# AMD Radeon R9 Nano to Feature a Single PCIe Power Connector



## btarunr (Jun 17, 2015)

AMD's Radeon R9 Nano is shaping up to be a more important card for AMD, than even its flaghsip, the R9 Fury X. Some of the first pictures of the Fury X led us to believe that it could stay compact only because it's liquid cooled. AMD disproved that notion, unveiling the Radeon R9 Nano, an extremely compact air-cooled graphics cards, with some stunning chops.

The Radeon R9 Nano is a feat similar to the NUC by Intel - to engineer a product that's surprisingly powerful for its size. The card is 6-inches long, 2-slot thick, and doesn't lug along any external radiator. AMD CEO Lisa Su, speaking at the company's E3 conference, stated that the R9 Nano will be faster than the Radeon R9 290X. That shouldn't surprise us, since it's a bigger chip; but it's the electrical specs, that make this product exciting - a single 8-pin PCIe power input, with a typical board power rated at 175W (Radeon R9 290X was rated at 275W). The card itself is as compact as some of the "ITX-friendly" custom design boards launched in recent times. It uses a vapor-chamber based air-cooling solution, with a single fan. The Radeon R9 Nano will launch later this Summer. It could compete with the GeForce GTX 970 in both performance and price.



 

 

 



*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## KarymidoN (Jun 17, 2015)

Looks Really cool...


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## Pap1er (Jun 17, 2015)

Looks like AMD could possibly be powering next generation of consoles, again...

Edit: And I forgot to mention ultra portable gaming machines like Steam consoles.

AMD did a great job there, I am wondering how do they achieved it with such a small budget for R&D


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## dj-electric (Jun 17, 2015)

It has been a long time since i was really impressed with a technology by AMD. Now is the time.


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## RejZoR (Jun 17, 2015)

Question here is, how are they achieving this. Only explanation can be cutting it down on shaders and/or clocks. I can't see any other way in getting such small thermal output and still calling it Fiji/Fury.


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## Chaitanya (Jun 17, 2015)

Since its AMD, I am going to be skeptical about all the claims until proven by a reliable 3rd party authority.


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## ZoneDymo (Jun 17, 2015)

Dj-ElectriC said:


> It has been a long time since i was really impressed with a technology by AMD. Now is the time.



Its been a long time since I've been impressed with gpu tech at all, but yeah now is the time.


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## Pap1er (Jun 17, 2015)

AMD rolled out some pretty interesting tech ...


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## DarkOCean (Jun 17, 2015)

I want to see this yesterday ! I'm tired of waiting a new gpu from amd.


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## revanchrist (Jun 17, 2015)

Pap1er said:


> Looks like AMD could possibly be powering next generation of consoles, again...
> 
> Edit: And I forgot to mention ultra portable gaming machines like Steam consoles.
> 
> AMD did a great job there, I am wondering how do they achieved it with such a small budget for R&D



That Quantum Project of AMD already shows what a next-gen console should looks like. Undoubtly Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will stick with AMD again.


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## GhostRyder (Jun 17, 2015)

I will still be waiting for some confirmation on this card.

However, the card is really small which is a great start and shows it has a lower thermal output with that cooler design.  Would love to see it in action so we can know exactly where it falls.


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## FrustratedGarrett (Jun 17, 2015)

According to PCPerspective, the nano Fury packs more performance than the 290X. 

*On stage at the AMD E3 2015 press conference, AMD's CEO Lisa Su announced the Radeon R9 Nano, a 6-in PCB small form factor graphics card that will feature "2x the performance per watt of the R9 290X" as well as "significantly" more performance than the R9 290X.

http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Announces-Radeon-R9-Nano-6-Graphics-Card*


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## RejZoR (Jun 17, 2015)

R9 Nano seems like a pilot project for Arctic Islands...


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## SonicZap (Jun 17, 2015)

A single 8-pin power connector and faster than the R9 290X. Unless they're drawing a lot more from that power connector than the PCI-E specification allows, Fiji really is a lot more efficient than GCN 1.1 (Hawaii) / 1.2 (Tonga). And that's great. I doubt it'll catch Maxwell, but if it'll be as good as the hype shows it will be, it'll be very close.


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## FrustratedGarrett (Jun 17, 2015)

RejZoR said:


> R9 Nano seems like a pilot project for Arctic Islands...



Yeah, doesn't look like a harvested Fiji. Fury seems to have 150% perfromance/Watt increase vs 200% performance/Watt on the Nano.


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## Haytch (Jun 17, 2015)

Looks like a great product so far.  Would love to get my hands on the full specification list.


