Anandtech's AMD Fury X review

[Silverforce11]

What if they simply turned off the pump/fan when doing the test - could the Fury X temperatures get that high with the fan/pump turned off?

Safety would kick in and GPU throttling will occur. I think its default to 75-80C when clocks drops. More than 75C is unsafe for water loops & pumps.

 

[DarkKnightDude]

Is there a way to measure the VRM temps? now you have me curious.

 

[iiiankiii]

Is there a way to measure the VRM temps? now you have me curious.

buy/borrow IR gun. If it's a 'full' water block, the VRM should not be 100c. That's ridiculous.

 

[3DVagabond]

A heatsink that get warmer than the heat source it is supposed to cool would be a first in human history..

So they got 100°C water out of a 60°C thermal source...??..

There s no other firm that is as much targeted with viral marketing practices than AMD, even absolute non sense is used as a weapon, meanwhile Hardwre.fr made a CF test..

Conclusion is that a Fury CF work at its rated frequency while a SLI throttle even in open air with a slot separating the cards, i guess that we wont hear of such issues discussed here, instead we have magical physics used as arguments...

http://www.hardware.fr/medias/photos_news/00/47/IMG0047725.png

Yeah, I wonder if all of the sites will do a big expose?

So, overall with their test suite, the 980 ti is 5% faster than Fury and that's considered smashing, crushing, making Fury a no go for purchase. In dual GPU (which most consider needed for 4K) the Fury beats 980 ti by ~11%. Does that translate the same way? For 4K is 980 ti SLI being doubly smashed, crushed, and even a worse buying decision?

Edit: For the record I overall like Hardware.fr reviews. They have a balanced software suite and their procedures of playing games and most of all running the cards up to temp seem pretty fair. You sometimes have to use your own interpretation, IMO. I'm not sure if it's Google.translate that's the issue or something else, but I often have a hard time agreeing with their subjective analysis.

 

[3DVagabond]

Is there a way to measure the VRM temps? now you have me curious.

AMD usually reports them in GPU-Z. At least they have in the past.

 

[Silverforce11]

Note that open bench testing is the best case scenario for air cooled GPUs.

I suspect in a closed case, Fury X CF (venting heat out the case, as well as serving as the case's outakes) would demolish 980Ti SLI even more.

 

[Abwx]

I'm not sure if it's Google.translate that's the issue or something else, but I often have a hard time agreeing with their subjective analysis.

Google is accurate actualy, the GPU reviewer is a known Nvidia fan and it sweat in his AMD reviews...

Other than that he did disable the AMD optimisations in TWitcher3 to keep the Radeons from limiting tesselations when useless triangles are used, i guess that he made all he could to help his favourite brand since he went as far as using non official driver settings for this review...

I suspect in a closed case, Fury X CF (venting heat out the case, as well as serving as the case's outakes) would demolish 980Ti SLI even more.

At least this review demonstrated that Nvidia cards are tested in unreal situations that have nothing to do with real world settings, i once pointed that their open air designs are not as good as displayed in theses non realistic tests..

 

[railven]

Note that open bench testing is the best case scenario for air cooled GPUs.

I suspect in a closed case, Fury X CF (venting heat out the case, as well as serving as the case's outakes) would demolish 980Ti SLI even more.

Yeah, of course - stock ref 980 Ti. I think that cooler is long over due for a overhaul and anyone buying it (like me ) should only be buying it to ensure its a ref model to use with a better cooler/option.

But at this point in time, why would anyone bench a CFX vs a ref 980 Ti? I just saw Zotac with triple fan cooler at Newegg for $650. If I were 100% sure it was ref I'd have bought that with it's back plate over the ref model (I actually started to regret not doing so haha).

 

[railven]

Safety would kick in and GPU throttling will occur. I think its default to 75-80C when clocks drops. More than 75C is unsafe for water loops & pumps.

