AMD reveals new VR-focused flagship graphics card R9 Fury X

AMD is doubling-down in its efforts to attract prospective virtual reality users with a brand new flagship GPU.

The R9 Fury X is a dual-GPU card that features an ace up its sleeve – HBM.

HBM stands for ‘high-bandwidth stacked memory’, a new design for graphics cards that AMD is introducing for the first time with the Fury X.

In layman’s terms, HBM is exactly what it sounds like: memory stacked on a graphics card, rather than being placed next to one another like in traditional designs.

The benefit of this, as it always is with computer hardware, is a boost in speed.

This performance boost AMD is targeting at users who will be looking to pick up VR headsets such as the Oculus Rift and Valve HTC Vive in the early months of 2016, with the Fury X going head-to-head with the similarly VR-friendly efforts of rival firm Nvidia’s Titan X card.

The Fury X is the top-tier component of the firm’s R9 300 line of graphics cards, revealed at this week’s PC Gaming Show at E3.

Succeeding the R9 200 range, R9 300 products are marked out by their inclusion of the brand new ‘Fiji’ GPU architecture, which is designed to maximise energy efficiency in comparison to the previous hardware.

Joining the Fury X are the R390X, R390, R380, the R7 300 range of cards and the compact form-factor version, the R9 Nano. However, HBM is currently only to be found in the Fury X.

The R9 300 lineup is due for release on June 18th with the R9 Fury X following on June 24th. The Fury X will be priced at $649 (408).