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 17, 2015)

FrustratedGarrett said:


> According to PCPerspective, the nano Fury packs more performance than the 290X.
> 
> *On stage at the AMD E3 2015 press conference, AMD's CEO Lisa Su announced the Radeon R9 Nano, a 6-in PCB small form factor graphics card that will feature "2x the performance per watt of the R9 290X" as well as "significantly" more performance than the R9 290X.
> 
> http://www.pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/AMD-Announces-Radeon-R9-Nano-6-Graphics-Card*



If by significantly you mean 15-25% (175W/150W (since it has 2x perf/w of 290X) = 1.16666) sure. The impressive bit is the powerconsumption, not the raw performance. if you want raw performance, you have to go up to the Fury or Fury X. Still waiting on actual 3r-party results though.


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## horik (Jun 17, 2015)

Was looking at an GTX970 card and price droped 10€ after AMD`s presentation, might just get one. I`m tired of waiting.


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## $ReaPeR$ (Jun 17, 2015)

oh... this is veeeeeeeery exciting!!!!!!!!! cants wait for the benchmarks...


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## happita (Jun 17, 2015)

revanchrist said:


> That Quantum Project of AMD already shows what a next-gen console should looks like. Undoubtly Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will stick with AMD again.



I'm not sure. It's too early to tell because I think current consoles will last us just as long as the X360 and PS3 did. Nvidia isn't some slouch when it comes to cards, but maybe because of the small profit margins associated with consoles, they pretty much just gave it to AMD.

OT though, AMD has certainly surprised us all with their product line. I was thinking the only "new" cards were going to be Fury-X/Fury. Seems it's more than just that and it's making my purchase finger twitch a little.


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## Assimilator (Jun 17, 2015)

So it's as fast as GTX 970 and uses the same amount of power. And it's about the size of the ITX GeForce 970. So... what's newsworthy, that AMD has "only" taken a year to reach parity with nVIDIA?


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## bubbleawsome (Jun 17, 2015)

Assimilator said:


> So it's as fast as GTX 970 and uses the same amount of power. And it's about the size of the ITX GeForce 970. So... what's newsworthy, that AMD has "only" taken a year to reach parity with nVIDIA?


Let's start with the basics of how competition works. Ya know, competition. Second, if AMD is showing promise with a card that can match the 970 it shows that they've overcome most arguments against them. (Power consumption mostly) If the fury line succeeds then stock in the market goes up. Eventually the R&D budget goes up and we get even better cards.

What is special about the card itself? Not much. Assuming the core is truly an exact equal with the 970 the only advantage it has is a true 4GB VRAM with HBM to boot. That introduces an option to people buying a card at the 970 price point. Nvidia may drop prices, then AMD may do the same. Overall it is much better for the market, in the short and long terms.


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## btarunr (Jun 17, 2015)

Assimilator said:


> So it's as fast as GTX 970 and uses the same amount of power. And it's about the size of the ITX GeForce 970. So... what's newsworthy, that AMD has "only" taken a year to reach parity with nVIDIA?



And it did that with 1/8th the budget.


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## GhostRyder (Jun 17, 2015)

Assimilator said:


> So it's as fast as GTX 970 and uses the same amount of power. And it's about the size of the ITX GeForce 970. So... what's newsworthy, that AMD has "only" taken a year to reach parity with nVIDIA?


 You do realize the R9 290X is more powerful than the GTX 970 right?  If its supposed to be more powerful than the R9 290X, then its more powerful than the GTX 970 while also having the full amount of memory (Presumably 4gb of HBM).



RejZoR said:


> R9 Nano seems like a pilot project for Arctic Islands...


 It seems like it really is another experiment similar to the R9 285.  Looking like its better though at least because it only has a single 8 pin which hints at the lower power consumption and the promise (Though I tend to not hold my breath) that its more powerful than a 290X.

All that together makes it a pretty compelling buy especially if priced right.  Still, I am more interested in the Fury X overall.


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## mirakul (Jun 17, 2015)

Assimilator said:


> So it's as fast as GTX 970 and uses the same amount of power. And it's about the size of the ITX GeForce 970. So... what's newsworthy, that AMD has "only" taken a year to reach parity with nVIDIA?


Nano has 4 GB of HBM. 970 has 3.5 GB of GDDR5.
And you said "reach parity"? Oh well...
If not for HBM the fury line up could have been release much sooner, cause GCN 1.2 had been ready at the time of R9 285.


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## Lionheart (Jun 17, 2015)

Assimilator said:


> So it's as fast as GTX 970 and uses the same amount of power. And it's about the size of the ITX GeForce 970. So... what's newsworthy, that AMD has "only" taken a year to reach parity with nVIDIA?


What an arrogant comment! Least this card can count to 4...


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## bubbleawsome (Jun 17, 2015)

mirakul said:


> Nano has 4 GB of HBM. 970 has 3.5 GB of GDDR5.
> And you said "reach parity"? Oh well...
> If not for HBM the fury line up could have been release much sooner, cause GCN 1.2 had been ready at the time of R9 285.


