GTX 980 VS R9 Fury Review

[WYP]

Being in the odd situation of owning a GTX 980 and a R9 Fury I decided that I need to give both a thorough benchmarking so that I could share my results with you guys.



The two GPUs that I have are pictured above, and are both available right now for very similar prices, so finding out which GPU will perform the best should be of great interest to many of you.

One thing to note is that the GTX 980 tested is a factory overclocked version and the R9 Fury tested is at AMD reference speed (which is 1000MHz).

Rig Specifications

OS: Windows 10
CPU: Intel i7 6700K @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Corsair H110
Motherboard: ASUS ROG Z170 Maximus VIII Hero
GPU: Sapphire R9 Fury, MSI GTX 980 Gaming
Memory: 4x4GB of G.Skill Ripjaws 3200MHz
SSD: 2x 256GB Crutial MX100 (not in Raid)
HDD: Seagate 3TB HDD
Case: NZXT H440
PSU: Corsair HX 1200i 80+ Platinum

Above are my Rigs specifications, which is all pretty high end. It is pretty much safe to say that this PC will not be "bottleknecked" by any of the other components.

Now Without further lip flabbering, let's get down to some benchmarking.


Benchmark Utilities

3DMARK Sky Diver

R9 Fury: 320911
GTX 980: 324800

3DMARK Fire Strike

GPU - Fire Strike, Fire Strike Extreme, Fire Strike Ultra
R9 Fury - 12785, 6713, 3658
GTX 980- 12117, 6194, 3284

Unigine Heaven

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 85.1, 55.5, 24.6
GTX 980- 102.2, 59.6, 23.7

Unigine Valley

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 113, 71.8, 32.5
GTX 980- 130.3, 78.9, 34.9

Unigine Heaven 8xAA

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 63.5, 41.4, 19
GTX 980- 67.8, 39.8, 16.6

Unigine Valley 8xAA

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 73.3, 46.5, 21.9
GTX 980- 69.3, 41.7, 19.1

In these benchmarks we can see that some benchmarks favour the AMD GPU while other favour the Nvidia solution.

In 3DMARK we can see AMD winning out in all benchmarks except for the lower end Sky diver test, with the score differences increasing as the benchmarks resolution is raised.

In the Unigine benchmarks we can see that Nvidia wins when no AA is applied, but when AA is applies the advantage swings to AMD, which is very strange. It seems that the AMD solution is much more capable when it comes to applying anti aliasing.




Assassin's Creed Unity - High Presets

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 85.55, 63.26, 35.60
GTX 980- 89.44, 57.98, 24.839

Alien Isolation

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 207.23, 144.44, 73.69
GTX 980- 232.59, 146.91, 70.77

Total War Attila

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 36.5, 25.1, 20.4
GTX 980- 36.6, 22.8, 19.1

Bioshock Infinite

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 135.13, 94.68, 48.28
GTX 980- 130.486, 85.73, 43.44

Company of Heroes 2

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 59.01, 39.01, 15.82
GTX 980- 57.57, 36.65, 18.32

Far Cry 4

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 108.37, 78.47, 43.13
GTX 980- 110.29, 65.69, 34.86

GTA V

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 102.85, 78.20, 43.13
GTX 980- 110.29, 78.36, 37.77

Metro Last Light

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 42.28, 24.97, 10.95
GTX 980- 39.53, 22.61, 9.01

Sleeping Dogs

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 89.5, 55.6, 26.1
GTX 980- 86.4, 51.0, 20.2

Hitman Absolution

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 64.59, 44.27, 22.54
GTX 980- 56.50, 36.22, 16.58

Shadow Of Mordor

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 101.85, 76.25, 44.21
GTX 980- 97.15, 68.78, 37.74

Sniper Elite

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 167.3, 121.5, 66.4
GTX 980- 175.5, 115.3, 76.4

Tomb Raider

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 105.5, 74.1, 38.6
GTX 980- 110.2, 73.0, 35.7

Watch Dogs

GPU - 1080p, 1440p, 4K
R9 Fury - 75.68, 54.30, 31.67
GTX 980- 90.35, 63.64, 33.67


Conclusion

Looking at the 4K benchmarks alone we can see that in games that the R9 Fury has a higher framerate in 11 out of the 14 titles, with the GTX 980 winning in only 3.

