AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review by TPU...Not

[Cloudfire]

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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.

No it does not. AMD own BS internal testing settings with 0xAF artifically boost Fiji cards up by a huge amount.

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)

 

[john_]

IMO, I would spend that $650 for either a 2nd GTX970 & a SLI capable board OR a heavily OCed GTX980Ti where it literally killed it's own big brother, Titan X & the whole suite of AMD's finest high end cards.

And you are going to put those two 970s in the same tiny box that someone will use for a Nano? Not to mention the power and heat from two cards compared to one card.
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.

 

[arbiter]

And you are going to put those two 970s in the same tiny box that someone will use for a Nano? Not to mention the power and heat from two cards compared to one card.
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.

the thing is the form factor its marketed to most those mITX cases can fit a full sized gpu anyway like a gtx980ti or even a r9 fury. heck a lot of them even got space for least 1 rad so fury x would fit. So 0.1% of market is pretty generous number to say its targeted at.

 

[RealNeil]

I had planned to read the review here. I trust this site's analysis and I can believe the posted results.
AMD is sucking hind teat and it's their own doing.

 

[Fluffmeister]

Fact is the last thing AMD want or need right now is super niche, ultimately it's going to do the square root of fuck all for their bottom line and their market share.

Although clearly the drama this Unicorn generates is delicious.

 

[john_]

No it does not. AMD own BS internal testing settings with 0xAF artifically boost Fiji cards up by a huge amount.

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)

"Artificially boost"? Really? How? It's two of the settings that you use in the games. You accuse AMD for using benchmarks with options that suits their hardware? What do you expect them to do? Run Project Cars with all the GameWorks crap at highest options? Run Batman with PhysX at highest settings? Nvidia is doing the same thing. All companies do the same thing. Is Nvidia completely honest? Don't say "yes". You probably want to, but don't!

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.

the thing is the form factor its marketed to most those mITX cases can fit a full sized gpu anyway like a gtx980ti or even a r9 fury. heck a lot of them even got space for least 1 rad so fury x would fit. So 0.1% of market is pretty generous number to say its targeted at.

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.

 

[arbiter]

"Artificially boost"? Really? How? It's two of the settings that you use in the games. You accuse AMD for using benchmarks with options that suits their hardware? What do you expect them to do? Run Project Cars with all the GameWorks crap at highest options? Run Batman with PhysX at highest settings? Nvidia is doing the same thing. All companies do the same thing. Is Nvidia completely honest? Don't say "yes". You probably want to, but don't!

First off All review sites turn gameworks and physx Off when doing testing. Problem with with AMD did was turned off game options that are not shader based. AA and AF for example are 2 they turned off. As for you claiming nvidia does it as well is hard kinda baseless since when they compare performance its vs their OWN cards. AMD is only one that puts up these shame of a benchmark's claiming their card is faster then nvidia which gets debunked when independent reviewers do their test using settings that are much closer to what a REAL customer would use for their game settings. AF is pretty much a standard that people run at least 8x or most time 16x.

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.

That is pretty funny you say 10-20% but that 10-20% comes at a permium of 2x the price. An mITX gtx970 can be had for under 300$, a fury nano is 650$ and performance difference between the 2 is still up in the air since AMD is know to use settings that make their card look better then it is compared to what it compete's against. They got ousted on that with Fury X.

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 not 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.

Most mITX cases have extra space down by where gpu is, only small number don't.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Interesting. There is no legit review on the Internets by the date...

Is AMD trolling everybody with this "so called" launch??

 

[arbiter]

Interesting. There is no legit review on the Internets by the date...

Is AMD trolling everybody with this "so called" launch??

they did a paper launch a few weeks ago but NDA'ed for reviews from what i heard that won't be up til the 10th

 

[john_]

First off All review sites turn gameworks and physx Off when doing testing. Problem with with AMD did was turned off game options that are not shader based. AA and AF for example are 2 they turned off. As for you claiming nvidia does it as well is hard kinda baseless since when they compare performance its vs their OWN cards. AMD is only one that puts up these shame of a benchmark's claiming their card is faster then nvidia which gets debunked when independent reviewers do their test using settings that are much closer to what a REAL customer would use for their game settings. AF is pretty much a standard that people run at least 8x or most time 16x.