I dunno exactly what Tom did for their torture test, but the card throttled, the temps hovered around 65C by their reading [EDIT: I assume this is what their software told them], but they still claimed the VRM's hit over 100C

The story changes during our stress test. The water-cooling rule of thumb comes to mind right away: use one centimeter of radiator length per 10W of power. Almost 90 °C at the motherboard slot indicates that the VRM pins have passed 100 °C. This certainly isn’t a great way to run the card long-term, but then again, stress tests aren’t an everyday usage scenario. Still, it would have been nice to see some reserves for overclocking.

Considering their IR images are with the rubber faceplate on, it's safe to assume they aren't getting good images directly of the internals. External shot of the card was climbing 90C, internal would most likely be higher.

 

[Silverforce11]

Multi GPU tend to work better with reference blowers than open air designs, due to no re-circulation of warm exhaust air, its going out the back of the case thanks to the blower. Open air multi-card, the top one is sucking in warm exhaust air from the bottom one, not a good situation. Also case airflow needs to be excellent to deal with 2x 250W (or more with OCs) heat dump in the case.

 

[railven]

Multi GPU tend to work better with reference blowers than open air designs, due to no re-circulation of warm exhaust air, its going out the back of the case thanks to the blower. Open air multi-card, the top one is sucking in warm exhaust air from the bottom one, not a good situation. Also case airflow needs to be excellent to deal with 2x 250W (or more with OCs) heat dump in the case.

For me CFX 7970 HD ran a lot cooler when I got rid of both ref coolers and went after market. [EDIT: I also have to stress, the sound was so much more bearable. That ref cooler was becoming a sore on 7970's, when I heard it Uber mode on R9 290X I was flabbergasted. And that top 290X was idling close to 50 C with the blower creeping 30% which is very very audible.)

Temps were lower for both cards, and I was able to OC both more (actually hit the power limit on my 750W PSU). My case had good ventilation.

For reference: I had a launch ref 7970 that got retro-fit with a Accelero extreme cooler and I returned a second ref Saphhire GHz in exchange for the Dual-X that was getting promoted around here.

Aesthetically, the ref coolers looked nice, performance wise in my rig ref blowers blew.

 

[chimaxi83]

Is there a way to measure the VRM temps? now you have me curious.

GPU-Z has a built in VRM temperature reading, based on the sensors in the GPU. Here is my reference 290:

 

[3DVagabond]

Yeah, of course - stock ref 980 Ti. I think that cooler is long over due for a overhaul and anyone buying it (like me ) should only be buying it to ensure its a ref model to use with a better cooler/option.

But at this point in time, why would anyone bench a CFX vs a ref 980 Ti? I just saw Zotac with triple fan cooler at Newegg for $650. If I were 100% sure it was ref I'd have bought that with it's back plate over the ref model (I actually started to regret not doing so haha).

It's ref vs ref, that's why.

 

[badb0y]

No way VRMs are hitting 100 degrees Celsius since there is active cooling on the VRMs.

 

[railven]

It's ref vs ref, that's why.

Well aware of that.

 

[Silverforce11]

Interesting to compare Tom's Fury X vs their 980Ti review:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti,4164-8.html

No usage of "Torture Tests", only "Gaming Load", and it's already hotter.

"During gaming, the VRMs stay reasonably cool, even though they're only covered by a small heat sink that touches a heat pipe above it. The board hits 60 °C at the slot, meaning the VRM’s heat travels across the PCB under the rubberized back plate."

 

[railven]

Interesting to compare Tom's Fury X vs their 980Ti review:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti,4164-8.html

No usage of "Torture Tests", only "Gaming Load", and it's already hotter.

"During gaming, the VRMs stay reasonably cool, even though they're only covered by a small heat sink that touches a heat pipe above it. The board hits 60 °C at the slot, meaning the VRM’s heat travels across the PCB under the rubberized back plate."

