Radeon R9 Fury X crossfire vs 980ti SLI

[Jake458]

I read that the 980ti almost doubles its performance in SLI at 4k. Does this mean that it would outperform the Radeon R9 Fury X in Crossfire?

 

[dark_lord69]

Well, it's hard to tell until the benchmarks come out. (I think most people would guess no, the Fury cards are expected to be faster.)
The reality is that any video card setup would struggle to compete with the high bandwidth that HBM provides.
That bandwidth is needed for 4K resolutions.

 

[MarkW]

Source: AMD Press Package

Now we wait a week for press generated benchmarks. Including SLI/Crossfire numbers.

 

[GRUxTSAR]

The Fury X will almost certainly be a faster card

 

[photonboy]

Well, let's wait...

I believe the Fury X is water cooled so definitely overclocked? So we're comparing it to a stock GTX980Ti?

(I doubt we're comparing to an overclocked GTX980Ti, and definitely not to the EVGA Hybrid GTX980Ti)

And the hand-picked AMD graph is showing maybe a 6% advantage on average?

Also, isn't the Fury X a 4GB card and the 980Ti a 6GB card? Would you spend this much money on a card in 2015 with only 4GB?

Summary:
It really comes down to PRICING. If we assume SIMILAR performance I'd still get the NVidia card for the driver support, features like PhysX, MFAA, H.265 etc, and more video memory. Laugh if you want, but I plan to play a lot of WITCHER 3 and think NVidia HairWorks is rather cool... once the EVGA 980Ti Hybrid comes back in stock..sigh.

So unless it's $550 or less it's pretty hard to recommend. Now I know it's $650 (suggested at least) to match the GTX980Ti. Aside from the hybrid design to keep NOISE down (or for small cases) I'm not sure it's worth the sacrifice.

HBM memory might be more power efficient, but frankly it doesn't add any "secret sauce" to speed things up. If a GPU can run at 100% (which the GTX980Ti can because it can be overclocked quite well) then there's no memory bandwidth issue.

So HBM is really, really premature. Getting 4GB instead of 6GB or 8GB is a pretty poor tradeoff for power efficiency.

*Actually, the IRONY here is that since this is a custom, liquid-cooled design they could have used 8GB of normal GDDR5 since it could be efficiently cooled, and for the same or less money which would be much better for future proofing (or Crossfire at high resolutions).

 

[sickbullet]

Time to start saving for that beast upgrade, maybe a Christmas treat if not before.

 

[renz496]

Fury X CF? First i would think where i want to put those radiotor since i already own H80 for my CPU.

 

[fudgecakes99]

Well, let's wait...

I believe the Fury X is water cooled so definitely overclocked? So we're comparing it to a stock GTX980Ti?

(I doubt we're comparing to an overclocked GTX980Ti, and definitely not to the EVGA Hybrid GTX980Ti)

And the hand-picked AMD graph is showing maybe a 6% advantage on average?

Also, isn't the Fury X a 4GB card and the 980Ti a 6GB card? Would you spend this much money on a card in 2015 with only 4GB?

Summary:
It really comes down to PRICING. If we assume SIMILAR performance I'd still get the NVidia card for the driver support, features like PhysX, MFAA, H.265 etc, and more video memory. Laugh if you want, but I plan to play a lot of WITCHER 3 and think NVidia HairWorks is rather cool... once the EVGA 980Ti Hybrid comes back in stock..sigh.

So unless it's $550 or less it's pretty hard to recommend. Now I know it's $650 (suggested at least) to match the GTX980Ti. Aside from the hybrid design to keep NOISE down (or for small cases) I'm not sure it's worth the sacrifice.

HBM memory might be more power efficient, but frankly it doesn't add any "secret sauce" to speed things up. If a GPU can run at 100% (which the GTX980Ti can because it can be overclocked quite well) then there's no memory bandwidth issue.

So HBM is really, really premature. Getting 4GB instead of 6GB or 8GB is a pretty poor tradeoff for power efficiency.

*Actually, the IRONY here is that since this is a custom, liquid-cooled design they could have used 8GB of normal GDDR5 since it could be efficiently cooled, and for the same or less money which would be much better for future proofing (or Crossfire at high resolutions).