To be fair, it does have a full 4.0GB, but marketing happens.


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## Casecutter (Jun 17, 2015)

Does anyone know what *21 and **22 notes on the last slide pertain to?

I think we need to not get into much speculation as what perf/watt, other than how AMD exposes it on that slide.  I can see folks already starting to work this up into a lather… "these people said"… "they say"… and that’s when it all goes into full "AMD over-promised".

I will say it’s interesting that AMD shows on that first slide only two HBM as green?  Could they be indicating that the Nano is positioned to say "up to 1440p", and they determine 2Gb of HBM more than sufficient for mainstream gaming especially into the future.  I don’t see it as an improving efficiency thing, perhaps they get a lot of bad HBM/interposer surface mounts. IDK

But when you got lemons, you make lemonade…


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## bubbleawsome (Jun 17, 2015)

If nano has 2GB I will be incredibly sad.


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## the54thvoid (Jun 17, 2015)

Casecutter said:


> Does anyone know what *21 and **22 notes on the last slide pertain to?
> 
> I think we need to not get into much speculation as what perf/watt, other than how AMD exposes it on that slide.  I can see folks already starting to work this up into a lather… "these people said"… "they say"… and that’s when it all goes into full "AMD over-promised".
> 
> ...



You're very correct.  At this moment we can only gauge the perf versus their own stable.  Otherwise the shit slinging will get nasty in a week or so.



bubbleawsome said:


> If nano has 2GB I will be incredibly sad.



It would but surely they wouldn't give a card the same or better perf than a 290X and hamper it with only 2GB Vram?


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## N3M3515 (Jun 17, 2015)

btarunr said:


> And it did that with 1/8th the budget.



You won the internet today!!!

Let's hope this card doesn't cost more than $330


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## xorbe (Jun 17, 2015)

I am guessing this is a full fiji just down-clocked (and reduced power section).  I much prefer that vs a cut chip clocked to the moon.


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## mirakul (Jun 17, 2015)

xorbe said:


> I am guessing this is a full fiji just down-clocked (and reduced power section).  I much prefer that vs a cut chip clocked to the moon.


Sadly there is term called "harvest". They need a card for bad dies, hence there will be always a cut down gpu. 

Fiji down clocked can be found in Fury btw.


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## 64K (Jun 17, 2015)

A single 8 pin is plenty for the Nano. That gives it 225 watts to play with after including what is provided through the slot. The Asus 970 Strix uses a single 8 pin too and does just fine even with overclocking.


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## Casecutter (Jun 17, 2015)

bubbleawsome said:


> If nano has 2GB I will be incredibly sad.


Said like those who preached 4Gb HBM isn't enough... I take the wait and see.



btarunr said:


> Would you choose 4 GB DDR3 over 1 GB GDDR5? The choice between HBM and GDDR5 will be similar.


Or 3.5Gb DDR5 over 2Gb HBM.


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## RejZoR (Jun 17, 2015)

I don't think 2GB would make ANY kind of sense on a card that is essentially as fast as R9-290X. I think it comes with 4GB as well. After all, space isn't an issue anymore...


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## Crap Daddy (Jun 17, 2015)

What is "performance density"?


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## Initialised (Jun 17, 2015)

Crap Daddy said:


> What is "performance density"?



Think of it as TerraFLOPS/Volume


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## iSkylaker (Jun 17, 2015)

"Energy efficient", I love that.

If all this is true, it only needs to be well priced to count with my support.


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## newtekie1 (Jun 17, 2015)

mirakul said:


> Nano has 4 GB of HBM. 970 has 3.5 GB of GDDR5.
> And you said "reach parity"? Oh well...
> If not for HBM the fury line up could have been release much sooner, cause GCN 1.2 had been ready at the time of R9 285.



Except HBM is the only reason this card can be this small, and the only reason it is capable of the performance.



Lionheart said:


> What an arrogant comment! Least this card can count to 4...



No, that is an arrogant statement.  The memory issue with the 970 doesn't much matter when it is kicking the crap out of everything AMD puts out, even with their 512-bit 4GB, and SLI 970s have been praised as the best bang for the buck for 4k for a good long while.

His statement was accurate, not arrogant.  We are all getting excited over AMD finally doing something that nVidia did 9 months ago.  And AMD has the advantage of HBM saving them an insane amount of PCB space.


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## LightningJR (Jun 17, 2015)

They wont go 2GB, it'll be 4GB HBM. It's quite obvious to me idk how it isn't obvious to others. Giving the 390/X 8GB and then giving a fury card 2GB.. never.