Answer to that might be in the page before, power:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-980-ti,4164-7.html

The GeForce GTX 980 Ti’s TDP is 250W, according to Nvidia. But it never reaches that number under normal conditions, except in certain professional applications. None of the usual stress tests manage to push it past the 254W mark. Taking the 233W gaming power consumption into consideration, 19 to 22W of headroom remain for overclocking. These are just idle musings for a reference-class GeForce GTX 980 Ti, though, since it runs into a thermal limit anyway. There’d be a bit more headroom with a higher-capacity cooling solution, even if this one is optimized for Nvidia's 250W cards.

Seems they couldn't get the card to go beyond 254W, meanwhile for AMD :
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/amd-radeon-r9-fury-x,4196-7.html

If AMD hadn't imposed a strict limit, power consumption might have veered out of control under full load. And sure enough, the Radeon R9 Fury X can get warm and cozy just under 348W. Granted, this only happens under what the company would consider a power virus, or some OpenCL-based task capable of hammering Fiji's shaders. Compute-heavy workloads also tend to run for longer than typical synthetic benchmarks.

Given the liquid cooler, AMD grants its Radeon R9 Fury X a much more generous power ceiling than Nvidia permits for GeForce GTX 980 Ti. If that extra ~100W of draw can be considered good or bad is up for debate. Regardless, it's unlikely that you'll ever see this limit under normal use.

Seems they saw no reason to record their findings under a stress test, wouldn't have revealed much. But, draw your own conclusions.

 

[antihelten]

Multi GPU tend to work better with reference blowers than open air designs

Is this really true though? I know it is often repeated as the the de facto truth across the internet, but I have never really seen any proof of it beside a few strenuous anecdotes.

Most numbers I can remember indicates that, yes open air coolers take a bigger hit then blowers when stacked in a multi GPU setup, but since they are generally so far ahead in the first place, they still end up at least equal if not better than the blower setups*.

Note I'm not saying it isn't true, I have just never come across a decent test of it.

*Of course open air coolers will heat up the other components in your case, but that shouldn't generally affect gaming performance.

 

[Final8ty]

@Sabrewings
Indeed, the coolant isn't hotter than the GPU. If hardware.fr thinks its 100C, the GPU core must be 110C at least. lol

Or we could look at it another way that the 100c coolant is down to the VRMs not the cooler running GPU, but the problem is that the 100c coolant would then be actively heating up the GPU which would then not be running anywhere near cool in fact it would be over 130c.

 

[iiiankiii]

It looks like some of you guys have never used water cooling. There's no way the coolant is 100c. If the coolant is 100c, the GPU is well over 100c. At that temperature, the tube would start to deform. Heck, i don't think most tube can even handle 100c. Most custom water cooling tubes aren't even rated over 80c.

 

[Erenhardt]

It is a Phase change AIO cooler then. First reference card with phase change cooling solution - amd took 290x complains way to seriously.

 

[casiofx]

You guys are hilarious, a less than 300 watt graphics card can heat the coolant till 100C while a 500 watt 295X2 ran a nice 60+C

Do we need talk about sorcery and magic here now? I always though this is a technical forum.

 

[3DVagabond]

You guys are hilarious, a less than 300 watt graphics card can heat the coolant till 100C while a 500 watt 295X2 ran a nice 60+C

Do we need talk about sorcery and magic here now? I always though this is a technical forum.

But the VRM's were air cooled on the 295X2. You didn't think about that, did you? AMD VRM's are possessed by Satin himself. None of this wimpy sorcery and witchcraft. >:-[

 

[RampantAndroid]

Wait, we're saying the coolant hit 100C? What is the coolant - water or something else? (and it's 100C in a capture image, so the coolant is really HOTTER since the tubing is an insulator?

 

[casiofx]

But the VRM's were air cooled on the 295X2. You didn't think about that, did you? AMD VRM's are possessed by Satin himself. None of this wimpy sorcery and witchcraft. >:-[

Since when did VRMs consume more electric power than GPU itself?
If you didn't study thermodynamics please don't spew out wrong facts and led others astray.
VRMs alone won't overcome GPU's heat output to heat up the coolant until 100C.