Are we not factoring in overclocking? If we are, the fury x will blow the 980ti out of the water. That said, yeah a a little disappointed in lack of more hbvram and lack of hdmi 2.0, but their are display adapters for display to 2.0 and we don't know how the hbvram's going to be used in the fury x. But what you fail to realize is, this is an mem interface at 4096gb. That power efficiency would overclock the card immensely. The truth of the matter is you don't know anything about the card and i dont, at least not until reviewers get it. So until it comes out can we just assume that fury x is going to destroy the 980 ti. In pricing overclock ability and stock speed until then?

 

[sz0ty0l4]

980ti sli all the way. Just consider the most important thing here. even amd in their own internal benchmark had to use medium-low settings for ac unity to get good values out of the benchmark, because crossing the vram capacity will destroy the fury cards. for 4k you will need the 6gb vram. What i'm talking about is the same benchmark MarkW linked. the whole article contains a table for the settings and games used for benchmarking. it's a synthetic benchmark for making every situation favorable for the fury with using inconsistent and changing ingame settings.

not to mention the 980tis are dx12.1 compatible while the fury cards are just 12.0. I wouldn't bother with them. If you want hbm cards then wait for nvidias next flagship on pascal, unlike amd, they will be smart enough to wait until jedec and hynix releases the 2GB IC modules so they won't need dual interposer for more than 4gb vram.

my whole point is: playing on 4k low medium settings because of vram limitation is POIntless. clear as sky

 

[fudgecakes99]

980ti sli all the way. Just consider the most important thing here. even amd in their own internal benchmark had to use medium-low settings for ac unity to get good values out of the benchmark, because crossing the vram capacity will destroy the fury cards. for 4k you will need the 6gb vram. What i'm talking about is the same benchmark MarkW linked. the whole article contains a table for the settings and games used for benchmarking. it's a synthetic benchmark for making every situation favorable for the fury with using inconsistent and changing ingame settings.

not to mention the 980tis are dx12.1 compatible while the fury cards are just 12.0. I wouldn't bother with them. If you want hbm cards then wait for nvidias next flagship on pascal, unlike amd, they will be smart enough to wait until jedec and hynix releases the 2GB IC modules so they won't need dual interposer for more than 4gb vram.

my whole point is: playing on 4k low medium settings because of vram limitation is POIntless. clear as sky

Why the hell would you think that a👎 980 ti would magically do better with more gddr5 vram when it's already doing worse than a fury x at low medium settings of ac at 4 k? What You think gpu's are like cars? That somehow the extra ram magically makes it perform better. No you're right , you know. If i put a massive spoiler's and stickers i do get more horsepower in my honda accord.... If a gpu is doing bad at lower settings why would it do better at higher settings? If an engine produces 350 horsepower, no matter how much octane 91 you put in it it's not gonna produce more than 350 horses. Now if you replace the headers, and pistons re do the engine maybe a bigger block. Then change the octane 91 gas to alcohol fuel. Then yes it will do better. Get my point. Just because you have more ram available doesn't automatically mean it's going to outperform a fury x. Is their some sort of limiter on gpu's that i've never heard of until now? Did i miss the memo? Your'e right nvidia would purposely gimp their guards at lower settings, but when the card gets more info to stream through it magically produces better results. A v4 engine is a v4 engine even if you put racing fuel in it.

That said, wait if you wanna do 4k. Fury or 980 ti i doubt either card will give you 60fps in upcoming games. Wait at least until fury x2 drops and by then maybe nvidia will do something about pascal. At the very least fury x2 is going to double performance. Nvidia will have to have something to answer it with then decide for yourself what is better, when their are actual benchmarks and better competition.

 

[Bossyfins]

He has a point on the DX compatibility.

As for Pascal, that will be based on HBM2 and will roughly pack about 4k cuda cores on a single chip. But not coming out till 2016..

 

[Bossyfins]

He has a point on the DX compatibility.

As for Pascal, that will be based on HBM2 and will roughly pack about 4k cuda cores on a single chip. But not coming out till 2016..


