AMD Radeon R9 Nano Nears Launch, 50% Higher Performance per Watt over Fury X

[Lionheart]

...and what do you expect? It's not like AMD hasn't over-hyped stuff in the past.

I get the extreme dislike of AMD's PR & overhyped BS but the constant negativity just keeps growing.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Man, I'm trying to remember where someone already said the Nano would fall between the 290X and 390X...where was that?

*cough*

Morale of the story is these are the same numbers, more or less, AMD put out during the conference.

 

[Casecutter]

Data obtained through isolated direct measurement of GDDR5 and HBM power delivery rails at full memory utilization. Power efficiency calculated as GB/s of bandwidth delivered per watt of power consumed

So the Performance/Watt is not about FpS, but the efficiency of the bandwidth?

The GTX 680 was really a mid range GPU and the high end Kepler was the 780. Nvidia has continued this course with the 970/980.

While yes 680 could be considered Nvidia's mid-range, one could consider Tahiti was the mid-range. At the time AMD could see Nvidia couldn't absolutely start flooding the Full-Keplers into the gaming market for many months... while yes Titan showed @ $1,000 Feb 2013... AMD saw no reason to substantiate what was a semi-quasi Professional offering. Had they had 7990 prior to Titan they could've at least had something but it took till April at that point it had little value.

The true GTX Gaming version showed as GTX 780 June 2013; AMD had Hawaii in the market Oct 2013, but yes the 290X was 5 months behind. That's was where AMD really started faltering, not have the money or foresight to get moving with big die's like Hawaii and Fiji has been their Achilles Heel.

 

[deemon]

now if they only made it
50% Higher Performance per €/$ over Fury X

 

[apoe]

Hey look it's another AMD marketing press release that will likely bear zero similarity to actual results achieved by independent third-party reviewers.

Exactly my thoughts when I saw the headline. Too much hype, all the time.

 

[NC37]

Hilarious watching everyone moan about 970 this, 970 that, when there are many 970 owners who have come out and stated the VRAM situation causes performance stuttering when being pushed over 3.5GB. Just ask 980 owners who came from a 970. The 980 doesn't have the issues even when it is pushed over 4GB.

So you want AMD to release an ultra competitive GPU that takes on the 970 directly? Are you blind? They already have one in the 390. It goes toe to toe and beats the 970 for the same price. Just because it doesn't have an "X" means you don't consider it? For the same price you get 8GB VRAM, around the same performance, and no stuttering issues. So what if it gulps power instead of drinks. The only better option is almost $200 higher which isn't much better in fps. Until NV drops the 980 under 390X prices, there is no competition.

 

[arbiter]

This is the problem. Nvidia lacks competition. It was obvious when they released the GTX 680 as a high end GPU for $500 because it was a little faster than AMD's high end GPU the HD 7970. The GTX 680 was really a mid range GPU and the high end Kepler was the 780. Nvidia has continued this course with the 970/980.

GTX680 was a bit faster then 7970 at the time. Which is why AMD released the bios update and released the cards with 1ghz clocks to make their cards closer to the 680.

He is talking about the same handful of users here that pounce on any AMD related thread and write negative comments,

They only do that because amd is vastly better

Most people are pointing out how AMD has made claims about fury being like 20% faster then a gtx980ti, in real world use with settings gamers use it was even and even fury is a hair slower at times. If you go back to last few years, AMD has a history of saying their part is faster then it ends up being cause how they do their benchmarks. Like their A series APU, they claim it was faster then i7 in mobile but when you look at benchmarks they used it was All GPU accelerated ones. Most of which normal buyers of their product wouldn't use.

My point still stands from a few threads ago: Less than 20% is not significantly faster. Less than 10% is barely faster. Especially considering the fury line has had no OC potential. I am so glad I did not wait for this to come out. The only way this card isn't a total flop is if the price is about $300-$350, and I don't see that happening. This is going to fall in somewhere north of $400.

I had that arguement with someone over that 5-10% over 290x, they were hell bent defending AMD for it.

I get the extreme dislike of AMD's PR & overhyped BS but the constant negativity just keeps growing.

When PR ends up being not being entirely true and it happens over and over, only so much of it before people start noticing it.

 

[EpicShweetness]

All I'm gonna say, AMD PR.

Ok maybe that, and we'll see

 

[tabascosauz]

I think people are missing the point here a bit.

The R9 Nano is designed to be a niche product. It aims to prove that GCN is still a slightly viable architecture to work with (and maybe, just maybe AMD is still a viable choice for your consumer graphics needs), despite the fact that both fully fledged 1.0 (Tahiti) and 1.1 (Hawaii) were monsters with respect to power consumption. It is not a direct competitor to the GTX 970; the R9 390 and 390X are supposed to be the hard-hitters that take on the GTX 970 and GTX 980 (with the latter having stiffer competition in the R9 Fury). Before you are quick to mention that Asus and GB have "mini-ITX" versions of the GTX 970, the R9 Nano is restricted to that niche, unlike the GTX 970, whose most popular variants are cards like the Strix, TF5, and ACX 2.0. The SG08 is a wonderful example of a single (1, not all of the mini-ITX cases, but 1 among perhaps 3 or 4 in total) mini-ITX case that has the strict limits on PCIe card length that may demand a card like the GTX 970 DC Mini or the R9 Nano, depending on the length of the PSU that you choose.

