AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review by TPU...Not

[dorsetknob]

Here's the most likely reason why TPU didn't get a sample. They operate in Germany as a worldwide english site. There just isn't that many samples and they most likely went to the german sites.

Just in case you have not browsed the entire site

 

[Luore]

My job as a reviewer is to meet the needs of our readers, and provide relevant info to their uses, not cater to the hardware makers. We sent the standard, and it is up to the hardware maker to meet or exceed our expectations, or to fail, and the reader to judge a products merit based on that. Otherwise we aren't reviewing anything.. we would then be marketing shills.

I thought the job of a reviewer was to make an impartial judgement of a product. Not to meet the needs of anything nor is this anything to do with a shill, a word that is misused quite often.

A slightly more logical Sony here, boys.

What's that have to do with anything other than a poor attempt to insult someone?

I don't understand why you cannot comprehend the fact that Pcars' presence in the benchmarks doesn't instantly assume Pcars' influence in the final score. I don't know why you can't figure this out. If you are oblivious to the fact that it's a Gameworks game and has a huge AMD disadvantage, and are unable to let it go as a result, then I'll leave it up to you to figure it out. The reviewers and the readers are all aware of this fact.

That's something that W1zzard has to tell us in terms of overall summary.

Again, just because Pcars fared horribly on the FuryX, you shouldn't be coming to the conclusion that the low overall score for the FuryX was due in part to Pcars. It was priced to beat the GTX 980 Ti, and it failed in that regard, not only in Pcars.

I never said anything about it performing up to expectations or not. I'm pointing out that the need to have a different bar in itself is an issue.

 

[tabascosauz]

I thought the job of a reviewer was to make an impartial judgement of a product. Not to meet the needs of anything nor is this anything to do with a shill, a word that is misused quite often.
What's that have to do with anything other than a poor attempt to insult someone?

That's something that W1zzard has to tell us in terms of overall summary.

I never said anything about it performing up to expectations or not. I'm pointing out that the need to have a different bar in itself is an issue.

I pointed out that it was a Gameworks game. Gameworks games are optimized for Nvidia and run like trash on AMD. The inclusion of Pcars is necessary but skews the results a bit, so the figure is there to provide a rough estimate of performance in non-Gameworks games.

 

[cadaveca]

I thought the job of a reviewer was to make an impartial judgement of a product. Not to meet the needs of anything nor is this anything to do with a shill, a word that is misused quite often.

Correct. But for that impartial judgment to be relevant requires setting a bar dictated by those that need the relevance. There are many review sites out there, and if we do not provide an accurate judgment based on a specific users needs, then they can look elsewhere. Being impartial means no bias, but all humans have bias based on their social status and upbringing.

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.

 

[Osjur]

Just in case you have not browsed the entire site

I know pretty well that they have multiple reviewers who do not live in Germany but isn't it W1zzard who's doing most of the graphic card reviews and according to the map, he actually lives there?

And I didn't say that as a fact, only as a hypothesis. the other info (retail ITX package) comes from pretty reliable source.

 

[dorsetknob]

If memory serves this old e Warrior once upon a time if you had a Motherboard with a nforce chipset you were well and truly screwed if you were a ATi /AMD graphics card owner
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

 

[Luore]

You don't seem to understand the point of a review and the gaming market whatsoever.
The test suite at TPU includes a host of games that are very popular. To dismiss a game because of vendor intervention would be an unfair reflection of the state of affairs. If game "x" is popular with a vast proportion of gamers, we like to know how it plays. To remove that game is to deny the reviewers audience of information.
What you purport to do is censorship of intelligence by proxy of 'biased' coding. It's not TPU's fault if a popular game has been coded favourably to a certain vendor. Dice worked closely with AMD on BF4, perhaps that should be excluded just in case? BioShock series as well? Thief, Tomb Raider. All AMD titles, surely must be filtered out. It's not TPU's problem that in DX9 or DX11, Nvidia managed to software optimise better.
No matter how cerebral your argument is put across and how civil you are (and thanks for being polite) your point is necessarily misguided. The hypocrisy of asking for a title to be removed because it favours a vendor is denying the reality of gaming hardware outcomes. DX12 will remove Nvidia's coding advantages so perhaps moving on we shouldn't need to care but frankly what you are suggesting is just as bad as Nvidia asking Star Dock to remove Async from the AoS bench...

I understand what you mean, it's essentially off when it comes to overall performance. I've already stated that I don't mind if the benchmark is in there. By all means have it in there, but if it's so obviously biased towards a vendor it shouldn't come to the overall performance because it skews everything by a decent margin. If someone is looking for overall performance and have it shifted, to either vendor because of it, it gives a very off picture of the overall performance.
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.

 

[64K]

Um, I'm not in Germany? Only W1zzard and DarkSaber are in Germany AFAIK. We are a global website, with hosting and staff in many countries, with our primary readership being in the US.



Now that... THAT is relevant. So AMD wanted testing done their way only.

