From an R9 Fury to R9 Fury X: tool unlocks the cores of select Radeon cards

This isn’t the first time a tool like this has existed for AMD’s range of Radeon GPUs.

Not all that long ago, R9 290s from a particular batch of vendors were wholly unlockable, giving those who purchased them the option to unlock dormant cores and effectively gain full R9 290X GPUs.

It was incredibly simple to do, really quite safe and became a fairly common practice as a result. Then all you needed to do was a little overclocking, and you would very quickly have an R9 290X for the price of its cut-down brethren.

CUINFO 1.6, by tx12, a user on OCN (Overclock.net), has released a tool that offers a similar functionality to that of the tool that unlocked the cores of the R9 290 cards, with two major differences.

One, it has the ability to unlock the cores of multiple GPUs: Hawaii, Tonga and Fiji to be precise. Two, it will offer varying results of each individual card, and has the potential to cause harm if the user is not careful.

If you’re willing to take the risk, having read the user guide provided by tx12, then let’s proceed shall we. Just how does it work?

CUINFO 1.6

The reason this is even possible is that in many cases, in producing the cut-down cards, like the R9 Fury, AMD disables a number of CUs, each CU containing a select amount of stream processors.

What you need to keep in mind is that not every GPU survives the manufacturing process undamaged. In the case of the R9 Fury X’s Fiji XT GPU, for example, 64 functioning CUs are required.

A number of GPUs will be produced without fault and therefore become R9 Fury Xs, while others have too many faults altogether and are discarded entirely. But should a GPU have just one or two CUs that don’t function correctly, it becomes a prime candidate for the lower tier variant.

AMD simply disables a few more CUs in addition to those that are damaged, 8 need to be disabled in the case of the Fiji Pro (the GPU powering the R9 Fury), and away you go.

The CUINFO tool is able to detect this locked CUs and subsequently unlocking them, providing the affected GPU with complete access to all stream processors contained within.

The Xs represent locked or otherwise faulty CUs.

After its analysis of your GPU, CUINFO will display locked or damaged CUs as Xs. You’re then given the option to unlock a number of them – don’t expect to unlock them all, not unless you’re very lucky.

Most users are reporting unlocking at least 4 CUs, adding an additional 256 stream processors to their card. Throw in a little overclocking and you’ll get a lot closer to the R9 Fury X than the vanilla R9 Fury is capable.

Fully Unlocked Fiji GPU - Fiji XT - R9 Fury X - 4096 Shaders

An example of a fully unlocked R9 Fury X and its Fiji XT GPU. Notice the 4096 shaders (stream processors).

Cut-down Fiji GPU - Fiji Pro - R9 Fury - 3584 Shaders

A nerfed Fiji Pro GPU. The R9 Fury and its 3584 stream processors, or shaders.

R9 Fury following CU unlocking process - 3840 Shaders

Following the unlocking process, this R9 Fury packs 3840 shaders.

The original forum thread contains a number of benchmarks and screenshots of users who have successfully unlocked their Furys to 3840 SP counterparts, including a user who unlocked his to a full blown Fury X.

Before attempting the process, which can also be done on Hawaii (Radeon R9 390) and Tonga (R 9 380) GPUs, be sure to read everything contained within the guide.

If you damage or kill your GPU altogether, there’s very little that can be done. Your warranty is unlikely to survive altering hardware after all.