But, if we are talking a stock 980 ti, the fury x beats it. But with 980 tis coming with 1.2 ghz base clocks soon, we will have to see

 

[sz0ty0l4]

980ti sli all the way. Just consider the most important thing here. even amd in their own internal benchmark had to use medium-low settings for ac unity to get good values out of the benchmark, because crossing the vram capacity will destroy the fury cards. for 4k you will need the 6gb vram. What i'm talking about is the same benchmark MarkW linked. the whole article contains a table for the settings and games used for benchmarking. it's a synthetic benchmark for making every situation favorable for the fury with using inconsistent and changing ingame settings.

not to mention the 980tis are dx12.1 compatible while the fury cards are just 12.0. I wouldn't bother with them. If you want hbm cards then wait for nvidias next flagship on pascal, unlike amd, they will be smart enough to wait until jedec and hynix releases the 2GB IC modules so they won't need dual interposer for more than 4gb vram.

my whole point is: playing on 4k low medium settings because of vram limitation is POIntless. clear as sky

Why the hell would you think that a👎 980 ti would magically do better with more gddr5 vram when it's already doing worse than a fury x at low medium settings of ac at 4 k? What You think gpu's are like cars? That somehow the extra ram magically makes it perform better. No you're right , you know. If i put a massive spoiler's and stickers i do get more horsepower in my honda accord.... If a gpu is doing bad at lower settings why would it do better at higher settings? If an engine produces 350 horsepower, no matter how much octane 91 you put in it it's not gonna produce more than 350 horses. Now if you replace the headers, and pistons re do the engine maybe a bigger block. Then change the octane 91 gas to alcohol fuel. Then yes it will do better. Get my point. Just because you have more ram available doesn't automatically mean it's going to outperform a fury x. Is their some sort of limiter on gpu's that i've never heard of until now? Did i miss the memo? Your'e right nvidia would purposely gimp their guards at lower settings, but when the card gets more info to stream through it magically produces better results. A v4 engine is a v4 engine even if you put racing fuel in it.

That said, wait if you wanna do 4k. Fury or 980 ti i doubt either card will give you 60fps in upcoming games. Wait at least until fury x2 drops and by then maybe nvidia will do something about pascal. At the very least fury x2 is going to double performance. Nvidia will have to have something to answer it with then decide for yourself what is better, when their are actual benchmarks and better competition.

You don't understand my point on the vram misery, even tho it's pretty simple i'll explain for it for you and sorry but it has nothing to do with cars, just stay technical.

The reason why they had to use low-medium settings for ac unity is the limitation of hbmv1. it's integrated on a silicon piece with the gpu and the ram modules are only 1 gb. the memory controller has acces to 4 of those so in case the limitation is 4gb. they could have used dual interposer or could've watied for jedec and hynix to make the 2gb modules, but they ddin't.

The problem here is that those who buy games for 4k or sli/cfx gpu setups don't want to play on medium, because it's pointless. increasing the resolution is only worthy if all the other settings except AA are already maxed out. that's the way how the graphical fidelity increases in a game or any rendered graphical animation. first you increase particles, level of detail, texture resolution, distance scaling etc. then when done you can increase resolution.

The 980Ti has enough vram capacity to store all the required data to run games like: ac unity, GTA 5, dying light, etc. on ultra settings in 4k, because these games already use around 5,5-5,8gb vram. you can check for yourself on youtube.
increasing the number of gpus will not increase the vram capacity in DX11 games, even tho dx12 is at the gates it will take a while until the stacked memory will come at play.
The fury x will not be able to run those vram hungry modern 14-15 games on ultra settings, because the data swapping will kill it's performance. What i mean by data swapping is: When vram capacity gets full and the card can't actually load textures or high res shadows from the vram it will load those assets from the system ram which is several times slower than the vram. these memory transfers are initialized by the cpu. in real life these transfers will occure in gameplay like a frametime spike which causes terrible performance drop.
So in this case you can say "2gb more gddr boosts performance" , but actually that's not how it works. as a matter of fact it's the opposite: 4gb hbm killing performance, bcouse of it's lack of capacity.

Those who buy the fury x 4gb versions will be limited to play on medium- low settings on games like unity,gta,dyinglight and more.
Those who buy the 980ti will be able to play on ultra settings on the same games.
The fps difference will not be much. a single 980ti can allready take ac unity on ultra settings 4k resolution around 30-40 fps. proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxzYoFWXn9Q
the fury x can take this game on 37 fps, but medium -low settings.
proof: amd's own internal benchmark.