At the end of the day it will probably be seen that AMD is cherry-picking review sites for the Nano review for a reason.

 

[rtwjunkie]

At the end of the day it will probably be seen that AMD is cherry-picking review sites for the Nano review for a reason.

I agree, and by that very decision it will hurt them. Their PR people are working overtime to try and outdo their predecessors' bumbles.

 

[Helios]

Let us make a collective order for it... .

 

[dorsetknob]

And I didn't say that as a fact, only as a hypothesis. the other info (retail ITX package) comes from pretty reliable source.

I wonder what the spec of this so called ITX package that is supplied for the review
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

 

[the54thvoid]

I understand what you mean, it's essentially off when it comes to overall performance. I've already stated that I don't mind if the benchmark is in there. By all means have it in there, but if it's so obviously biased towards a vendor it shouldn't come to the overall performance because it skews everything by a decent margin. If someone is looking for overall performance and have it shifted, to either vendor because of it, it gives a very off picture of the overall performance.
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.

I never use the performance summary but it is a meta data conglomerate. I look at the games I play (benefit of W1zzards large test set) and judge on that. I know WoW for example is heavily NV leaning so I never look at it. I actually look at FC4 as I know Fiji was doing well in it (I still bought my 980ti).
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.

 

[midnightoil]

Prints a load of pro NVIDIA FUD - that ridiculous drivers 'editorial' is an example - then cries when the site doesn't get a review sample.

LOL.

I wonder what the spec of this so called ITX package that is supplied for the review
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

Wow, well deduced Einstein. There aren't FX ITX boards.

 

[dorsetknob]

Prints a load of pro NVIDIA FUD - that ridiculous drivers 'editorial' is an example - then cries when the site doesn't get a review sample.

""Oops Misread that as midnightroll""

 

[geon2k2]

Like 10 years or more ago review sites used to do image comparison tests.
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.

 

[vega22]

For me, this isn't a job. It's a hobby

My job as a reviewer is....

if it is a job things like buying cpu to test free mobo would not be an issue. they would be writes offs against your income.

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

 

[the54thvoid]

if it is a job things like buying cpu to test free mobo would not be an issue. they would be writes offs against your income.

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

But you are an AMD apologist (certainly in a lot of the threads I've seen you post in....)

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.

 

[vega22]

But you are an AMD apologist (certainly in a lot of the threads I've seen you post in....)

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.

yea dave had no end of issues with the 7970, my 7950 was flawless.

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?

 

[dorsetknob]

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.

SIDE TRACK and now win 10 is breaking both of them Life's a Bitch inn'it

 

[HumanSmoke]

Here's the most likely reason why TPU didn't get a sample. They operate in Germany as a worldwide english site.

Nope.
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.

PCWorld got one http://www.pcworld.com/article/2979...-to-the-fury-a-tiny-gtx-970-and-a-pencil.html

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.

 

[the54thvoid]

but when you look at how nvidia have been acting how could any sane person not be?

They make very good gfx cards. It's like accepting Tom Cruise is a Scientology Wacko but you know what- his movies I enjoy. Yes, Nv and JSH are arrogant and devious. But they make great hardware.

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.

 

[dorsetknob]

Just Googled
"" Nano Review ""
https://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

 

[truth teller]

Here's the most likely reason why TPU didn't get a sample. They operate in Germany as a worldwide english site. There just isn't that many samples and they most likely went to the german sites.

Also, AMD is not directly sending these samples, they come from retailers and its not just a card they are sending. It's a whole ITX form factor computer.

mmm, that seems plausible, so they cherry picked a whole itx configuration that "works best"?
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)

Like 10 years or more ago review sites used to do image comparison tests.
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.

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)

 

[cadaveca]

yea dave had no end of issues with the 7970, my 7950 was flawless.

I wasn't just the 7970. It was the 5870's and 6950's and 7950's. And before that, the 4870's and 4850's and 3870x2's and 3870's and 2900XT's. And before that x1950XTX and X1900's and X1800's and X800's. All that history is here on TPU an on other forums like XtremeSystems. When I say I was ATi/AMD's #1 fanboy, I really mean it. All those VGAs I bought with my own money. In January 2014 I gave up on AMD videocards and drivers and bought triple 780 TIs, and my gaming experience has been far better since, although at times, there have been problems.

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...

 

[john_]

I think that is an unfortunate mistake, it doesn't look like anything mollitious to me but rather an attempt to inject humour, which is a good thing but how it was done IMO was unwise.

They are right that GPU is a re-brand of a re-brand and the potential to make a wisecrack of it is there, with a different kind of thought process about how that would look to someone watching: it comes across as a bit derogatory toward the cards vendor (AMD) already the viewer gets the impression AMD are the but of jokes. that can be devastating for AMD.

The information is valid and should be included, but its no joke and perhaps a coment on whether or not the product is actually any good despite it being a re-brand, does the fact that it is a re-brand really matter? this is information that is important to the viewer.

I can understand the humor about 370X. A comment about performance could help to balance the news report, but my problem wasn't 370X.

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.