I never expect to read from you something different than Nvidia's defence. Anything that paints a negative image about Nvidia is baseless for you. Anything that AMD does is bad. Not what we are talking about here. Not something specific. But ANYTHING.

That is pretty funny you say 10-20% but that 10-20% comes at a permium of 2x the price. An mITX gtx970 can be had for under 300$, a fury nano is 650$ and performance difference between the 2 is still up in the air since AMD is know to use settings that make their card look better then it is compared to what it compete's against. They got ousted on that with Fury X.

More of the same objectivity. If Nano is faster than a 970 ITX then it does justifies it's price for the minority of those who will be interested in getting the top performance no matter the cost. The same minority that will pay $200 more for the top Skylake mobile CPU, even if it offers only 5% higher performance, the same minority that will pay $300 more over a 980Ti for a Titan X, just to play games.

Most mITX cases have extra space down by where gpu is, only small number don't.

The difference isn't big enough to interest us, but OEMs would have the option of building smaller cases, even by an inch or just a centimeter. And if Nano ends up faster than a GTX 970 ITX card, then you will have to advantages of that card over ANY other ITX card. Those two are not enough for me, you and almost everybody else in this forum. But not all. And not all everywhere. And Nano wasn't made to be sold by the millions.

 

[arbiter]

The difference isn't big enough to interest us, but OEMs would have the option of building smaller cases, even by an inch or just a centimeter. And if Nano ends up faster than a GTX 970 ITX card, then you will have to advantages of that card over ANY other ITX card. Those two are not enough for me, you and almost everybody else in this forum. But not all. And not all everywhere. And Nano wasn't made to be sold by the millions.

Point i was making is very few ITX cases limit you to a small card. Only a very few limit you to tiny cards, most you have space to get a Fury(x) or a 980ti in there. Much better options then this little card.

More of the same objectivity. If Nano is faster than a 970 ITX then it does justifies it's price for the minority of those who will be interested in getting the top performance no matter the cost.

That minority was cost is 0 factor in things is very tiny group. if say its 10% faster by independent results, hard to justify price over other mITX option or other 650$ option.

 

[john_]

Point i was making is very few ITX cases limit you to a small card. Only a very few limit you to tiny cards, most you have space to get a Fury(x) or a 980ti in there. Much better options then this little card.

OEMs can create small cases where the 1 inch that Nano saves, could be translated in a one inch smaller case. For both of us this is NOT important. For someone could be. Why people buy NUCs? There are so many arguments against them, but people buy them. Why Intel created 5X5? It's not that more smaller than a mini ITX and you also lose the PCIe.

That minority was cost is 0 factor in things is very tiny group. if say its 10% faster by independent results, hard to justify price over other mITX option or other 650$ option.

When it doesn't suits you, you play it dumb and keep repeating the same thing. Why people buy the top product that costs 50% higher and offers 5% more performance? BECAUSE YOU AVOID TO ANSWER WHAT YOU DON'T WANT TO ANSWER.

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.

 

[ZoneDymo]

Victim blaming? Clearly you haven't read enough of Sony's posts which speak for themselves.

That is Sony talking negatively about Nvidia and Positively about AMD, something many other people do in reverse in the commentsection of this same article, for example:

"
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

"

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.

 

[RejZoR]

Problem with overhyped products is, if they turn out to be tiny bit worse than anticipated, it'll be portrayed 10 times worse than if it was just released like any average product. But if you create a hype and then also deliver the goods, people will praise you 10 times more.

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...

 

[remixedcat]

Interesting. There is no legit review on the Internets by the date...

Is AMD trolling everybody with this "so called" launch??

 

[the54thvoid]

That is Sony talking negatively about Nvidia and Positively about AMD, something many other people do in reverse in the commentsection of this same article, for example:

"
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

"

amd fags.... rational manner...amd has been brainwashing them...

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.

Sony's posts are consistently like this.

"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.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

And you are going to put those two 970s in the same tiny box that someone will use for a Nano? Not to mention the power and heat from two cards compared to one card.
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.

