I must admit I had to rub my eyes a few times when I first saw the peak power consumption result in BioShock. However, after re-testing a few more times it became clear that the R9 Fury X was only consuming slightly more power than the R9 290X and R9 390X despite the massive increase in SPUs.
The BioShock results were confirmed by Metro: Last Light as we again see the Fury X consuming a similar level of power to the R9 390X.
The R9 Fury X’s power consumption is a real achievement by AMD. Given what we had seen in the past by the Radeon R9 290X and R9 390X, we had just naturally assumed that the Fury X would use a lot more power than the R9 390X. The Tomb Raider frame rate performance wasn’t good and here we see very little power consumption which might explain it.
If the card’s power results failed to impress then perhaps its operating temperatures will. The very best air-cooled R9 390Xs still reach temperatures in the high 60s when gaming, so we weren’t quite sure what to expect from the Fury X. AMD’s press material did claim 50 degree operating temperatures, and it appears they weren’t exaggerating. Under full load the Fury X maxed out at 52 degrees, while the 120mm fan remained whisper quiet.
