Friday, September 4th 2015
AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review by TPU...Not
There won't be a Radeon R9 Nano review on TechPowerUp. AMD says that it has too few review samples for the press. When AMD first held up the Radeon R9 Nano at its "Fiji" GPU unveil, to us it came across as the most promising product based on the chip, even more than the R9 Fury series, its dual-GPU variant, and the food-processor-shaped SFF gaming desktop thing. The prospect of "faster than R9 290X at 175W" is what excited us the most, as that would disrupt NVIDIA's GM204 based products. Unfortunately, the most exciting product by AMD also has the least amount of excitement by AMD itself.
The first signs of that are, AMD making it prohibitively expensive at $650, and not putting it in the hands of the press, for a launch-day review. We're not getting one, and nor do some of our friends on either sides of the Atlantic. AMD is making some of its tallest claims with this product, and it's important (for AMD) that some of those claims are put to the test. A validated product could maybe even convince some to reach for their wallets, to pull out $650.
Are we sourgraping? You tell us. We're one of the few sites that give you noise testing by some really expensive and broad-ranged noise-testing equipment, and more importantly, card-only power-draw. Our reviews also grill graphics cards through 22 real-world tests across four resolutions, each, and offer price-performance graphs. When NVIDIA didn't send us a GeForce GTX TITAN-Z sample, we didn't care. We didn't make an announcement like this. At $2,999, it was just a terrible product and we never wished it was part of our graphs. Its competing R9 295X2 could be had under $700, and so it continues to top our performance charts.
The R9 Nano, on the other hand, has the potential for greatness. Never mind the compact board design and its SFF credentials. Pull out this ASIC, put it on a normal 20-25 cm PCB, price it around $350, and dual-slot cooling that can turn its fans off in idle, and AMD could have had a GM204-killing product. Sadly, there's no way for us to test that, either. We can't emulate an R9 Nano on an R9 Fury X. The Nano appears to have a unique power/temperature based throttling algorithm that we can't copy.
"Fiji" is a good piece of technology, but apparently, very little effort is being made to put it into the hands of as many people as possible (and by that we mean consumers). This is an incoherence between what AMD CEO stated at the "Fiji" unveil, and what her company is doing. It's also great disservice to the people who probably stayed up many nights to get the interposer design right, or sailing through uncharted territory with HBM. Oh well.
The first signs of that are, AMD making it prohibitively expensive at $650, and not putting it in the hands of the press, for a launch-day review. We're not getting one, and nor do some of our friends on either sides of the Atlantic. AMD is making some of its tallest claims with this product, and it's important (for AMD) that some of those claims are put to the test. A validated product could maybe even convince some to reach for their wallets, to pull out $650.
The R9 Nano, on the other hand, has the potential for greatness. Never mind the compact board design and its SFF credentials. Pull out this ASIC, put it on a normal 20-25 cm PCB, price it around $350, and dual-slot cooling that can turn its fans off in idle, and AMD could have had a GM204-killing product. Sadly, there's no way for us to test that, either. We can't emulate an R9 Nano on an R9 Fury X. The Nano appears to have a unique power/temperature based throttling algorithm that we can't copy.
"Fiji" is a good piece of technology, but apparently, very little effort is being made to put it into the hands of as many people as possible (and by that we mean consumers). This is an incoherence between what AMD CEO stated at the "Fiji" unveil, and what her company is doing. It's also great disservice to the people who probably stayed up many nights to get the interposer design right, or sailing through uncharted territory with HBM. Oh well.
759 Comments on AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review by TPU...Not
Removing a benchmark because a brand does poorly in it is being biased, and a shill.
People play games because they like the game style, or something about the game, not because it runs faster on a certain hardware. They might base purchases upon performance in a specific title, so providing that sort of info is 100% required. We choose games and apps that people use often, not apps that favor one brand or the other. therein lies the motivation.. it's about what is relevant to the reader, not what's relevant to the hardware, since it's the reader that gets the benefit of the review, not the hardware. You've flipped it backwards.
