E3 is fresh on every gamers mind with all the latest video games tempting to make your wallet cry. For those of us who prefer gaming with a bit more oomph, AMD has you covered with their latest flagship - the Fury X.
What exactly is 3x4K? Quick simply, three 4k monitors running in tandem putting out a staggering 11,520x2160 resolution. If you thought 1080p @ 60FPS was pretty sweet, this latest feat by team red may have you saving your pennies. For comparison, AMD claims that two R9 Radeon 290X's in crossfire (or a single 295X2 dual GPU monster) nets you around 45-50FPS at the same resolution. Did we mention this was accomplished using a single Fury X card?
The above image may be Dirt 3 from 2013 using R9 290x's according to Wccftech. Original Legit Reviews article didn't mention this and other sites are sourcing the same image.This doesn't diminish the Fury X specs, we feel it's best to be 100% honest with the readers at all times.
A little note about the AMD Fury X is that it's relatively inexpensive considering the tech that's under the hood. At an MSRP of $649 USD, it's not exactly a budget card by any stretch of the imagination, but AMD is squaring off against Nvidia's GTX 980 Ti. The latter also considered good value for money as it is able to go toe to toe with Nvidia's own Titan X (in gaming performance), a card costing over a grand. One of the key differences between the AMD Fury X and the Nvidia 980 Ti is the newer developed HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) vs the standard GDDR5 found on the majority of graphics cards today.
Still a little lost on the whole HBM type of memory that AMD is going to be using for their upcoming Fury and Fury X? Fear not! One of our writers at TechRaptor has you covered. You can read more about HBM here to get a better understanding of this newer technology.
It's going to be interesting to see how these high performance GPUs stack up against one another. At a glance, here are the specs that's making magic happen with a single GPU.
Not quite as energy efficient as the GTX 980 Ti, but those memory specs...dear God. That's not all, the Fiji powered card also managed to score a higher FireStrike Ultra score over rival GTX 980 Ti of 4007 versus 3817 - both cards tested using an Intel Core i7-5960x to eliminate any bottlenecks. Not bad, not bad at all. This isn't related to getting 60FPS in Dirt Rally with three 4k monitors, just showcasing the raw power of the card in question.
No matter how you look at it, being able to get 60FPS on a single 4K monitor from a game that isn't LoL is impressive enough, let alone three of them. AMD's latest flagship to debut this July is definitely a heavy hitter. For any readers curious, the recommended graphics cards for Dirt Rally are a GTX 780 for Nvidia or an R9 290 if you're in the AMD camp - not recommended if you're trying to push over 4k at a reasonable frame rate with those GPUs on their own. While the settings weren't specified in achieving 60FPS with three 4K monitors, with that high of a resolution, it's not necessary to have some crazy demanding anti aliasing. The wow factor is definitely still there.
Dirt Rally is a PC only title, this eliminates any performance issues some console ports can suffer from. AMD is including the game as a bonus gift with select graphics cards and CPUs along with popular Rockstar title GTA V. Being an AMD Evolved title, this may give Dirt Rally an advantage with AMD hardware. Something of interest is that AMD's Mantle API is being phased out for Vulkan (for those out there wondering about Mantle API). Gamers with older DX10 cards are also getting errors and being that the game is still early access with DX11 cards recommended, safe to assume that for now, Dirt Rally is strictly a DX11 title.
Anything can happen between now and when the Fury X is readily available on the market. Driver tweaks and optimizations can boost performance even further. Games are getting more demanding and AMD's latest offerings utilizing HBM will only initially be rolled out with 4GB of the stuff. For the most hardcore of PC gamers who are gung-ho about modding, this may be an issue. AMD has plans to later release graphics cards that feature 8GB of HBM when Fiji XT is out.
Between the Fury X and the more standard Fury, the former comes with an AIO liquid cooler that you'd typically see cooling a CPU. Cooling for this beast is no issue, it's really a matter of do you need this much power and if you're comfortable with your shiny new toy using more power than the competition. On raw power alone, it's hard not to give props where they are due.
The final word is simple, this is a powerful card. For the average gamer who has a single monitor or using multiple 1080p ones, you may not need this. If cost is no issue or if you're a really big fan of Dirt Rally at crazy resolutions, stay aboard the hype train. A graphics card like this could make for one baller of a mini itx system, just saying.
Would love to see AMD showcase other games and aiming for the higher frame rates. Not everyone games at 4K+, still plenty of 1080p and 1440p gamers who like their frames over 100FPS. What are your thoughts on AMD's new direction?
