Asus r9 fury strix review

Asus leader in the manufacture of graphics cards, motherboards, routers and peripherals. We have been sent to one of the best graphics cards on the market, it is the R9 Fury Strix with 4GB of HBM memory, a DirectCU III heatsink with three fans, backplate and one of the best 0dB cooling system on the market.

Do you want to know more about this beast? Read on for our review. We are going to compare it against the all powerful GTX 980 Ti !

We thank Asus for trusting the product for its analysis:

Technical characteristics

ASUS R9 FURY TECHNICAL FEATURES
GPU	AMD Radeon R9 Fury
Connectors	2 x 8-pin PCIE.
Core frequency	1020 MHz (OC Mode) 1000 MHz (Gaming Mode)
Memory type	HBM.
Memory size	4GB.
Memory speed (mhz)	500 MHz.
DirectX	version 12.
BUS memory	4096 bit.
BUS card	PCI-E 3.0 x16.
OpenGL	OpenGL 4.4
I / O	1 x DVI-D 1 x HDMI Output 3 x Display Port (Regular DP) Supports HDCP.
Dimensions	30 x 13.77 x 4 centimeters.
Price	599 euros.

ASUS R9 Fury Strix

Like the rest of the Strix and Direct CU series, the presentation is well cared for and they are all very similar: cardboard box, strix logo and they refer to the main features on the front of the box.

Once we open the box we find the following bundle:

Asus R9 Fury Strix graphics card Instruction manual CD with drivers 8-pin to 6-pin dual Y power cable.

The card measures 30.5 x 15.22 x 3.95 cm and it shows that its weight is quite high. It combines very well the red and black colors of the company's serious Republic of Gamer. The processor comes from the factory at 1000 Mhz (1020 with turbo), its 4 GB of memory is HBM and they run at 500 Mhz, its new interface is full power with 4096-bit, compatible with OpenGL 4.5, Dx12 and the standard PCI Express bus 3.0.

As we can see, the power supply is quite powerful and incorporates two 8-pin PCI Express connections, while on the reverse it incorporates a backplate that covers the entire surface, leaving some of the circuitry in the air and the 4 screws to separate the card from the heatsink. As I have already commented on other occasions, the backplate helps to rigidity the PCB, improves the cooling and why not… we like the view.

At the top it has a led strip that illuminates the Strix letters, we also see that the card is a little higher than the rest we have seen. In the second photo you can see how it is punctured on a Z170 plate.

In the rear connections we find:

1 x DVI-I.

3 x DisplayPort.

1x HDMI 2.0.

DirectCU III and Custom PCB Design

The graphics card is the company's flagship, thanks to its excellent Direct CU III three-fan heatsink , reinforced frame and a PCB customized by the brand's own engineers.

First I want to talk about the heatsink and comment that it incorporates three 90mm fans each, which are activated when it reaches a temperature of 64ºC. In other words, it is a very silent and semi passive graphics card (semi fanless). When they start to turn they start with 40% and never go up in speed as it is a very well studied card.

When we separated the heatsink from the graphics card we found 5 nickel-plated copper heatpipes with a thickness of 10mm and a copper base that cools the R9 Fury chips but Asus has not made life difficult and uses the same design for Nvidia as for AMD which means that some of the heatpipes do not do their dissipation function.

As we have mentioned, we have two 8-pin power connections, but the graphic incorporates 12 power phases with the Super Alloy Power II design, together with the best components on the market, making this graphics card improve up to 50% more cooling compared to the reference model. from AMD and reduce the Coil Whine or electrical noise in Spanish to a minimum, without actually existing.

The TDP reaches almost 300 W, so with a good 650 ~ 750W power supply it is enough, and if we want to mount a crossfire with 850 ç or 1000 w they will be enough.

Test bench and performance tests

TESTING BENCH
Processor:	i5-6600k @ 4400 Mhz.
Base plate:	Asus Maximus VIII Hero
Memory:	Corsair DDR4 LPX 16GB
Heatsink	RL Custom
HDD	Samsung 850 EVO 1Tb
Graphic card	Asus R9 Fury Strix
Power supply	EVGA SuperNova G2 750W 80 Plus Gold.

To evaluate the performance of the graphics card we have used the following applications:

3DMark - Fire Strike.Crysis 3.Metro Last light.Tomb Raider.Battlefield 4.

All our tests have been carried out with a resolution of 1920px x 1080px and with 4xAA filters.

What are we looking for in the tests?

First the best possible image quality. The most important value for us is the average FPS (Frames per second), the higher the number of FPS, the more fluid the game will be. To slightly differentiate the quality, we leave you a table to assess the quality in FPS:

FRAMES BY SECONDS
Frames for Seconds. (FPS)	Gameplay
Less than 30 FPS	Limited
30 - 40 FPS	Playable
40 - 60 FPS	Good
Greater than 60 FPS	Fairly Good or Excellent

Let's not fool ourselves; there are games that can have an average of 100 FPS. It may be because the game is quite old and does not require excessive graphic resources or that the graphics is the most powerful on the market, or we have GPU systems for thousands of euros. But the reality is different, and games like Crysis 3 and Metro Last Light are very demanding and do not usually give high scores.

Temperature and consumption

In this section we want to detail the level of temperature and consumption with the test equipment. This data is very useful for silent computer lovers, knowing the maximum temperature limit of the card and the consumption on the wall of the complete equipment with the graphics card. Without further delay I leave you the comparative tables:

Final words and conclusion

Strix is is the name that was used for the owl in Greek and Latin. Legend has it that it improves your environment so that you detect and react to the slightest movement, in addition to adding that it improves your survival skills to the limit. And is that the R9 Fury Strix is a masterpiece designed by Asus both for its excellent heatsink and an unbeatable PCB.

In our tests we have seen that the performance with Windows 10 is excellent. Able to play any current game with everything in ultra in Full HD (1920 * 1080) resolutions and capable of supporting any game in 2K (2560 * 1440) with minimal benefits. Great card!

Whoever is looking for a graphics card for less than 600 euros this can be a great alternative, since it has a performance not far from that of the GTX 980 Ti or its older sister R9 Fury X that costs more than 170 euros, although we have " only ”4GB HBM vs the 6GB GDDR5 of the 980 Ti. Quite a dilemma!

Its price in store today is 599 euros with a low stock, I hope it drops a little price compared to Christmas. If AMD is capable of stability at a price close to 500 euros, more than one will choose this card as candidate number 1.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ EXCELLENT COMPONENTS.	- PRICE, ALL FURY SHOULD BE IN 500 EUROS...
+ DIRECT CU III HEATSINK.	- LITTLE STOCK.
+ VERY GOOD PERFORMANCE.
+ GREAT AESTHETICS.
+ 0DB SYSTEM.