And I didn't say that as a fact, only as a hypothesis. the other info (retail ITX package) comes from pretty reliable source.
Forums all over the web were full of hate and problems that came from Brand ? Drivers and graphics card
I'm sure others will confirm my failing degenerate Brain cells
If someone is looking at a performance of a few specific games, then let them look at it. Maybe it should've been worded better than it shouldn't be removed at all from the entirety of the test, but it shouldn't reflect the overall performance. If w1zzard comes in and says it isn't reflected then I really have no problem with it.
The Tpu reviewer sometimes uses different and multiple Cpu / motherboard combo's to give a Fair comparison
I Bet that This ITX Package is Intel powered and the only AMD Chip is in the Graphics card
Point is, TPU gfx card reviews provide a wealth of info for users to utilise. That the summary portrays AMD in a bad light is simply a reflection of one or two outliers (and/or a general trend favouring NV performance).
But this is all OT. The logical question is "How does AMD select review sites given limited supply?"
We're all assuming things without adequate info (why these threads exist frankly). TPU has a large user base and by laws of exposure should have received one. Perhaps it is as simple as no YouTube/media outlet. Let's face it, people are thick as mince these days and reading isn't as much fun as watching an animated reviewer tell us the bullet points.
Frankly, whatever way you look at it, AMD still can't produce enough of its halo product anywhere in the world. That's more worrying than TPU not getting a sample.
LOL.Wow, well deduced Einstein. There aren't FX ITX boards.
Can we have those back?
I guess it will be pretty hard to get exactly the same image from game a or b however I'm afraid all this driver "optimizations" are done at the expense of image quality, like disabling some post processing feature, rearranging draw order and so on.
Without this how can one know if 8x SSAA anti-aliasing is being applied and not 2x, or even some form of edge, which looks well enough?
I'm sure both camps are doing shady things, however it will be interesting to see to what extent.
if it's a hobby, does that mean your reviews hold less weight coming from a hobbyist?
sorry dave but i aint sure you can play both cards in the same thread.
meh, it matters not. looking back i blame bta for this. his articles are full of back handed compliments for amd.
i do find it funny how a site that was built on the back of atitools has become the breeding grounds for nvidia fanbois.
que the "marsey is an amd fanboi" posts while i go play on a maxwell gpu xD
On the semantic front:
Dave says this is a hobby not a job. And he says my job is....
These aren't contradictory. This is his hobby but when he does the review for TPU he has a 'job' (or a role, if you prefer) to perform. So his 'job' (or task, or role) as a reviewer is A, B and C. I build PC's as a hobby. When I build a PC, especially for a friend or family, it is my 'job' to ensure it works, it's maintained etc etc.
And FTR, how can you not know Dave was an AMD activist for ages? You've been a member longer than me and he must have spent about 3 years alone trying to get a crossfire issue working and was constantly loyal (while criticising).
That's Dave's (and so many people here) strong point. Just because they own a brand, it doesn't make them blind to issues with it.
that is the funny part, of late i have had very few issues (dx9 games had a lighting issue a while back, nothing else springs to mind) with my amd cards while my nvidia systems have been causing me headaches. when kepler came out i just stopped updating the drivers for my fermi cards as each one broke more than it fixed. maxwell drivers were less troublesome, it was 1 in 3 drivers which broke something then.
go back a few of years and it was the other way around, 3/4k series cards were the root of my headaches while the constant g92 rebands all worked flawlessly.
now the common theme as i see it (and that is all i can do, tell it how i see) is that back then nv had the better core and milked it for all it was worth. this continuity meant drivers were more stable as they already knew the core and how to make the most of it. back to today and it is amd rebranding old cores and having stable drivers while nv have pumped out new core after new core to try and catch up.
i mean shit, i aint going to lie, i am much more pro amd than nvidia myself these days. but when you look at how nvidia have been acting how could any sane person not be?
I suspect the reason that TPU didn't get a sample is because of the comprehensive nature of W1zz's reviews. Large number of games across multiple resolutions with price, power consumption, availability, and overclocking all factored in.