On the 1080p side things are very different, with the GTX 980 coming out on top in 7 out of the 14 games, placing these GPUs in as equal of a position as is possible.

For those that game at 1080p both of these GPUs will serve you equally well, though if you game at 1440p or 4K the AMD solution is definitely the better buy right now.


I hope you guys have enjoyed my little side-review. I might do this with some future GPUs I purchase, now that I have these results for comparison, but we will see.

I hope this gives you guys plenty to discuss.

 

[Kilbane]

Really nice comparison fella. To be honest, I think the choice would solely be down to preference on team red or green. The 2 cards are so close in performance, for the sake of 2-3 fps in most situations either card is a good investment. Good job!

 

[jimma47]

Nice review. CoH2, FC2 and GTAV all seem to have the same pic

Are you going to add your lightning into the mix?

Seems to me AMD is the pick for higher res and multuple monitor configs. Nvidia for 1080 but agree theres not enough difference to sway you from one camp to the other.

 

[NeverBackDown]

Nice review. CoH2, FC2 and GTAV all seem to have the same pic

Are you going to add your lightning into the mix?

Seems to me AMD is the pick for higher res and multuple monitor configs. Nvidia for 1080 but agree theres not enough difference to sway you from one camp to the other.

1080p both of these cards are overkill, these are more aimed at the 1440p crowd and at those resolutions, Fury beats the 980 more often than not making it a better buy. Don't forget that this test was done with a stock Fury and an OC'd 980. I'm sure OC'ing the Fury would have made the 1080p results favor the Fury more, but again doesn't matter to much as both are overkill for 1080p(unless aiming for 144hz that is)

Nice side review it was clean and simple and to the point. Good work

 

[Excalabur50]

Nice little comparison and nice to see the AMD GPU performing on par if not slightly better than it's Nvidia rival it's nice to have a choice and to know either is going to perform well

 

[jimma47]

1080p both of these cards are overkill, these are more aimed at the 1440p crowd and at those resolutions, Fury beats the 980 more often than not making it a better buy. Don't forget that this test was done with a stock Fury and an OC'd 980. I'm sure OC'ing the Fury would have made the 1080p results favor the Fury more, but again doesn't matter to much as both are overkill for 1080p(unless aiming for 144hz that is)

Nice side review it was clean and simple and to the point. Good work

Yep they're both really overkill for 1080 but I think AMD really seem to have the multiple screen setups sorted (even tho it's not mentioned in this particular comparison) They also seem to have the edge at higher res.

Nice little comparison and nice to see the AMD GPU performing on par if not slightly better than it's Nvidia rival it's nice to have a choice and to know either is going to perform well

That's what it's all about.

 

[Dicehunter]

1080p both of these cards are overkill, these are more aimed at the 1440p crowd and at those resolutions, Fury beats the 980 more often than not making it a better buy. Don't forget that this test was done with a stock Fury and an OC'd 980. I'm sure OC'ing the Fury would have made the 1080p results favor the Fury more, but again doesn't matter to much as both are overkill for 1080p(unless aiming for 144hz that is)

Nice side review it was clean and simple and to the point. Good work

Well sadly we can't overclock the Fury line by much, Usually 50MHZ or so and the overclocks don't really give the same high results as Nvidia's line when overclocked.

For example I got 3FPS more on average in games when using my Fury X with an overclock of 1150 on the core and that's not really anything to write home about, Now if we had voltage control this could be a different story however

 

[NeverBackDown]

Well sadly we can't overclock the Fury line by much, Usually 50MHZ or so and the overclocks don't really give the same high results as Nvidia's line when overclocked.

For example I got 3FPS more on average in games when using my Fury X with an overclock of 1150 on the core and that's not really anything to write home about, Now if we had voltage control this could be a different story however

I get huge bonuses in 3dmark and etc even with an 70mhz jump. You tend to get more from memory OCs now a days than cores as well but with HBM not being unlocked it's rather hard to get big increases. It's still worth OC'ing and you get bigger FPS jumps per clock with AMD then Nvidia. Kinda like the more slower cores and less faster cores thing with AMD and Intel

 

[Feronix]

Fury beats the 980 more often than not making it a better buy.