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## HTC (Jun 17, 2015)

What i fear here is that i didn't hear anything about the performance of the card in the presentation: only about *performance over watts*. BIG difference.

Supposedly, this card will make direct competition with 970, but is that on the performance side, on the performance over watts, both?

Reviews will tell.


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## LightningJR (Jun 17, 2015)

HTC said:


> What i fear here is that i didn't hear anything about the performance of the card in the presentation: only about *performance over watts*. BIG difference.
> 
> Supposedly, this card will make direct competition with 970, but is that on the performance side, on the performance over watts, both?
> 
> Reviews will tell.



She said it was faster than the 290X, "significantly faster", the 290X is around equal to the 970 so if it competes with the 980 and undercuts the price it's great competition.


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## xvi (Jun 17, 2015)

Dear AMD marketing team,

Lead with this next time.

Sincerely,
The Consumers


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## HTC (Jun 17, 2015)

LightningJR said:


> *She said it was faster than the 290X, "significantly faster"*, the 290X is around equal to the 970 so if it competes with the 980 and undercuts the price it's great competition.



Must have missed it: don't recall that bit 

EDIT

Just checked: www.twitch.tv/amd/v/6240136?t=1h15m48s

She starts talking about the nano @ this time and indeed she says that.

Well see in them reviews.


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## HumanSmoke (Jun 17, 2015)

btarunr said:


> And it did that with 1/8th the budget.


That's probably another one of those "facts" you found via your magic ass, right?
There is no way in hell, Fiji's (inc the ancillary tech - interposer design, HBM R&D etc) R&D costs equate to an eighth of what GM204 cost to develop. Even a simple glance at the R&D spend for each company (AMD and Nvidia) should tell you that is basically impossible.
If AMD can develop a 596mm² GPU utilizing a swath of new GPU tech for 1/8th the R&D budget of a 398mm² GPU based on refinement of previous design, it makes you wonder why they didn't apply the same fervour to some much smaller chips.


Lionheart said:


> What an arrogant comment! Least this card can count to 4...


Well played!


Crap Daddy said:


> What is "performance density"?


Probably someone in marketing noticed they didn't have enough bullet points on the slide then got the idea to divide transistor count per mm by some hand-tailored game image quality level and viola "Performance Density"!!
If AMD lead this particular metric, it should become the new "must have" feature very soon. Hallelujah! I was getting sick of DX12 feature level support being the defining factor for buying anything graphics related.


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## Cool Vibrations (Jun 17, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> The memory issue with the 970 doesn't much matter when it is kicking the crap out of everything AMD puts out, even with their 512-bit 4GB, and SLI 970s have been praised as the best bang for the buck for 4k for a good long while.



Sounds exactly like the 290 before the 9XX series came out. 

Oh wait, the 290 had 4GB not 3.5GB. 

I forgot it's okay to lie to the consumers if your company's name is Nvidia. Silly me.


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## Casecutter (Jun 17, 2015)

Casecutter said:


> I will say it’s interesting that AMD shows on that first slide only two HBM as green?


 Ok have seen other pictures (slides) and it not that they're highlighting the HBM it's a reflection, so tin-foil is now off... or would that mean I need it back on?


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## rruff (Jun 17, 2015)

Casecutter said:


> Or 3.5Gb DDR5 over 2Gb HBM.



Please explain how fast vram can compensate for it's small size when a game is calling for >2GB of data for one frame.


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## Casecutter (Jun 17, 2015)

rruff said:


> Please explain how fast vram can compensate for it's small size when a game is calling for >2GB of data for one frame.


I'd defer back to btarunr he said it best!


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## rruff (Jun 18, 2015)

Casecutter said:


> I'd defer back to btarunr he said it best!



Where?


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## mirakul (Jun 18, 2015)

rruff said:


> Please explain how fast vram can compensate for it's small size when a game is calling for >2GB of data for one frame.



In most case a proper optimization from driver could fix that problem, said Macri, AMD CTO.

“If you actually look at frame buffers and how efficient they are and how efficient the drivers are at managing capacities across the resolutions, you’ll find that there’s a lot that can be done. *We do not see 4GB as a limitation that would cause performance bottlenecks*. We just need to do a better job managing the capacities. We were getting free capacity, because with [GDDR5] in order to get more bandwidth we needed to make the memory system wider, so the capacities were increasing. As engineers, we always focus on where the bottleneck is. If you’re getting capacity, you don’t put as much effort into better utilising that capacity. *4GB is more than sufficient. We’ve had to go do a little bit of investment in order to better utilise the frame buffer, but we’re not really seeing a frame buffer capacity [problem]*. You’ll be blown away by how much [capacity] is wasted.”

Read more: http://wccftech.com/amd-addresses-capacity-limitation-concern-hbm/#ixzz3dNO7Y7Nv


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## btarunr (Jun 18, 2015)

With Fiji, AMD too has a new lossless texture compression mojo, just like NVIDIA.



