Some ASUS Radeon R9 Fury ‘STRIX’ Graphic Cards Can Be Unlocked Into The More Powerful ‘4096 SP’ Fury X

[Mr_Troll]

User unlocks ASUS Strix Fury to Fury X – shows decent overclocking headroom with the DirectCU III air cooler
 

The graphic card in question is the ASUS Radeon R9 Fury Strix with the DirectCU III air cooler. The unlock was done by the user 2good4you over at XtremeSystems forums and he was able to unlock all remaining CUs (from 3840 to 4096) suggesting a full blown Fiji XT core has been used in these models. Ofcourse, this trait will be limited to certain batches of the graphic card in certain localities only – so it very much remains a matter of luck. The procedure itself is easy and relatively safe, and has become a fairly common sight. TX12, a user on OCN even released a universal tool that will allow any AMD Hawaii, Tonga or Fiji GPU based graphic card to (potentially) be unlocked to a powerful variant.

 

 

 

Now there are two reasons due to which a GPU might have more CUs than what the bios is showing. Reason Uno is something called yield. When a GPU is manufactured, not all the chips on the wafer survive the lithographic process. Infact a good number will have some defect or the other. The chips that are below a certain threshold are discarded entirely, whileas those dies that only have 1 or 2 CUs disabled are chosen for the lower tier variant of the product offering. Functioning CUs of these dies are usually locked (either by lasering off or a soft lock ) to ensure uniformity and the consumers get a slightly lower powered version of the flagship (in this case, the Fury.

 

 

The second reason is due to a temporary supply issue. Take the Fury for example. The supply of the cores is provided by UMC but sometimes a batch of the cores might be delayed for whatsoever reason. The cut down variant (Fury) usually has higher demand (and therefore requires more supply) while as the full blown variant usually has higher margins but less demand.  If an Add in Board partner runs into a shortage of Fury cores, they have the option of putting in Fury X cores with a soft lock. We have seen this happen before with the r9 290x too and this is what I suspect happened this time around.

The forum post by the user shows a pretty decent overclocking headroom as well. He was able to achieve silent fan operation with clocks of 1050 Mhz at vcore of 1.19v. Clocks upto 1150 Mhz also appear to be possible with drastically higher vcore (1.3v) and maximum fan speed. Although, the exact cut off limit will depend on the ASIC quality that the user has. Needless to say, this is a very very big gain in performance for absolutely free. Going from 3840 SPs to 4096 SPs at beyond Fury X base clocks is an absolutely insane jump. So if you are in town looking for a Fury to buy, I would suggest going for the ASUS Strix, since in all probability you would be able to unlock some (if not all) the CUs

 

WTF? Looks like amds cut down cards are not really broken . LOL. Mindblown

 

Source:http://wccftech.com/asus-strix-fury-unlocked-fury-x-4096/

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?293772-Unlocked-OC-of-ASUS-R9-Fury-on-AIR&p=5267372#post5267372

http://www.overclock.net/t/1567179/activation-of-cores-in-hawaii-tonga-and-fiji-unlockability-tester-ver-1-6-and-atomtool
 

 

[thekeemo]

You were able to do this with the 290 390 280 7950 etc not suprised

[Gofspar]

old

[PlayStation 2]

For once there's a reason to buy Asus lol

[EarthboundHero]

This is nothing new. Most companies cut down chips to make more stock of the lower card.

[thekeemo]

For once there's a reason to buy Asus lol

Chances are the other brands too

[ThinkWithPortals]

Cool.

[Suika]

NVIDIA and Intel do this as well, they'll throw higher binned chips on cheaper products when there is a supply shortage. It's very likely that some 970s are actually able to be working 980s.

[manofsteel]

okay so how to unlock this cu's?

[cesrai]

You were able to do this with the 290 390 280 7950 etc not suprised

But 290 and 390 had same number of stream processors, yet Fury X SP != Fury SP.

[Sauron]

At this point I wonder why AMD won't allow for custom pcb/cooler fury Xs

[thekeemo]

But 290 and 390 had same number of stream processors, yet Fury X SP != Fury SP.

Same idea though

you just have stuff that is there but locked

[captain cactus]

Or the 465 becoming a 470 back in the days.

[cesrai]

Same idea though

you just have stuff that is there but locked

Care to tell me what was locked ? From what I understand the 290 just got their bios flahsed.

[thekeemo]

Care to tell me what was locked ? From what I understand the 290 just got their bios flahsed.

Some 290s had the extra stuff but it was locked away because of demand for the 290 over the 290x

 

[cesrai]

Some 290s had the extra stuff but it was locked away because of demand for the 290 over the 290x

You said 290 and 390 not 290 and 290X, I may have misinterpreted what you meant.

Just to be clear you mean unlocking 290 to 290X right ?

[thekeemo]

You said 290 and 390 not 290 and 290X, I may have misinterpreted what you meant.

Just to be clear you mean unlocking 290 to 290X right ?

Yes

[cesrai]

NVIDIA and Intel do this as well, they'll throw higher binned chips on cheaper products when there is a supply shortage. It's very likely that some 970s are actually able to be working 980s.

I don't get this mindset, other companies do it so if another company does it it's fine.

And I'm slightly confused, do you think this is a bad thing or what ?

[thekeemo]

I don't get this mindset, other companies do it so if another company does it it's fine.

And I'm slightly confused, do you think this is a bad thing or what ?

Its normal

this is a good thing

it means you can have a chance of getting something better for less

[dragosudeki]

I don't get this mindset, other companies do it so if another company does it it's fine.

And I'm slightly confused, do you think this is a bad thing or what ?

I don't think it is necessarily bad. It seems to be a trend in the GPU market (can also occur with other hardware), that the super high end cards will be bought by less people due to the price. So instead of having more stock on high end cards that less people buy, they simply just take those high end chips and bring them down to a lower card, which more people are likely to buy. As a result, some cards can easily take advantage of more features/power due to it probably being able to be a higher end card, but wasn't because of stock management.

[cesrai]

Its normal

this is a good thing

it means you can have a chance of getting something better for less

Still, that mindset doesn't make sense. E.g. company X releases a product that has a flaw then people say it's fine company Y did that too.

[thekeemo]

Still, that mindset doesn't make sense. E.g. company X releases a product that has a flaw then people say it's fine company Y did that too.

here is the thing

they release as a cheaper product then a non flawed thing

[cesrai]

here is the thing

they release as a cheaper product then a non flawed thing

Makes sense.

[thekeemo]

Makes sense.

Yea. They dont sell a flawed thing at full price.

[Suika]

I don't get this mindset, other companies do it so if another company does it it's fine.

And I'm slightly confused, do you think this is a bad thing or what ?

Down binning chips has existed for a long time, this is a unique case because the GPU cores are unlockable, which isn't exactly common.

This is good news if anything, there is nothing bad about this.