That depends, here in the Netherlands I can get 980s for €499 and up whereas the cheapest Fury costs €577 so if you game on 1080p you're much better off with the 980 considering they're both already overkill and if you have a 144Hz monitor, the 980 is still the better card out of the two (as it seems to beat the Fury at 1080p most of the time) and it's a fair amount cheaper.

Moving up to 1440p and 4k AMD have always been better than Nvidia (or relatively/ compared to 1080p and price to performance ratio at least), I suspect it was because they always had a bigger memory bus (384-bit compared to Nvidia's 256) and now because of HBM.
Though based on this review they still don't differ THAT much in performance. Most benchmarks that show a difference over 3-4FPS are titles in which both cards perform under 30FPS anyway, which is unacceptable. In the titles that actually run smoothly the difference appears to be smaller.

It is then up to the consumer to pay more and get better FPS, or not to (as usual). Although realistically if you're going to game at 4k you should be looking at the Fury X and 980 Ti, not these cards, but there's always that little thing called budget

 

[NeverBackDown]

That depends, here in the Netherlands I can get 980s for €499 and up whereas the cheapest Fury costs €577 so if you game on 1080p you're much better off with the 980 considering they're both already overkill and if you have a 144Hz monitor, the 980 is still the better card out of the two (as it seems to beat the Fury at 1080p most of the time) and it's a fair amount cheaper.

Moving up to 1440p and 4k AMD have always been better than Nvidia (or relatively/ compared to 1080p and price to performance ratio at least), I suspect it was because they always had a bigger memory bus (384-bit compared to Nvidia's 256) and now because of HBM.
Though based on this review they still don't differ THAT much in performance. Most benchmarks that show a difference over 3-4FPS are titles in which both cards perform under 30FPS anyway, which is unacceptable. In the titles that actually run smoothly the difference appears to be smaller.

It is then up to the consumer to pay more and get better FPS, or not to (as usual). Although realistically if you're going to game at 4k you should be looking at the Fury X and 980 Ti, not these cards, but there's always that little thing called budget

That's interesting, in the US they are generally the same price. From what I have seen others say too in the UK they were about the same price too unless that's changed recently. Both are overkill for 1080p but for 1440p they are perfect and at that res the Fury tends to do better more often than not. No card alone is good enough for 4k really so you would need two of either card realistically. Budget is a huge factor but if someone really wanted either of these for 4k, it's doable with some settings being turned down.

 

[Darkwood Systems]

Nice review, I agree with kilbane it will probably come down to peoples preference as there isn't much in it.

Really nice comparison fella. To be honest, I think the choice would solely be down to preference on team red or green. The 2 cards are so close in performance, for the sake of 2-3 fps in most situations either card is a good investment. Good job!

 

[Agost]

Did you try overclocking the Fury? We're still talking about 1000 MHz vs 1350 MHz

 

[WYP]

Did you try overclocking the Fury? We're still talking about 1000 MHz vs 1350 MHz

When I overclocked it i got to 1080MHz on the core and 550MHz on the memory.

With the new Voltage unlock a higher overclock of 1100 to 1150MHz would be expected.

 

[Agost]

When I overclocked it i got to 1080MHz on the core and 550MHz on the memory.

With the new Voltage unlock a higher overclock of 1100 to 1150MHz would be expected.

Sadly EU prices aren't helping me, so I'd probably have enough money for this kind of GPU only when Artic Islands/Pascal are out lol

 

[SpencerUk]

Sadly EU prices aren't helping me, so I'd probably have enough money for this kind of GPU only when Artic Islands/Pascal are out lol

R9 Fury can be got for about £380 if thats within your range?

 

[Agost]

R9 Fury can be got for about £380 if thats within your range?

It's more than 500€, that's quite a lot, especially considering that I'm going to upgrade all my pc (well, actually that's a whole new pc incoming)

Since a Skylake platform will be kinda expensive until 6700Ks get a decent availability I need to save a fair amount of cash to switch to 4K (I'm an university student)