W1zz's charts are used across many tech forums to illustrate various posters arguments - especially the performance per watt, performance per $, and overall performance summaries.
AMD is keen to massage the Fiji message - focusing upon the points where Nano excels. AMD does not need the world+dog having ready access to perf/$ charts...especially at anything less than 4K.
I applaud AMD, or any company for that matter, strategizing for their product line - but the end result here is heavy handed and very short-sighted given that unit sales will be low and probably won't counter the negative press from a the company cherry-picking its product reviewers.No surprise. Site that benches a handful of games exclusively at 4K, with more than half of them falling under AMD's Gaming Evolved development program.
AMD for it's part haven't done a single thing to enamour me since the 5870/5850. I bought their 7970's but that was the start of AMD's (at least in recent years) move away from budget friendly. As a company - why do people feel loyalty to them? Because they're not doing so well? They're the underdog?
And what is that about supporting the underdog? Because you're not as good we have to support you? Because your business acumen has gone south and your ability to create profit for your investors is null? Why support them? They're not little tiger cubs or cute button nosed mammals. They're not badgers FFS! It's a company. A cold hard company - just like Nvidia, but not as rich, or quite as evil.
Anyway - I digress. FWIW, I've never had any real problems (apart from DX9 crossfire stutter) with either brand.
"" Nano Review ""
www.google.co.uk/search?q=Nano+review&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&gws_rd=cr&ei=RVzrVe7vN4q7atDVsfgG
Result 3 from top
Now that deserves a card for review 3rd most popular result and the rest are about that indian car the Tata nano
also, are retailers shipping these whole systems pre-assembled? that can't be cheap nor easy
what a mess, next time, amd, allow reviewers to test the hardware and present the data they like the best way they see fit, customers, at least the smart ones, will make sense of it no need for cherry picking stuff (tpu already has power consumption, noise and heat test data gathering)i second this motion, we really need this back again
preferable done in hardware video capture (from card output and not in software [screenshots] cause you know iq settings can change between frames if the driver detects such tactics)
And the54thvoid already said more than enough for me; I need say little else. Like most do, I take my hobbies pretty seriously. ;)
What I will add, however, id that the fact it remains only a hobby is not my choice. That's W1zzard's choice, so to speak. If doing reviews would pay my bills, I'd do nothing but. Things like doing video reviews and social media focus would have been things I gladly would have done, and done well (and offered and asked for permission to do), in order to make this a job, but W1zz has chosen for it to be different. In the end, I'm glad he did, although, I could use a job right about now...
It was with the Nano. What does the video say about the Nano? Well nothing. It says that "Hey, there is a new card out there that costs twice as much as a 290X and offers 30% better performance. Why do you pay double price for only 30% performance? Because it is a nice display of a new tech. Here have Papermaster say something that no customer cares about". Should I add here the "let down about the price" and the sarcasm about "performance" in the end? No mention about the cards compact form factor, and please don't tell me about the two slides that no one will notice for the 5 seconds they appear, while concentrating to what the person on the video says.
Nano is for the ITX market what Titan X is for the gaming market(yes Titan cards are gaming and not gaming cards - usually whatever suits better). It offers 20-30% better performance compared to the competition (GTX 970 ITX) for a much higher price. 99 out of 100 people will not buy a Titan X or a Nano. But those cards target that 1 person that will consider it.
Remember the Fury X pre release benchmarks where they put it above 980Ti? That put it 20% above 980Ti in average? Most was with 0xAF.
Yeah that turned out to be 0% once real reviews came in.
Then its the Nano benchmarks. Looks like a true GTX 970 ITX killer right?
Also 0xAF and 0xMSAA.
That is on 4K. Which will maybe be +10% in reality.
We all know 4K is the Fiji`s strong suit. What happens in 1080p and 1440p? I expect 970 ITX and Nano to be very close.
Way different situation than Titan X +43% real performance over 290X (Click)