HumanSmoke said:


> That's probably another one of those "facts" you found via your magic ass, right?



Nah, finance.google.com .


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## HumanSmoke (Jun 18, 2015)

btarunr said:


> Nah, finance.google.com .


Awesome. Care to share a link.
GPU R&D costs tend to be a rare information commodity as a general rule. Last comprehensive costing for a single large GPU I've seen was the $475million in R&D Nvidia spent getting the G80 to market.


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## btarunr (Jun 18, 2015)

HumanSmoke said:


> Awesome. Care to share a link.
> GPU R&D costs tend to be a rare information commodity as a general rule. Last comprehensive costing for a single large GPU I've seen was the $475million in R&D Nvidia spent getting the G80 to market.



No. I meant to say that a company with 1/8th the monies could catch up with NVIDIA in less than a year.


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## rruff (Jun 18, 2015)

mirakul said:


> In most case a proper optimization from driver could fix that problem, said Macri, AMD CTO.



Thanks for the info! I was under the impression that the game controlled vram utilization, not the driver.


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## rruff (Jun 18, 2015)

btarunr said:


> With Fiji, AMD too has a new lossless texture compression mojo, just like NVIDIA.



I thought that only improved bandwidth, not capacity? At least I don't recall it  ever being mentioned as capacity enhancing. Seems like that would have come out during the 970 debacle.


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## geon2k2 (Jun 18, 2015)

So the frame-buffer for FHD is what 1920*1080*4 (32 bit) *2 (2 frames, 1 displayed, 1 working on)/ =  16588800/1024/1024 = 15.82 MB

OMG  !!!   How are we going to fit 16 MB into 4096 MB?

With 4k there will be even a bigger problem. We will need 16 MB * 4 = 64 MB. Disaster ! We are DOOMED !

No this will never work, they should stop this inception before it destroys everything.

Oh well ... there is hope in this world though. We have the mighty iGPUs which can run FHD even with their tiny shared frame-buffers.


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## AsRock (Jun 18, 2015)

newtekie1 said:


> Except HBM is the only reason this card can be this small, and the only reason it is capable of the performance.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



But still i found the funny in it how ever it sounded.  As nearly every other post is just unknown facts or same crap circles.


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## Kissamies (Jun 18, 2015)

No need to think anymore what GFX card I will be getting for my new build when Skylake rolls out..


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## HumanSmoke (Jun 18, 2015)

btarunr said:


> No. I meant to say that a company with 1/8th the monies could catch up with NVIDIA in less than a year.


It's a nice achievement, but let's not get carried away. Fiji looks to be a doubled up Tonga minus the GDDR5 MC's and interface (the lack of HDMI 2.0 and FL 12_1 support, and added DCC tend to make Fiji look like it is reusing Tonga's logic blocks) . It is also only a single GPU, to which I guess you can add Iceland at the bottom end of the market. The company still don't seem to have tackled the mainstream/performance segment with a GPU that can pull double duty as enthusiast mobile, and they are still fielding a GPU in the current/future lineup that lacks TrueAudio and FreeSync support - AMD's principle broad-based marketing focus.


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## Yorgos (Jun 18, 2015)

Chaitanya said:


> Since its AMD, I am going to be skeptical about all the claims until proven by a reliable 3rd party authority.


nVidia delivers what it claims... 4 GB.


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## Brusfantomet (Jun 18, 2015)

rruff said:


> I thought that only improved bandwidth, not capacity? At least I don't recall it  ever being mentioned as capacity enhancing. Seems like that would have come out during the 970 debacle.



Unless they have some processor in the memory chip to decompress the textrues in the memory chips the increase in bandwidth is the same as the increase in ram.

Lets say the textures for a game takes 2000 MB, transferring this over a buss at 200 GB/s takes 10 ms (2GB / 200GB/s = 0,01) and it takes 2000 MB of the ram. If the data is compressed 25% it now takes 1500 MB meaning that it over the same bus takes 1.5GB / 200GB/s = 0.0075 s = 7.5 ms. But you do not unpack the textures in the memory, meaning that the 2000 MB of textures now only takes 1500 MB of ram.


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## Assimilator (Jun 18, 2015)

btarunr said:


> And it did that with 1/8th the budget.



Consumers don't care about budgets, they care about bang for buck and performance/watt. The latter is something AMD has been lacking for so long, hence why they only have 1/8th the budget to work with. Not to mention that nVIDIA already has working samples of Pascal, while AMD is probably going to pull another Hawaii and recycle Fury for the next 3 generations.



mirakul said:


> Nano has 4 GB of HBM. 970 has 3.5 GB of GDDR5.
> And you said "reach parity"? Oh well...



