First Liquid Cooled AMD Radeon R9 Fury Non-X Coming Soon – This Or A Fury X?

We have only seen a handful of AMD AIB partners announce Radeon R9 Fury cards so far. None of which featured liquid cooling, until now. XFX has just teased an upcoming Radeon graphics card on twitter, something that looks a lot like a Radeon R9 Fury X but actually isn't. We've just reported that AMD is prepping a dual GPU "Fury X2" 17 teraflop monster of a graphics card just in time for the holidays. But it seems AMD isn't the only company looking to shake things up with new Radeon graphics card launches.

The graphics card shown above is actually a Radeon R9 Fury, that's right not a Fury X. One can tell through some very subtle differences between it and the Radeon R9 Fury X. Like the I/O bracket for example which is not ventilated on the XFX Radeon R9 Fury X but is on the XFX Radeon R9 Fury shown above. AMD doesn't allow any of its partners to change the design of the R9 Fury X, including the I/O bracket.

Thankfully a thorough examination and a keen eye for detail isn't going to be necessary to quickly figure out that this is indeed a water cooled R9 Fury rather than a Fury X. Because as it happens we can just take a look at the leaked photo of the box which clearly states "R9 Fury". Where as the box for XFX's R9 Fury X clearly states "R9 Fury X".

First Liquid Cooled AMD Radeon R9 Fury Non-X To Be Released By XFX

Now that we've established that this is invariably an R9 Fury, let's talk about what makes it different. Well first of all it's the first liquid cooled R9 Fury that we've seen so far. It also features a custom XFX frontplate and backplate. XFX hasn't revealed any clock speed or pricing details about the card, but I have little doubt that it's going to be one of the fastest and most expensive R9 Fury cards of the bunch.

Which brings me to one very interesting point. Liquid cooling is generally more expensive than air cooling and the custom liquid cooling solution that AMD has designed for the R9 Fury X is actually a very high-end single radiator solution. The 120mm high fin density radiator is a double thickness radiator, twice as thick as standard 120mm radiators. These double thickness radiators are normally found in $80 CPU cooling solutions like the Corsair H80i.The included fan with the Fury X is a Nidec/Scythe Gentle Typhoon, one of the quietest and very best pressure optimized radiator fans. AMD also designed a custom fanless cooling solution for the voltage regulator.
When all of that is taken into consideration it becomes clear that this is not just a run of the mill cooling solution. And if you were to actually look at similarly liquid cooled graphics cards in the market, like MSI's $740 liquid cooled GTX 980 Ti Sea Hawk for example, you'll find that it adds a huge $90 premium to the price tag and understandably so. Even though it's not fanless or not really as custom as the liquid cooling solution used for the R9 Fury X, it still added a considerable amount to the cost.

How Can XFX's Liquid Cooled R9 Fury Compete With The R9 Fury X ?

The Fury and Fury X competing ? how's that really possible ? Well only $100 sits between the R9 Fury X and the R9 Fury. Adding an expensive liquid cooling solution to the Fury will bring its MSRP almost uncomfortably close to the Fury X. We've just given an example of how it added $90 to the MSRP of the GTX 980 Ti and if it does the same to XFX's R9 Fury it's going to be a very tough sell.

There are however a few things that XFX can do to make its liquid cooled R9 Fury more attractive. One obvious play is to push the clock speeds. With ample thermal headroom enabled by the liquid cooling solution and no restrictions from AMD on R9 Fury designs, XFX can achieve really astounding factory overclocks.

One other play in XFX's cards - excuse the pun - is to sacrifice some of its own profit margin to bring the card at a more attractive price point and distance it from the $650 R9 Fury X. But realistically speaking, I can't see the card coming out at much less than $599. However, with an aggressive factory overclock XFX might be able to push the card's performance to a level that matches or even exceeds that of the Fury X. And with an MSRP that's lower than that of its bigger brother, this R9 Fury might appeal to enough gamers to make it a win.

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this card, does it make sense? Would you buy a liquid cooled Fury if it was slightly cheaper than the Fury X? What if it was as fast as a Fury X, does that make it a better deal?

WCCFTech	AMD Radeon R9 Fury X2	AMD Radeon R9 Fury X	AMD Radeon R9 Nano	AMD Radeon R9 Fury	AMD Radeon R9 290X
GPU	Fiji XT x 2	Fiji XT	Fiji XT	Fiji Pro	Hawaii XT
Stream Processors	8192	4096	4096	3584	2816
GCN Compute Units	128	64	64	56	44
Render Output Units	128	64	64	64	64
Texture Mapping Units	512	256	256	224	176
GPU Frequency	TBA	Up to 1050Mhz	Up to 1000 MHz	Up to 1000 MHz	1000Mhz
Memory	8GB HBM (4 GB Per Chip)	4GB HBM	4GB HBM	4GB HBM	4GB GDDR5
Memory Interface	4096-bit x 2	4096bit	4096bit	4096bit	512bit
Memory Frequency	500Mhz	500Mhz	500 MHz	500Mhz	1250Mhz
Effective Memory Speed	1Gbps	1Gbps	1Gbps	1Gbps	5Gbps
Memory Bandwidth	1024 GB/s	512GB/s	512GB/s	512GB/s	320GB/s
Cooling	Liquid	Liquid, 120mm Radiator	Air, Single Fan. Custom AIB Solutions Later	Air, Custom AIB Solutions	Air, Single Blower Fan
Performance (SPFP)	17.2 TFLOPS	8.6 TFLOPS	8.19 TFLOPS	7.2 TFLOPS	5.6 TFLOPS
TDP	TBA	275W	175W	275W	250W
Power Connectors	Dual 8-Pin	Dual 8-Pin	8-Pin	Dual 8-Pin	6+8 Pin
GFLOPS/Watt	TBA	31.3	47.1	26.2	19.3
New Prices	TBA	$649	$499	$549	$299 (Retail)
Launch Date	Early 2016	24th June 2015	7th September 2015	10th July 2015	24th October 2013

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