any sense. The vast majority of motherboards are mounted vertically with the GPU running parallel to the floor. This means the GPU chip, VRM, and VRAM are on the effective underside of the card. Heat can't rise from there because it would have to pass through the PCB. Heat escaping out the "top" and "front" of the card would have a tendency to rise into the CPU area. Heat on the "lower" section of the card gets blown into the PCB then bounces down toward the mboard into the PCIe slots. Without good front-back airflow in the case, the heat just rises again into the GPU fans and gets recirculated back into the PCIe slots, building up.

 

[Zerozen]

Memory Type: DDR5?

it must be a typo....

 

[JackNaylorPE]

The stuff we learned in 8th grade earth science is only true under the stated conditions.

-Hot air does rise... yes if is a fraction of % lighter but this does not overcome the force of a bunch of radiator fans.... 2 of 3 fans blowing air thru a radiator and back out the rear grille before it even reaches the GFX cards is a far more effective than the gentle current created by slightly warmer air.

Yes, it would be better to throw air out the back except for the fact that the teeny little grille is very ineffective at doing so.... far less then a cadre of exhaust fans in your case. Not to mention the fact that if you have a CLC installed with fans as exhaust, you are likely sucking that GPU air back in thru the rear case slot grilles.

Still this should be good news for the red team, if it can deliver some decent OCs... something no R9 or Fury regardless of reference / non-reference has been able to deliver. as yet. As for the statement about the Fury Being the 980 ... ?

At 1440p I am seeing the reference 980 "beating" the reference Fury by 1% here.... tho I would hardly call 1% a beat down. At 1080p, it's a 14% difference. At 4k, the Fury does a lot better so the folks that comprise 0.07% of the market (7 in 10,000) should definitely go w/ the Fury X if not overclocking their GFX cards

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X/31.html

With only non-reference cards being tested to date, the reference Fury's limited OC ability 5.1% (108.1 fps / 102.9 fps) could certainly use a boost. But can Gigabyte get the same 21.7 boost (158.1 / 130.7) they gave the G1 980 over the reference card ? Given that to date, the best they have been able to do with the 390x is 107.1% and 108.2% with the 390, I'm not expecting a

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/R9_Fury_X/34.html

Hopefully, Gigabyte can make a mark here and get a 20% or more OC to make it competitive again.

 

[Blueberries]

The stuff we learned in 8th grade earth science is only true under the stated conditions.

-Hot air does rise... yes if is a fraction of % lighter but this does not overcome the force of a bunch of radiator fans.... 2 of 3 fans blowing air thru a radiator and back out the rear grille before it even reaches the GFX cards is a far more effective than the gentle current created by slightly warmer air.

Yes, it would be better to throw air out the back except for the fact that the teeny little grille is very ineffective at doing so.... far less then a cadre of exhaust fans in your case. Not to mention the fact that if you have a CLC installed with fans as exhaust, you are likely sucking that GPU air back in thru the rear case slot grilles.

Yes a radiator is more effective, airflow is focused and isn't constrained. The grill on a video card is typically a small cutout in one of the PCI-e bays. Heat passing through the heat-sink and into the case would work better than trying to pass air through the PCI-e bay.

Air doesn't hit the PCB and stop at a wall either, the 90% that doesn't pass through the grill gets poured into the case and exhausted by a fan.