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
Nano is a very specific product for a very small percentage of buyers. Probably 0.1% of the market. Those would consider this card as the best available solution. 99.9% will go for anything else that will fit nicely in their full ATX case.
AMD is sucking hind teat and it's their own doing.
Although clearly the drama this Unicorn generates is delicious.
Now, if you want a card for 1080p or 1440p, no one stops you for going for a 380 ITX, 960ITX or 970 ITX. If you can live with -10%, -20% -50% performance, no one asks you to buy the top card.
The top product is always ridiculously expensive. Titan compared to 780Ti, Titan X compared to 980Ti(who is talking about 290X? and anyway if you really really REALLY NEED to compare Titan X with 290X, Titan's price is 320% higher), Intel I7 6920HQ costs $190 more than Intel I7 6820HQ and their only difference is 200MHz on the CPU.
If Nano offers 10%-20% better performance and there is no other card that can offer that performance, yes you can put a ridiculous price on that card. 999 buyers will laugh at that price. One will buy the card. You only target that one person.There are people who will buy that box that it is one centimeter smaller in just one direction compared to the next one. The specs wouldn't matter much. Yes I am talking about people who don't know what a benchmark is. But they do use dollars, or euros, or bitcoins or whatever like every other person out there.
Is AMD trolling everybody with this "so called" launch??
Having a conversation with you is like having a conversation with an MP3 file. It doesn't matter what I will say. The MP3 file will always have the same arguments.
"
Tsukiyomi91
Gonna rest this case once & for all. Will give these AMD fags like Sony time to get their shit together & think in a rational manner. Maybe one day they will slowly shift into the Green camp once all the lies AMD has been brainwashing them with is gone. Oh, the Blue camp would accept them with open arms & show them the beauty of power, efficiency & ingenuity in which AMD has failed to accomplish that.
Posted on Sep 5th 2015, 20:52
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amd fags.... rational manner...amd has been brainwashing them...
Actually, this is not a good example at all because he insults/attacks AMD users as well, something Sony did not do in your example.
but that is all fine and allowed, yet the person who said they wont dignify an "fanboy" accusation with a responds gets a (temp) ban?
Idk man, seems atleast fishy to me.
Seeing how AMD hyped us all with R9 Nano and after clocks surfaced and after you do the math on your own based on clocks and see how they can't even supply them enough to reviewers, that is not looking good and they are falling into the first hype group. Which is bad for them...
"AMD are victims this, Nvidia are a nasty evil company that"
When anybody and everybody provides evidence or better proof that a post is inaccurate, there is no capitulation. Instead, tantrum heels get dug in and the posts become more infuriating.
The point of a community is to argue, discuss, understand. Sony on the whole attempts zero understanding and simply continue to push an often 'proven invalid' point.
What I tend to notice is the tiers (structures, not tears) of AMD support that defend each other. Guess what Zone, you're an AMD supporter, at least going by post history.
But I agree, your mention of an Nvidia fan (on mobile can't see name) is partially relevant. I hate those sorts of posts too.
Most people here are ticked off with AMD because of this, even people who aren't nVidia supporters. Simply fact is this was a very bad call by AMD for whatever reason it may be.
As for the pay what you get, it's very subjective. Titan X is an example. Even GTX 980 was a nice example when compared to the GTX 970. I say was because now that we know the real specs of GTX 970, some might have second thought about it's value and if it is a future proof product. And where can I buy a Nano TODAY? Reviews will come out before the card starts selling and no one puts a gun on your head to buy the card before TPU publishes it's own review. So, where is the problem?
It's just boring to keep repeating that people keep using double standards. I have shown in the past that people in here and not only here, will happily blame AMD, and then find plenty of excuses for Intel and Nvidia for the same exact things.
It's funny how everyone ignores the example of Intel I7 6920HQ and Intel I7 6820HQ, forget that Titan X costs $350 more than a GTX 980Ti probably for the same performance gains as a Nano over a GTX 970 ITX.
Iit's funny how you will have to write 50 posts about GTX 970 4GBs fiasco(and ROPs, and data bus and cache) only to get denial, it's funny how async compute contradicts what Nvidia was spreading directly or indirectly about Maxwell's complete DirectX 12 support, but people will not consider it important. Nvidia will come probably with a software emulation of the fanction and everyone in this specific case will come to the conclusion that software emulation is as good as a hardware function. I am absolutely sure about that. If it was AMD, it would have been a nice excuse for an editorial and how AMD lies to consumers by emulating something that doesn't exists.
Then there is the no DirectX 12 Fermi support that no one cares to comment. But if AMD wasn't supporting DirectX 12 on GCN 1.0 for example, everyone would be firing at them. There are 700 and 600 series cards out there from Nvidia that they are NOT DirectX 12 because they are Fermi rebrands. But it is Nvidia. No reason to mention it.
Honestly I dont get what all this heated discussion is about, I mean gawd its a videocard.
I think this mostly stems from their just being 2 camps, take cars, hard to keep track of what brands to hate and why, there are so many after all.
Anywho, they dont provide a review sample, so what?
The people who care about reviews will wait untill reviews have been done (every review company can just go out a buy a copy for reviewing and perhaps even return it later, that would honestly be a better idea anyway as there is no chance of cherry picked review samples).
The people who dont care about reviews....well they dont care, whether its done or not they will decide on buying it or not on other reasons, simple as that.
Its questionable for sure but man, such heated speculation and fanboy-ish hate remarks, its just insanity.
Both companies have screwed up at times one things, it happens. Problem is that AMD if you look at their track record last 3-4 years its been 1 after another on top of them crying foul at nvidia saying they intentionally cripple performance on radeon cards yet AMD has been guilty of doing same thing on nvidia cards. At this point people are starting to get sick of it.
AMD obviously has far less driver work required and can use its ACE instead. But that's OT.