Conclusion; Fury X Who?
Conclusion; Fury X Who?
When the GTX 980 Ti was launched, many held off purchasing it since they knew AMD’s next generation GPU was just around the corner. Had the R9 Fury X been able to overcome NVIDIA’s new flagship yet retail for a lower price, it wasn’t beyond imagination that the GTX 980 Ti’s price would have been reduced. However, despite AMD’s efforts resulting in a relatively competitive GPU, the Fury X ultimately failed to beat the GTX 980 Ti in both performance and pricing circles.
Now that both players have shown their cards, we can get a better sense how the next few months will play out. With AMD designing and manufacturing the cards, pre-overclocked Fury X SKUs will likely never exist and if they ever do, it will be sometime in the distant future. Meanwhile on the GeForce side of the fence we have cards like the EVGA GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ ACX+ which not only offer better performance but provide a bit of variety as well.
With sustained clock speeds that are a good 100MHz higher than NVIDIA’s reference card, the Superclocked+ is easily able to remain ahead of a standard GTX 980 Ti. The difference isn’t all that much –amounting to an average of 7%- but they’re certainly there, particularly in games which benefit more from the card’s frequencies. This also allows it to pull slightly ahead of the ultra-expensive TITAN X as well. The amount of value being offered here is quite tantalizing for anyone looking for the fastest GPU available.
Its cards like this which will likely cause a very big problem for AMD since their Fury X struggles to find a reasonable balance between competitive 4K results and lackluster 1440P performance. For a mere $30 more than the $649 Radeon card, gamers can realize substantially better 1440P framerates and an almost guaranteed win in every game at 4K. Indeed, at resolutions lower than UHD the Fury X isn’t even worthy of mention when talking about the GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+
Aside from its obvious performance dominance, the EVGA GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ runs at nearly-silent fan RPMs and has the ability to overclock to a reasonably impressive level. Granted, it may not have an awesome-looking water cooler but the inclusion of a very capable ACX+ heatsink makes it’s installation infinitely more adaptable than AMD’s somewhat clunky affair.
Paying $679 for a high end video card may be a lot to ask but we feel that EVGA’s premium is certainly worthwhile given how well the GTX 980 Ti Superclocked+ performs in relation to the reference card. If anything, it is custom products like this which will give all but the most ardent AMD fan reason to pause before jumping onto the R9 Fury X bandwagon.