If the R9 Nano is released with a high asking price, it shouldn't be of any surprise to anyone since the card was never marketed as a GTX 970-killer - a GTX 970 DC Mini competitor, perhaps. However, I still cling to the belief that the Fiji product family shouldn't have warranted 3 separate, obscure launches. The Fury X release was the only one that drew significant attention (save for the R9 Nano, of course, we'll see how this one turns out), with most of that attention turning into hype and eventually, disappointment. The R9 Fury kind of just appeared in the background, and seemed incredibly delayed.

We've endured this kind of horrible marketing from AMD since, I dunno, forever? It isn't even something to take note of anymore. When you're losing to the competition in just about everything, what do you do? Find one of the rare things in which you aren't losing, and put it up on your PR slides. Duh. Would "Fury X is more expensive and slower than the GTX 980 Ti" be a better title for AMD's release event? It's just marketing. Learn to read the fine print. He even had a picture dedicated to the fine print.

 

[moproblems99]

I didn't forget, but when your CEO says something is significantly faster, don't show me a slide saying that it is 5% faster in best case. But your other points are valid.

 

[arbiter]

I didn't forget, but when your CEO says something is significantly faster, don't show me a slide saying that it is 5% faster in best case. But your other points are valid.

If 5%-10% is acceptable then it would be very hypocritical of people to say that it is. Then all the complaints about intel cpu's only being ~10% faster well turns in to complete load of dung.

 

[moproblems99]

Exactly. 10% is borderline. If Hawaii wasn't a couple years old it would be closer to acceptable.

 

[Zen_]

Plot twist: It will be an amazing cryptocurrency miner, and thus, no gamers will be able to buy one for nine months.

 

[Xzibit]

DGLee

 

[Bansaku]

FC4 is a rather demanding game on Tahiti,

Demanding yes, but still capable. I can get 60fps @1200p maxed settings if I dummy down the AA, 55fps in eyefinity with OC CFX.

 

[nem]

True innovation 175w tdp.

http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=892&pgno=2

 

[vega22]

um with water block, single slot 295x2 is do-able

yes. so please tell me more about how, no chance anybody could make one of these single slot

 

[decends]

I'm interested in Fury Nano. Not because I'd buy one, but I want to see the maximum power efficiency that AMD is able to achieve with Fiji. If it beats Maxwell in power efficiency, there might be hope left for Arctic Islands GCN.

I thought with the Arctic Islands was gonna be based off a completely new architecture and leave GCN behind......

 

[RejZoR]

I don't think AMD will be dropping GCN. It has been hugely successful. They'll just upgrade it to v2.0 or something...

 

[SonicZap]

I thought with the Arctic Islands was gonna be based off a completely new architecture and leave GCN behind......

I'm pretty sure it'll just be another newer version of GCN. AMD doesn't have the resources for designing a new GPU architechture and GCN has been succesful in many ways, they've gained market share in professional graphics and it also did well against Kepler. Performance and efficiency wise Fiji is doing okay-ish against Maxwell, but is hurt by very low yields because of manufacturing the HBM and the interposer.

 

[newtekie1]

Hilarious watching everyone moan about 970 this, 970 that, when there are many 970 owners who have come out and stated the VRAM situation causes performance stuttering when being pushed over 3.5GB. Just ask 980 owners who came from a 970. The 980 doesn't have the issues even when it is pushed over 4GB.

I think most of the 970 stuttering claims were made by people that never even owned a 970 actually. Also, any situation that would put a 970 over 3.5GB would also require SLI to run smoothly, so anyone with a single card(or claiming to have a single card) that complained of stuttering was over driving their card anyway.

As an actual 970 owner, an SLI 970 owner, I can tell you the stuttering was way over exaggerated. I get no noticeable stutter in any of the modern games except one. The one game I do get stutter on is Shadow of Mordor with the HD Textures installed. And the reason it stutters is for some reason it actually ignores the extre 0.5GB of memory and once it fills the 3.5GB it starts using system RAM. And I had the same problem with my 980, it just happened at 4GB. Shadow of Mordor actually will use close to 6GB of VRAM with the HD Textures, and once you start paging out to system RAM you will get stuttering. It isn't any worse on the 970 compared to the 980.

So you want AMD to release an ultra competitive GPU that takes on the 970 directly? Are you blind? They already have one in the 390. It goes toe to toe and beats the 970 for the same price. Just because it doesn't have an "X" means you don't consider it? For the same price you get 8GB VRAM, around the same performance, and no stuttering issues. So what if it gulps power instead of drinks. The only better option is almost $200 higher which isn't much better in fps. Until NV drops the 980 under 390X prices, there is no competition.

