The Sapphire R9 Nitro Fury Graphics Card
January 12, 2016
SAPPHIRE Technology is introducing a new flagship card in the SAPPHIRE NITRO Gaming series. The SAPPHIRE NITRO R9 FURY is filled with innovative technologies and a range of custom solutions designed by SAPPHIRE. The exciting new SAPPHIRE NITRO R9 FURY is a card for gamers who demand the absolute best from their rig and engage in graphically-intense gaming with the latest state of the art titles. With improvements in VRM circuitry, original PCB design, unique Tri-X cooling and factory-overclocked core, the SAPPHIRE NITRO R9 FURY is faster and quieter than any competing product.
Today’s debut of the SAPPHIRE NITRO R9 FURY is the company’s second take on the AMD Radeon R9 FURY following last year’s release of the Tri-X variant.
Of course, there are several R9 FURY-based cards on the market — the very same SAPPHIRE Tri-X among them — which are highly competitive with GeForce GTX 980 accelerators thanks to the “Fiji” GPU, AMD’s latest high-performance incarnation of their GCN architecture. However, SAPPHIRE NITRO strives to be something more than just another R9 FURY card you can buy. SAPPHIRE’s goal has been to create the perfect combination of the highest possible performance, quiet operation and exceptional overclocking capabilities. They want the new NITRO R9 FURY to be a worthy addition to the award winning SAPPHIRE NITRO Gaming Series of graphics cards. Have they succeeded? Let’s take a look!
The Radeon R9 FURY is based on the same silicon as the R9 FURY X, code-named “Fiji”. The chip features AMD’s latest GCN 1.2 architecture, making it AMD’s most technologically advanced solution. Of the 64 CU’s present in the chip, 56 can be used. That amounts to 3584 stream processors and 224 TMUs. There are also 64 ROP units and a 4096-bit HBM memory controller. It is important that the first generation of HBM memory is limited to 4 GB — that is exactly the amount R9 FURY offers. Although this may seem insufficient for 4K gaming, bear in mind that GeForce GTX 980-based cards also have 4 GB of VRAM.
The SAPPHIRE NITRO R9 FURY features the company’s flagship cooling solution, which promises low load temperatures and very quiet operation. Tri-X, just as the name suggests, incorporates three ball bearing fans and is also completely noiseless under low-load operation thanks to its semi-passive nature. The card comes overclocked out of the box to a GPU clock of 1050 MHz — that’s 5% above the reference clocks. This also means that the NITRO R9 FURY is currently the highest clocked R9 FURY on the market. Memory frequency has remained at 500 MHz, most probably because it already offers 512 GB/s of bandwidth and certainly isn’t a bottleneck of any kind.
| GeForce GTX 980 | Radeon R9 FURY | SAPPHIRE NITRO Radeon R9 FURY | |
| Graphics Processor | GM204 | Fiji | Fiji |
| Transistors | 5200M | 8900M | 8900M |
| Shader Units | 2048 | 3584 | 3584 |
| ROPs | 64 | 64 | 64 |
| TMUs | 128 | 224 | 224 |
| Core Clock | 1126 MHz + Turbo | 1000 MHz | 1050 MHz |
| Memory Clock | 1750 MHz | 500 MHz | 500 MHz |
| Memory Size | 4096 MB | 4096 MB | 4096 MB |
| Memory Bus | 256 bit | 4096 bit | 4096 bit |
| Memory Bandwidth | 224 GB/s | 512 GB/s | 512 GB/s |
Accessories
Inside the box, you will find:
- A Graphics card
- A User’s manual
- A Driver DVD
- A SAPPHIRE Select Club registration code
- An HDMI cable
The Card
The SAPPHIRE NITRO R9 FURY is based on the company’s own, non-reference PCB, which is significantly longer than AMD’s reference design.
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About SAPPHIRE Technology
SAPPHIRE Technology is a leading manufacturer and global supplier of innovative components and solutions for PC systems for both consumer and professional applications. From its origins in the design and manufacture of state-of-the-art graphics add-in boards, the extensive SAPPHIRE product range has grown to include a broad range of professional and embedded products. Founded in 2001, SAPPHIRE is a privately held global company headquartered in Hong Kong.