Fact: GTX 970 has 4GB GDDR5.
Fact: GTX 970 can address 4GB GDDR5.
Fact: you are a troll, and a poor one at that.


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## mirakul (Jun 18, 2015)

geon2k2 said:


> So the frame-buffer for FHD is what 1920*1080*4 (32 bit) *2 (2 frames, 1 displayed, 1 working on)/ =  16588800/1024/1024 = 15.82 MB
> 
> OMG  !!!   How are we going to fit 16 MB into 4096 MB?
> 
> ...


It's not as simple as you think.

Some stupid games tend to store a lot of textures into VRAM (Sh* of Mordor for example) and eventually ask for very high amount of VRAM. The AA process adds more burden to the capacity as well.

However, this could be fixed with a proper driver, as said by Macri from AMD. He also stated that it is the higher bandwidth of HBM makes the process possible.



Assimilator said:


> Consumers don't care about budgets, they care about bang for buck and performance/watt. The latter is something AMD has been lacking for so long, hence why they only have 1/8th the budget to work with. Not to mention that nVIDIA already has working samples of Pascal, while AMD is probably going to pull another Hawaii and recycle Fury for the next 3 generations.
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Fact: Pascal won't be available until HBM2
Fact: AMD spent that budget to give consumers new tech, not new Gimmworks sh*t.
Fact: If GTX970 could address more than 3.5GB with same bandwidth, nVidia CEO would be awarded the Nobel prize


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## cbeck113 (Jun 18, 2015)

AMD: "6" IS enough"


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## deemon (Jun 18, 2015)

Assimilator said:


> So it's as fast as GTX 970 and uses the same amount of power. And it's about the size of the ITX GeForce 970. So... what's newsworthy, that AMD has "only" taken a year to reach parity with nVIDIA?



also Nano seems to be a bit shorter than shortest 970:
Nano: http://www.techpowerup.com/img/15-06-17/170d.jpg
ASUS 970: http://images.bit-tech.net/content_...ce-gtx-970-directcu-mini-review/970dcm-3b.jpg
And this alone is quite significant for ITX builds!
Can't wait now 3rd party performance and thermal testing results vs 970 to see if it fully qualifies as ITX card.
(And didn't AMD support on consumer cards also 10bit and 12bit colors (per channel), whereas nvidia has that supported only on Quadro/Firepro and GTX cards are limited to 8bit?)


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## HTC (Jun 18, 2015)

I'm waiting for a version of nano with no PCIe connector. If it happens, it will probably be next year: we'll see ...


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## deemon (Jun 19, 2015)

HTC said:


> I'm waiting for a version of nano with no PCIe connector. If it happens, it will probably be next year: we'll see ...



with what then? USB? TB?


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 19, 2015)

HTC said:


> I'm waiting for a version of nano with no PCIe connector. If it happens, it will probably be next year: we'll see ...


Never gonna happen. If there's more budget, they make a bigger, similarly power-hungry core with more performance. For an example of what I mean, compare the 750Ti (no PCIe power, 75W max) to the 960 (one 6pin, 150W max), the 970 (2 6pin or 1 8pin, 225W max) and 980 (the 960 is basically a 980 chopped in 2, also 2 6pin or 1 8pin, 225W max) to see the performance tiers at various power brackets.


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## HTC (Jun 19, 2015)

ZeDestructor said:


> *Never gonna happen. If there's more budget, they make a bigger, similarly power-hungry core with more performance.* For an example of what I mean, compare the 750Ti (no PCIe power, 75W max) to the 960 (one 6pin, 150W max), the 970 (2 6pin or 1 8pin, 225W max) and 980 (the 960 is basically a 980 chopped in 2, also 2 6pin or 1 8pin, 225W max) to see the performance tiers at various power brackets.



Who say's i'm looking for performance?

I'm looking for a scaled down version of this with also scaled down levels of performance while *maintaining the HBM memory type*. Dunno if HBM can be with 2 GB of memory only: 4 would be nice but if it's only 2 it would still be OK for me.


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 19, 2015)

HTC said:


> Who say's i'm looking for performance?
> 
> I'm looking for a scaled down version of this with also scaled down levels of performance while *maintaining the HBM memory type*. Dunno if HBM can be with 2 GB of memory only: 4 would be nice but if it's only 2 it would still be OK for me.



You don't need HBM to feed a lower power GPU, so no, you're not getting a scaled down card for a while. You'll see DDR4/GDDR5 still for low power cards because it's sufficient.


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## HTC (Jun 19, 2015)

ZeDestructor said:


> *You don't need HBM to feed a lower power GPU*, so no, you're not getting a scaled down card for a while. You'll see DDR4/GDDR5 still for low power cards because it's sufficient.