The 390 has virtually no overclock potential though, because AMD is already pushing the Hawaii silicon to its clock speed limits with the stock clocks. You are looking at sub-100MHz overclocks on the 390 while I haven't seen a 970 yet that couldn't do a 200MHz overclock.

And lets face it, overclock the video card is no mainstream. With every card coming with some kind of overclock utility bundled with it, and the warranties now covering overclocking, people do consider how a card will overclock in their final decision, especially people on an enthusiust tech site.

Then there is the fact that the 390 is more expensive, by about $30, than the 970. So the 390 is more expensive, performs worse once both are overclocked, performs equally when not overclocked, it uses way more power, puts out way more heat, and takes up way more space in your case. The 970 is already available in basically the same size form factor as the Nano, you'll never find a 390 in that form factor. The only benefit of the 390 is 8GB of VRAM, and all the reviews straight up say 8GB on this card is useless except in select couple of situations.

 

[Aquinus]

The 390 has virtually no overclock potential though, because AMD is already pushing the Hawaii silicon to its clock speed limits with the stock clocks. You are looking at sub-100MHz overclocks on the 390 while I haven't seen a 970 yet that couldn't do a 200MHz overclock.

And lets face it, overclock the video card is no mainstream. With every card coming with some kind of overclock utility bundled with it, and the warranties now covering overclocking, people do consider how a card will overclock in their final decision, especially people on an enthusiust tech site.

Yeah but, I bought my 390 with the intent that it would be good out of the box. You're right, I can't usually pull more than 1160Mhz on it without pumping a good bit of voltage and even then. The question was what were the alternatives. Paying a tiny bit extra for the 970 didn't make sense when the 390 does almost the same but gives you that 8GB of VRAM. Not to say that's useful yet but I've been occasionally touching that limit in Farcry 4.

The 390 has a lot of texturing capability versus the 970. On paper you would expect the 390 to do something vastly better than the 970 but we don't see that in a lot of cases. I suspect when we start using more memory for higher resolution textures that the 390 will suffer a lot less than a 970. This is all to be seen though. More demanding games are in order for us to see how that all goes over.

 

[newtekie1]

Yeah but, I bought my 390 with the intent that it would be good out of the box. You're right, I can't usually pull more than 1160Mhz on it without pumping a good bit of voltage and even then. The question was what were the alternatives. Paying a tiny bit extra for the 970 didn't make sense when the 390 does almost the same but gives you that 8GB of VRAM. Not to say that's useful yet but I've been occasionally touching that limit in Farcry 4.

The 390 has a lot of texturing capability versus the 970. On paper you would expect the 390 to do something vastly better than the 970 but we don't see that in a lot of cases. I suspect when we start using more memory for higher resolution textures that the 390 will suffer a lot less than a 970. This is all to be seen though. More demanding games are in order for us to see how that all goes over.

Sure, but the 390 isn't any better out of the box than the 970. At 1440p, their target market, they're basically dead even. And at this point the 970 is cheaper than the 390, so the question comes down to paying more for a card that is currently equal in performance, is worse in every other way, just in the hopes that the 8GB of memory becomes useful. And most of the experts(reviewers) have already said the 8GB won't be useful because the core just isn't powerful enough to utilize it. By the time you crank up the graphics to the point that the 8GB would be useful, the core is so bogged down with processing that you get no benefit anyway.

 

[GhostRyder]

Then there is the fact that the 390 is more expensive, by about $30, than the 970. So the 390 is more expensive, performs worse once both are overclocked, performs equally when not overclocked, it uses way more power, puts out way more heat, and takes up way more space in your case. The 970 is already available in basically the same size form factor as the Nano, you'll never find a 390 in that form factor. The only benefit of the 390 is 8GB of VRAM, and all the reviews straight up say 8GB on this card is useless except in select couple of situations.

Not exactly, the 390 can overclock a bit further than its predecessor 290 because of improvements on the silicon similar to the 390X's improvements. Just because the numbers on the clocks are higher does not result in more performance.

Now that's one situation and its all based on silicon lottery, however 1150+ is much more possible than it was before which results in a decent amount of performance. Most cards including those by NVidia have a point where overclocking starts to show diminishing results. So really the situation is going to matter what happens in SLI or CFX is where VRAM will have an impact. However on a single card to card basis, neither are going to really shine brighter than the other except depending on the silicon lottery.

Nano is adorable, I am curious about this cooler more than anything and how it performs with this card especially considering the small size. Though its not going to be my cup of tea unless I decide to make a new portable system.

 

[64K]

Not exactly, the 390 can overclock a bit further than its predecessor 290 because of improvements on the silicon

I thought the 390 was a 290 with higher clocks. Is there something new with the architecture?