After months of rumors and speculation, AMD has unveiled four brand new high-end graphics cards at E3 in Los Angeles this week, including its new flagship R9 Fury X. The company has ditched the numerical branding in favor of grouping its top cards under the “Fury” brand name. Each of the new graphics cards feature the all-new Fiji chip, an improved variant of the AMD’s well-known GCN architecture.
R9 Fury X
Of the four cards announced, the R9 Fury X is AMD’s flagship GPU, which will sell for $649 starting from June 24. It is positioned to compete against Nvidia’s GTX 980 Ti. Compared to the R9 290X’s 2816 stream processors, the R9 Fury X features 4096, which is a significant increase over the previous flagship card. Its core clock speed goes up to 1050MHz. Other specifications include 256 texture units, 64 ROPs, HBM memory with 512 GB/s of bandwidth, a 67.2 GP/s pixel fill rate.The R9 Fury X also comes built with a six-phase VRM (voltage regulator module), making it ideal for overclocking as per AMD.
In terms of power consumption, the R9 Fury X is a little higher than the R9 290X’s, with a TDP of 275W and support for up to 375W of power for overclocking. It’s worth mentioning, though, that the real-world usage for an R9 290X was actually nearer to 300W. Therefore, some real-world tests are likely to yield a more accurate figure for the card’s power consumption.
The reference cooler used with AMD’s cards has also received some upgrades, with the company doing away with the blower design of earlier cards. As a result of the HBM technology for stacked memory, AMD has been able to build a card that is ideal for small form factor builds. The card’s length is now around 7.5-inches, which is no small feat given that the die is made up of 8.9 billion transistors. Most importantly, though, is the fact that this cooler uses watercooling in order to keep the Fury X’s temperatures in check. The 120mm radiator attached to the cooler is rated for as much as 500W of cooling.
R9 Fury
Just below AMD’s new flagship GPU is the R9 Fury, an air-cooled variant of the Fury X that is priced at $549. The exact specifications for this card aren’t available as of writing, although it does appear to feature the same aluminium construction seen on the Fury X. The cooler sports a blower-style fan for throwing hot air directly out of the case. As is par for the course, the Fury is likely to feature a lesser number of stream processors and ROPs in comparison to the flagship Fury X. However, things will only become clear once AMD officially provides detailed specs for the card.
R9 Nano
Below the R9 Fury falls the R9 Nano, which is also based on the Fiji chip and includes HBM memory. However, it is just 6-inch in length, which is usually the size for lower-end GPUs. The cooler has a large fan on the side for venting the air inside of a PC case. According to AMD, the R9 Nano provides as much as twice the performance-per-watt of the R9 290X. While the card’s price is not known at this point, this is likely to give it a greater performance/price ratio than what is offered by the Fury and Fury X. The R9 Nano is scheduled to arrive sometime this Summer.
Dual-GPU Fiji
AMD also revealed a dual-GPU Fiji card at the PC Gaming show. This monster of a card is scheduled to arrive on store shelves sometime during the Fall. The retail price for this dual-GPU variant was not provided by the GPU manufacturer.
We’ll keep you posted on any additional details regarding the specifications, pricing, and availability of each of these cards. Until then, feel free to tell us in the comments below if you’ll be picking one up in the near future.