It's my opinion & others can either agree or disagree since it's their choice & I respect that choice of theirs since it's their money, not mine. It's the whole "pay what you get" thing. Besides, both vendors are good at their own things but it's AMD that's on the losing end... with that sort of desperation, would you consider purchasing a product that has not been tested by proper reviewers & instead rely on glorified paper scores mock up by the vendors themselves? I wouldn't no matter how sweet it may be.

 

[arbiter]

View attachment 67829

Well Ryan over at PCper got one but NDA isn't til like 10th. I was pretty sure i seen ryan in and outta games yesturday so he likely was doing performance tests on the card so will be able to see.

 

[john_]

but that is all fine and allowed

Yes because 80% runs Nvidia cards. When you offend 20%, you have the support of the other 80%, because they see your characterizations as justified. When you offend 80%, well 20% support is not enough to save you.

 

[Aquinus]

That is Sony talking negatively about Nvidia and Positively about AMD, something many other people do in reverse in the commentsection of this same article, for example:

"
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

"

amd fags.... rational manner...amd has been brainwashing them...

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.

That was in response to Sony specifically. Once again, I think you need to look into half of the shit Sony says before making claims like that. A lot of people who are upset with AMD are people who aren't green camp supporters and I include myself upon them. I wouldn't have bought a 390 if I didn't think it wasn't worth it however, this PR game AMD is trying to play is insanely stupid. When you have people like Sony who is posting fud constantly, there comes a point where the banstick comes into play.

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.

 

[john_]

It's my opinion & others can either agree or disagree since it's their choice & I respect that choice of theirs since it's their money, not mine. It's the whole "pay what you get" thing. Besides, both vendors are good at their own things but it's AMD that's on the losing end... with that sort of desperation, would you consider purchasing a product that has not been tested by proper reviewers & instead rely on glorified paper scores mock up by the vendors themselves? I wouldn't no matter how sweet it may be.

Did my comment had to do anything about you having an opinion? Don't make it look like that.

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.

 

[ZoneDymo]

That was in response to Sony specifically. Once again, I think you need to look into half of the shit Sony says before making claims like that. A lot of people who are upset with AMD are people who aren't green camp supporters and I include myself upon them. I wouldn't have bought a 390 if I didn't think it wasn't worth it however, this PR game AMD is trying to play is insanely stupid. When you have people like Sony who is posting fud constantly, there comes a point where the banstick comes into play.

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.

Not sure what claims I made, I responded directly to the proof provided with some counter proof of an even worst kind to show it seems out of balance to ban Sony and not that other guy (and probably a ton of other posts here that I did not include).

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.

 

[arbiter]

Did my comment had to do anything about you having an opinion? Don't make it look like that.

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.

Problem with what you say is double standard. Nvidia took heat over gtx970. Thing is it was one few times nvidia messed up. AMD on other hand comes out makes a huge PR about how their card is so much faster then nvidia card or can do so much. Like 290x was one their new cards at time and how great and fast of card it was, but put a crappy cooler on it that crippled the card. Point I am making reason its easier for people to give nvidia a pass on things, most time they make claims about a product they put out, it gives the performance or works like they claim it does. On the other hand AMD makes claims about something ahead of time and it ends up being bit of a lie and not as fast as they claim (fury x vs 980ti for example) or not as good as they would liked people to believe( freesync vs g-sync, yea it worked like g-sync but ghosting issues, limited VRR window and tearing of image under min refresh rate). Even 1 claim was some current monitors that were out now could do freesync, which turned not to happen which if it was just a lie or turned out long term the monitors couldn't handle it is a unknown. AMD's PR department tends to promise a lot but their tech just tends to fall a tad short of claim.

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.

 

[the54thvoid]

Oxide is currently working with Nvidia over the Async feature. Maxwell 2 uses Asynchronous Warp Schedulers but the driver allocates the queue to the AWS. So Nvidia will have a software managed hardware level implementation, not an emulation.
AMD obviously has far less driver work required and can use its ACE instead. But that's OT.

 

[Dieinafire]

Nano is a gpu? I thought it represents the chance amd has surviving beyond 2016