But since the power savings come from HBM versions of these cards (nano and fury(X)), it stands to reason that a version of these with GDDR5 would be far more power hungry then a version with HBM.

It's also the HBM that makes it possible for the card to be this small: it may be even possible for a card with around the performance i'm looking for to be even smaller, i'm guessing.


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 19, 2015)

HTC said:


> But since the power savings come from HBM versions of these cards (nano and fury(X)), it stands to reason that a version of these with GDDR5 would be far more power hungry then a version with HBM.
> 
> It's also the HBM that makes it possible for the card to be this small: it may be even possible for a card with around the performance i'm looking for to be even smaller, i'm guessing.



Yes and no.. A certain amount is the engineering time involved, as well as the price of the RAM itself - HBM is expensive relative to DDR. The result of the combination of these factors is why you won't see HBM in a 75W desktop card for a while.


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## HTC (Jun 19, 2015)

ZeDestructor said:


> Yes and no.. A certain amount is the engineering time involved, as well as the price of the RAM itself - HBM is expensive relative to DDR. The result of the combination of these factors is why you won't see HBM in a 75W desktop card for a while.



Makes sense.

Still, it all comes down to how much is saved on "real estate" VS how much is spent on the more costly HBM ram.


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## Aquinus (Jun 19, 2015)

geon2k2 said:


> So the frame-buffer for FHD is what 1920*1080*4 (32 bit) *2 (2 frames, 1 displayed, 1 working on)/ =  16588800/1024/1024 = 15.82 MB
> 
> OMG  !!!   How are we going to fit 16 MB into 4096 MB?
> 
> ...


Dude, this isn't 2D days when your frame buffer was a color lookup palate and 3D was drawing in 2D space. You have the output frame buffer for the frames to be output but, you also require the textures for those objects, you require vertices for drawing the world, references to attach textures to polygons (triangles), light sources and their data, camera positioning. Needless to say, your over simplification of hardware and how things work is astonishing and disturbing.

GPUs do a lot more than display whatever is in the frame buffer.


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 20, 2015)

HTC said:


> Makes sense.
> 
> Still, it all comes down to how much is saved on "real estate" VS how much is spent on the more costly HBM ram.



PCB area isn't that big of a deal on lower-power cards (yet), as shown by the 740-750Ti: there's a few low-profile variants out there. The issue more often than not is the age-old cooling question, with the low-profile cards needing double-slot cooling.

The reason why memory isn't an issue on low-power cards is really quite simple: the card gets compute-limited before it gets memory-limited. Of course, with time this will change, I suspect 2-3 more generations myself.

The other part of the cost is the engineering and binning costs, which must also be thought about, and also a tradeoff .


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## HTC (Jun 20, 2015)

ZeDestructor said:


> *PCB area isn't that big of a deal on lower-power cards (yet), as shown by the 740-750Ti: there's a few low-profile variants out there.* The issue more often than not is the age-old cooling question, *with the low-profile cards needing double-slot cooling.*
> 
> The reason why memory isn't an issue on low-power cards is really quite simple: the card gets compute-limited before it gets memory-limited. Of course, with time this will change, I suspect 2-3 more generations myself.
> 
> The other part of the cost is the engineering and binning costs, which must also be thought about, and also a tradeoff .



That also depends on how much power those "lower power" cards have. I was looking for the highest "low power" card i can get, so i can underclock it like crazy and STILL have great performance. If such a card wont be in this generation, then i just have to wait for the next generation: we'll see ...

Double slot cooling? Still???? That surprises me, tbh!


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 20, 2015)

HTC said:


> That also depends on how much power those "lower power" cards have. I was looking for the highest "low power" card i can get, so i can underclock it like crazy and STILL have great performance. If such a card wont be in this generation, then i just have to wait for the next generation: we'll see ...
> 
> Double slot cooling? Still???? That surprises me, tbh!



Enjoy

It's just a plain aluminium-fin design, nothing particularly fancy with heatpipes or vapour chambers, but it is compact, and probably somewhat loud too... Colorful reportedly builds a blower variant, but I can't find a link to it.


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## HTC (Jun 20, 2015)

ZeDestructor said:


> Enjoy
> 
> It's just a plain aluminium-fin design, nothing particularly fancy with heatpipes or vapour chambers, *but it is compact, and probably somewhat loud too... *Colorful reportedly builds a blower variant, but I can't find a link to it.



That's a HUGE no no for me: i value quietness allot.


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 20, 2015)

HTC said:


> That's a HUGE no no for me: i value quietness allot.



Well, I mean relatively.. it should be around as loud as the CPU cooler in an SFF build. If you want quieter, you'll need a watercooled loop of some sort, or have to move up to a full-height card where they can fit a much larger fan.