 

[fudgecakes99]

980ti sli all the way. Just consider the most important thing here. even amd in their own internal benchmark had to use medium-low settings for ac unity to get good values out of the benchmark, because crossing the vram capacity will destroy the fury cards. for 4k you will need the 6gb vram. What i'm talking about is the same benchmark MarkW linked. the whole article contains a table for the settings and games used for benchmarking. it's a synthetic benchmark for making every situation favorable for the fury with using inconsistent and changing ingame settings.

not to mention the 980tis are dx12.1 compatible while the fury cards are just 12.0. I wouldn't bother with them. If you want hbm cards then wait for nvidias next flagship on pascal, unlike amd, they will be smart enough to wait until jedec and hynix releases the 2GB IC modules so they won't need dual interposer for more than 4gb vram.

my whole point is: playing on 4k low medium settings because of vram limitation is POIntless. clear as sky

Why the hell would you think that a👎 980 ti would magically do better with more gddr5 vram when it's already doing worse than a fury x at low medium settings of ac at 4 k? What You think gpu's are like cars? That somehow the extra ram magically makes it perform better. No you're right , you know. If i put a massive spoiler's and stickers i do get more horsepower in my honda accord.... If a gpu is doing bad at lower settings why would it do better at higher settings? If an engine produces 350 horsepower, no matter how much octane 91 you put in it it's not gonna produce more than 350 horses. Now if you replace the headers, and pistons re do the engine maybe a bigger block. Then change the octane 91 gas to alcohol fuel. Then yes it will do better. Get my point. Just because you have more ram available doesn't automatically mean it's going to outperform a fury x. Is their some sort of limiter on gpu's that i've never heard of until now? Did i miss the memo? Your'e right nvidia would purposely gimp their guards at lower settings, but when the card gets more info to stream through it magically produces better results. A v4 engine is a v4 engine even if you put racing fuel in it.

That said, wait if you wanna do 4k. Fury or 980 ti i doubt either card will give you 60fps in upcoming games. Wait at least until fury x2 drops and by then maybe nvidia will do something about pascal. At the very least fury x2 is going to double performance. Nvidia will have to have something to answer it with then decide for yourself what is better, when their are actual benchmarks and better competition.

You don't understand my point on the vram misery, even tho it's pretty simple i'll explain for it for you and sorry but it has nothing to do with cars, just stay technical.

The reason why they had to use low-medium settings for ac unity is the limitation of hbmv1. it's integrated on a silicon piece with the gpu and the ram modules are only 1 gb. the memory controller has acces to 4 of those so in case the limitation is 4gb. they could have used dual interposer or could've watied for jedec and hynix to make the 2gb modules, but they ddin't.

The problem here is that those who buy games for 4k or sli/cfx gpu setups don't want to play on medium, because it's pointless. increasing the resolution is only worthy if all the other settings except AA are already maxed out. that's the way how the graphical fidelity increases in a game or any rendered graphical animation. first you increase particles, level of detail, texture resolution, distance scaling etc. then when done you can increase resolution.

The 980Ti has enough vram capacity to store all the required data to run games like: ac unity, GTA 5, dying light, etc. on ultra settings in 4k, because these games already use around 5,5-5,8gb vram. you can check for yourself on youtube.
increasing the number of gpus will not increase the vram capacity in DX11 games, even tho dx12 is at the gates it will take a while until the stacked memory will come at play.
The fury x will not be able to run those vram hungry modern 14-15 games on ultra settings, because the data swapping will kill it's performance. What i mean by data swapping is: When vram capacity gets full and the card can't actually load textures or high res shadows from the vram it will load those assets from the system ram which is several times slower than the vram. these memory transfers are initialized by the cpu. in real life these transfers will occure in gameplay like a frametime spike which causes terrible performance drop.
So in this case you can say "2gb more gddr boosts performance" , but actually that's not how it works. as a matter of fact it's the opposite: 4gb hbm killing performance, bcouse of it's lack of capacity.

Those who buy the fury x 4gb versions will be limited to play on medium- low settings on games like unity,gta,dyinglight and more.
Those who buy the 980ti will be able to play on ultra settings on the same games.
The fps difference will not be much. a single 980ti can allready take ac unity on ultra settings 4k resolution around 30-40 fps. proof:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxzYoFWXn9Q
the fury x can take this game on 37 fps, but medium -low settings.
proof: amd's own internal benchmark.

I think you missed my point i'm not talking about running 980ti's in sli. I'm taking single gpu performance. A single 980 ti running a game in 4k on maxed settings doesn't magically get more frame rate when it was doing terribly on medium settings. It just doesn't work like that. That "video" only proved my point. Barely getting an averafge of about 30fps. maybe 31. A lot of dips below to 28 or lower. Just because a card hits 37 once doesn't mean thats what the card is going output the entire game. Which should be obvious. So yes, if a card has 6 gigs of ram, and does terribly on lower settings it will not do better on higher settings just because it has more ram.

