AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review by TPU...Not

[Dany]

Maybe this is why ...

View attachment 67896

yeah that pretty much sums it up , this is AMD's reply :

 

[Ferrum Master]

is there a source link for that saucy language?

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_980/31.html

 

[rtwjunkie]

is there a source link for that saucy language?

Yeah, W1zzard's own review. I remember it being a topic of discussion when the review came out.

 

[Mussels]

Yeah, W1zzard's own review. I remember it being a topic of discussion when the review came out.

Well he wasn't far wrong with his prediction, and i'm an AMD fanboy. A smart company would try and change his mind.

Whats the guess the coil whine was the reason TPU didn't get one - w1zzy would never let that slide.

 

[truth teller]

hey free publicity is always good isnt it roy? what about the 4th link on google?

pretty sure all the other "fair" homebrew reviewers get this kind of exposure, right? RIGHT?

thanks @amd_roy for single-handedly ruining amds reputation even further, thus loosing customers to a company that isnt exactly doing well in its finances department. the most "fair" route now would not be handing out cards to all reviewers, but dr lisa to kick your ass to the curb (hope you dont have little kids that need the income, but you brought this uppon yourself).

people have no honor or code of conduct anymore, customers cant trust anyone in the tech business anymore (or any other business for that matter), what a shame and a let down

 

[ShurikN]

A great little card, but the price is not justified. $500 max.

 

[Ferrum Master]

Streamwhores

 

[rtwjunkie]

Streamwhores

View attachment 67897

That is classic! Good find.

 

[Assimilator]

Nano is looking like it mostly lives up to the hype, except that it rarely gets close to 900Mhz. But given that the end result is 96% the performance of a Fury (non-X), I don't understand why AMD decided to use full-blown Fiji chips for this card. They could've used die-harvested parts and priced the end result a lot lower, while retaining the form factor and most of the performance.

Streamwhores

View attachment 67897

BAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

[ShurikN]

Nano is looking like it mostly lives up to the hype, except that it rarely gets close to 900Mhz. But given that the end result is 96% the performance of a Fury (non-X), I don't understand why AMD decided to use full-blown Fiji chips for this card. They could've used die-harvested parts and priced the end result a lot lower, while retaining the form factor and most of the performance.

In the Tom's review, the clocks are constantly between 850 and 900.

 

[Enterprise24]

For me each reviewer has different of good thing.
- TPU I like performance summary , noise , lot of games , closer look inside GPU
- Techreport and PCPer hardwork on frame time
- Guru3D thermal image camera. Very few site investigate GPU VRM temp
- HardOCP maximum image quality of each game that you can expect from card , very hardwork on OC , OC vs OC ,
- Anandtech deep explanation , one of very few site that include stategy game
- Tomshardware hardwork on power consumption test

So sorry that TPU , Techreport , HardOCP don't get sample.

 

[btarunr]

For me each reviewer has different of good thing.
- TPU I like performance summary , noise , lot of games , closer look inside GPU
- Techreport and PCPer hardwork on frame time
- Guru3D thermal image camera. Very few site investigate GPU VRM temp
- HardOCP maximum image quality of each game that you can expect from card , very hardwork on OC , OC vs OC ,
- Anandtech deep explanation , one of very few site that include stategy game
- Tomshardware hardwork on power consumption test

So sorry that TPU , Techreport , HardOCP don't get sample.

We have thermal camera too. It's a high end FLIR 800 pixels wide cam.

 

[Enterprise24]

We have thermal camera too. It's a high end FLIR 800 pixels wide cam.

Then I suggest TPU should review VRM temp.

 

[the54thvoid]

There were never doubts about the Nano's performance (it had to beat every other ITX card) - it was the other metrics such as noise and heat.

Well, coil whine must be awful - does every reviewer have it? This is Hexus review.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/86042-amd-radeon-r9-nano/?page=12

Which brings us nicely on to the noise tests. The Nano isn't the quietest card on test, due to spatial limitations, but neither is it the loudest. We'd class the noise as very acceptable in a modern PC, and certainly a lot quieter than previous-generation cards that made a racket.

However, we noticed significant coil whine across our suite of games, particularly in Total War: Rome II. This may be sample-specific, but it would grate us long term if this was the case with all cards.

And given how many reviews there are - it was most definitely a cherry picking.

 

[alucasa]

Why you the f-word in a professional review?

 

[the54thvoid]

Why you the f-word in a professional review?

Define 'professional'?

If i wrote a review and said it was 'kick ass' - that would also be a colloquialism. Saying it's not 'professional' is not appropriate for a privately owned review site. Language is a very flexible tool and can be used to many ends. Using the term "AMD is fucked" implies that the reviewed Nvidia card basically ripped AMD's nuts off in a commercial sense. And it did - sales stats have shown the growing gulf.