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## deemon (Jun 21, 2015)

ZeDestructor said:


> Well, I mean relatively.. it should be around as loud as the CPU cooler in an SFF build. If you want quieter, you'll need a watercooled loop of some sort, or have to move up to a full-height card where they can fit a much larger fan.



Air cooling is a lot quieter than waterloops. Also they usually take less space than water cooling (just because water cooling radiator is elsewhere, doesn't make it smaller)


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 21, 2015)

deemon said:


> Air cooling is a lot quieter than waterloops. Also they usually take less space than water cooling (just because water cooling radiator is elsewhere, doesn't make it smaller)



I disagree on the quieter part. Sound depends entirely on your fan choice, and to a very minor extent, your pump. If I put a 6500rpm San Ace fan on an NH-D15 and an 1500rpm Noctua NF-F12 fan on a Nexxos Monsta, the Monsta is going to be magnitudes quieter.

And yes, with a watercooling loop, I do need to fit the rad elsewhere, but that has it benefits: I can have it at the intake instead of using warm case air, and I don't hang 1.3kg off my CPU socket with a center of gravity a fair bit away from the socket.


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## deemon (Jun 21, 2015)

ZeDestructor said:


> I disagree on the quieter part. Sound depends entirely on your fan choice, and to a very minor extent, your pump. If I put a 6500rpm San Ace fan on an NH-D15 and an 1500rpm Noctua NF-F12 fan on a Nexxos Monsta, the Monsta is going to be magnitudes quieter.



This was about the concept of air cooler vs closed loop liquid cooler (that already means, you use the same everything else ... like case, CPU, GPU, PSU, also used cooler fans if they are not somehow fixed/molded to your cooler and unremovable. .... you trying to bring the topic to san ace vs noctua is utter nonsense.... were we comparing fans here? NO).


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 21, 2015)

deemon said:


> This was about the concept of air cooler vs closed loop liquid cooler (that already means, you use the same everything else ... like case, CPU, GPU, PSU, also used cooler fans if they are not somehow fixed/molded to your cooler and unremovable. .... you trying to bring the topic to san ace vs noctua is utter nonsense.... were we comparing fans here? NO).



Fans are by far the main source of noise in any decent watercooling loop. On a CLC, the pump is usually a tiny, quiet little thing, and on a custom loop, you mount your pump(s) in some form of vibration-isolating mount, which brings the noise down to near zero. The lat source of noise would be air trapped in your pump, but that should only last the amount of time it takes you to bleed the air out of your loop and no more, since air in pump is how you fry your pumps.

With identical fans, running at identical speeds, an air cooler and a radiator will sound equally loud. Note I said sound equal, not produce equal noise.


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## Brusfantomet (Jun 22, 2015)

ZeDestructor said:


> Fans are by far the main source of noise in any decent watercooling loop. On a CLC, the pump is usually a tiny, quiet little thing, and on a custom loop, you mount your pump(s) in some form of vibration-isolating mount, which brings the noise down to near zero. The lat source of noise would be air trapped in your pump, but that should only last the amount of time it takes you to bleed the air out of your loop and no more, since air in pump is how you fry your pumps.
> 
> With identical fans, running at identical speeds, an air cooler and a radiator will sound equally loud. Note I said sound equal, not produce equal noise.



Having a swiftech MCP35X i can promise you that its far from quiet, eaven at 10% pwm and 1300 rpm it is verry audible, eaven tho i have mounted it on a shoggy sandwich thing that isolates the pump from the cabinet.

For the same OC a water cooling loop has the potential to be quieter than air, but at stock the water cooling will have the added noise from the pump, meaning that with the same fans it will always be louder, given that the air cooler is not saturated.


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 25, 2015)

Brusfantomet said:


> Having a swiftech MCP35X i can promise you that its far from quiet, eaven at 10% pwm and 1300 rpm it is verry audible, eaven tho i have mounted it on a shoggy sandwich thing that isolates the pump from the cabinet.
> 
> For the same OC a water cooling loop has the potential to be quieter than air, but at stock the water cooling will have the added noise from the pump, meaning that with the same fans it will always be louder, given that the air cooler is not saturated.



My lone MCP30X runs at 3000rpm all the time, can't hear it over the numerous fans.


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## Brusfantomet (Jun 25, 2015)

I have noticed that i might be a bit sensitive to fan/pump noise, in my experience any thing spinning over 600 rpm is noisy.

Is the MCP30X the one that comes with the H220-X?


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## ZeDestructor (Jun 26, 2015)

Brusfantomet said:


> I have noticed that i might be a bit sensitive to fan/pump noise, in my experience any thing spinning over 600 rpm is noisy.
> 
> Is the MCP30X the one that comes with the H220-X?



Yup. It's basically an MCP50X, but limited to 3000rpm max.o


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