In lames terms. If you have a 32 ounce soda, but only have 8 ounces of soda in it. That doesn't mean you have 32 ounces of soda. That's the point i'm trying to prove. Yes, if you get two 980 ti's chances are they will outperform a fury x. No shit, should be obvious. Even them in dx11 vram doesn't mean crap. It doesn't scale the vram together it's s till 6gb of vram. Maybe in dx12 whenever that drops.

 

[sz0ty0l4]

even tho i explained detailed you still don't understand and you keep coming with cars, soda and everything else but not the point. I can't help that. you still suggest OP buying the fury cfx and playing on medium-low settings 4k. that's your suggestion.

My suggestion is still to buy the 980ti SLI and play on ultra settings 4k.

 

[InfamousGG]

how about we wait until the fury x is actually released instead of arguing..

 

[fudgecakes99]

single gpu vs single gpu fury wins. 4k crossfire we'll have to see. HBM memory might be used differnetly then gddr5 memoroy. That extra throughput wouldn't need to hold as much ram because it could offload it so damn efficently. We won't know until reviews come out. But a single fury x vs 980ti seems like it'd be the fury's we'll have to wait and see.

 

[redgarl]

Let's explain science, the 980 TI memory is like a 20L bucket with a garden hose and the Fur X like a firefighter hose with a 15L bucket.

Which one is going to empty the bucket faster?

 

[fudgecakes99]

Let's explain science, the 980 TI memory is like a 20L bucket with a garden hose and the Fur X like a firefighter hose with a 15L bucket.

Which one is going to empty the bucket faster?

You do realize emptying the bucket is a good thing right? That you'd want the bucket to be empty so new water can get in.

 

[renz496]

except i don't think it will work as easy as that. if the notion of high bandwidth will help the lack of VRAM then there is no need to put many VRAM on high end card compared to mid range and low end card because high end card will always have more bandwidth than it's midrange and low end part. for example why put 6GB on 980Ti when it has 300GB/s+ of bandwidth compared to 960 that only have around 112GB/s? since 980ti almost had three times the bandwidth of 960 it should be no problem to put 3GB of VRAM on 980Ti because the high bandwidth will help the lack of VRAM. see does it make sense? it doesn't matter HBM vs GDDR5. VRAM is VRAM. just like GDDR5 vs GDDR3.

 

[fudgecakes99]

Of course it won't. Or they wouldn't need to market vram.

 

[sz0ty0l4]

As i said this card lags behind the 980ti in most of the cases. It also has a limitation in vram which i was saying already from the start whne we got to knew it's only 4gb. You have to compromise on settings when it comes to 4k Ultra- close max - max settings gaming, where the card actually starts to die, but the 980 ti or the titan x easily handles the amount of data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=459&v=9l-7kFsqNjU
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/24/amd_radeon_r9_fury_x_video_card_review/11#.VYrCEfntlBc

 

[Bossyfins]

As i said this card lags behind the 980ti in most of the cases. It also has a limitation in vram which i was saying already from the start whne we got to knew it's only 4gb. You have to compromise on settings when it comes to 4k Ultra- close max - max settings gaming, where the card actually starts to die, but the 980 ti or the titan x easily handles the amount of data.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=459&v=9l-7kFsqNjU
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/06/24/amd_radeon_r9_fury_x_video_card_review/11#.VYrCEfntlBc

HardOCP says it is better competition for the 980 rather than the 980 ti. That is interesting.

 

[sz0ty0l4]

I think the logical reason for that is the overclocking capabilities of the cards. The gtx 980 is probably the best overclocker of all time. It's the first GPU in the world to reach 2Ghz if i'm right. It can actually beat the 980ti and the titan x on crazy OCs, but even on air cooling you can easily put the core clock up to 1450mhz on a good third party air cooler, whereit already has a very similar performance to a 980ti, not the mention cards like the asus rog poseidon 980 with hybrid cooling which can easily do 1600mhz stable gaming and benchs.

While the Fury X seems to be not overclockable at any decent point.

 

[fudgecakes99]

Can someone explain to me the difference between a 980 ti sc vs a stock 980 ti? Is it just the mhz clock up by 100? Couldn't i just do it on my own tweaking the driver software? I don't see the justification of 100 dollars for only 100 mhz and nothing else.