As for our seeming TPU meta review - here's what is telling from Guru3D - apart from saying of course that it is a great little card (which it is):

Let's put the cards on the table - HDMI 2.0 is not supported and this card does not have a DVI connector. DVI I am not concerned about but, for a card intended to be on a small form factor that sits in the Ultra HD gaming space (your living room on an Ultra HD telly), I feel HDMI 2.0 (60Hz Ultra HD) should have been implemented. Again, this product is intended for the living room. In the living room you'll have that nice Ultra HD telly, these devices do not have Display Port and require HDMI 2.0 for 60hz Ultra HD. AMD sticks to 1.4a meaning 30Hz at Ultra HD is supported only. For movies, not a big deal. But we do not believe for a second that you'd buy a Fiji based setup for movies, this is all about gaming at Ultra HD, and as such that's where a limit of 30 Hz / 30 FPS will kick in. AMD stated that this problem will be addressed by releasing a DisplayPort 1.4 to HDMI 2.0 adapter on the market. We can only assume that's going to be an active converter meaning it'll likely add another 100 EURO easily to your purchasing decision. Also we must note that the card will not be able to support HDCP 2.2 and upcoming Blu-Ray 4K playback.

Nano is meant for SFF living room stuff. So $100 extra dollars for it to be 30fps + on your HDTV. That connectivity oversight was really dumb. Also, Hilbert made it a very obvious point to state it has coil whine (and it's as loud as a Titan Z unless you ace your mini ITX case cooling).

After reading 3 reviews (Hexus, Guru3D and Anandtech, here is an unbiased summary:

Positive
Best performing ITX card by a good margin (leaves the 970 mini trailing). For a little more noise and 18% more power it performs about 30-35% better

Negative
Costs as much as a Fury X
Isn't as quiet as hoped for (if Guru says it, it means something - see my earlier posts in this thread)
Not ideal for HDTV use due to poor output connector choice.
Coil Whine being flagged up at most sites

Summary
Taking the Fiji core and showing how much power can exist in small package (all down to HBM) - but it begs the question, why the hell didn't AMD strap a good fan on Fury X? However, the intended market for SFF and HDTV is seriously let down by the connection choice from AMD (why AMD, why!). To get the required output of fps for 4k you really need two and that then brings in the cheaper option of a standard Fury as an ITX case won't support crossfire.
Nano is a powerful card for it's size but for it's cost it's already a strange design. Too slow for 4k on it's own and too expensive to justify for 1080p or 1440p (when a cheaper, quieter 970 mini will suffice - if you could find one). You want to crossfire them - get a bigger mobo and case, hell, just get two Fury's.

Interesting card but ultimately a bit lost.

 

[the54thvoid]

Double post required.

Please all and sundry check the retail specs online. Both Scan and OcUK are rating it as 1000Mhz. Not 'up to' but simply 1000Mhz.

As Hexus say:

the card fails to reach its prescribed 1,000MHz core clock in any game.

Is this the retailer or AMD's choice because as reported in reviews - 850-900 is it's operating range. Shall we call this evens on the 3.5Gb memory of the 970?

 

[alucasa]

Define 'professional'?

Easy, the university essay level language.

 

[the54thvoid]

Easy, the university essay level language.

It's not fucking uni.

EDIT: please look at my location description

 

[alucasa]

It's not fucking uni.

True, but the general rule applies when it comes to writing articles.

 

[nem]

10 TFLOPS !!!! nano rig

 

[lemonadesoda]

AMD, who is AMD

 

[the54thvoid]

AMD, who is AMD

Evil guys that bought that nice Canadian company ATI (oh - you know who AMD are...)

I'd like to see ATI rise like a pheonix, with a Canadian accent. Not sure why - I like the idea of a Canadian tech company blazing forward.

 

[Tsukiyomi91]

constant 850-900MHz? That's kinda slow... My 2nd rig's 760 even clocked at stable 1.1GHz with occasional speeds of 1.3GHz on core as it's barely reaching the thermal ceiling of 80C as it only hums gently at a warm 62C. I thought that speed is king for gaming? Also... lack of HDMI 2.0 to push 4K @ 60Hz is NOT a good thing.

 

[Yorgos]

constant 850-900MHz? That's kinda slow... My 2nd rig's 760 even clocked at stable 1.1GHz with occasional speeds of 1.3GHz on core as it's barely reaching the thermal ceiling of 80C as it only hums gently at a warm 62C. I thought that speed is king for gaming? Also... lack of HDMI 2.0 to push 4K @ 60Hz is NOT a good thing.

you'd better get also and a Pentium 4, that thing clock at 3 GHz since 10 years ago.