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
Regardless if that is true, there is irony ooozing out of it!
EDIT: Fair is testing it as users generally run it.... WITH AF. Again, this isn't 2004.
yes he is getting Publicity for his Product but its turning nasty over the way he has handeled it
Its becoming a shitstorm of bad tasting Publicity that he could have avoided for AMD
Seems kinda odd as it is, but they really are trying to make the Nano a "Feature Presentation" of their products so they want a specific image of it.
They could be more transparent and various other things, but I still love AMD for being AMD.Meh, I kind of like an AMD that stands up for itself.Yeah, my words have been twisted more times than I am comfortable with. But again, oh well. ASUS didn't send me a Z170 ROG board, and MSI never sent me the X99 GodLike. Biostar doesn't return my emails, Corsair and Kingston stopped sending samples... such is the life of a product reviewer. I find other samples to keep me busy.
We are talking about how the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY runs their video cards (using AF) and AMD not doing that. This, to me, is a bit more than simply 'marketing their products in a specific way'. I mean, it is that, yes, but, they are going against what the majority uses, to make their card look better than it is when the 'overwhelming majority' uses them. It is misleading. If you expect 60 FPS because a review said so, now you are getting 45 because they don't use an incredibly common setting...... how is that OK?
Settings will differ from review to review, no doubt, but no AF? Come on....
Though what matters is why in the end and it sounds still like it could very well be low supply mixed with choice of marketing. It won't matter in the end, cards will surface and we will see the benchmarks which in the end will give us the chance to judge all we want. Its unfortunate since I do appreciate seeing so many different scenarios with TPU's/wizards reviews but there is nothing we can do about it now unless someone gets one early and sends it over to him or buys him one.
Regardless, I hear where you are coming from. :)
AMD discrete desktop graphics market share in Q2 2015: 18%
Nvidia had the common sense to show Roy the door. AMD have already effectively demoted him from chief of global channel sales to VP of Alliances (whatever that translates to). Take the voluntary redundancy Roy, you don't have a leg to stand on if you take it to employment arbitration!
I think what we need is the card to show itself in public to get the truth, nothing is going to satisfy until that happens. I think we have been waiting far to long at this point to see something :P
A lot of industry names tend to swap positions on a regular basis. The PR variety tend to garner more attention being more visible. AMD's other resident shoutcaster, Richard Huddy (thankfully muzzled at the moment) also did a stint at Nvidia, as well as Intel.