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
and hahahaha I just noticed sorry :P
What do you mean by "They hold intellectual property that will keep them afloat" ? that isn't stopping them from losing vast amounts of money, money they no longer have to lose as its all gone.
So what are you suggesting? that they sell their IP? Wouldn't you agree that for AMD to start selling IP is the same as them going out of existence? whose going to buy CPU and GPU technologies? Intel and Nvidia, with that AMD's existence would be totally at the mercy of Intel and Nvidia, and what then when the money from those sales runs out and Intel, Nvidia own everything while AMD have nothing?
You think their IP will save them?
You know what. if it comes to that i would rather AMD gave it away to some one like Samsung and close up shop.For AMD to make better products to better compete with Intel and Nvidia they need R&D for development.
They don't have any, they are losing massive amounts of money, not making it.
AMD is stuck between a rock and a hard place and no matter how good management you get in there, the reality is that NVidia and Intel and wipe the floor with respect to R&D funding. So either someone really smart at AMD has to make a crazy breakthrough, or the ship is going to sink. I would hate to see AMD go the way of the dinosaur but, it's entirely possible that AMD is in a downward spiral that's being accelerated by poor management.
I would argue that the day AMD starting spiraling downhill was when they sold off their fabs and it has only been getting worse since. The more you outsource, the more problems you're going to have and, the slower it will be to correct them. In general, it's cheap up front, but costly down the road.
Someone like Samsung, they have big ambitions in the mobile market and AMD's IP can help them in that.
There was talk a while back of AMD spinning off its GPU department, if the CPU department remains AMD with the X86_64 IP while all the other IP gets transferd with the GPU spin-off then Samsung could take it over, the X86_64 IP can come later (if Samsung want it) once that contract is up for renewal.
lets stick to this crock of ..............................
AMD has Fiji, but it's almost deliberately not monetizing it properly.
:fear:
And I'm not joking. I first called myself ATI's #1 fanboy, then it was AMD's #1 fanboy, when AMD bought ATI (and when everyone said no way to that, I was the one saying, "All day" like Kanye.")
That's really what's wrong with AMD. They hire executives with no passion for the industry. They really need to hire me. (this is also not the first time I've said that).And W1zz also made it plain with no plans for reviews. So...
and not doing reviews on youtube is frankly stupid thats shutting your self out of a pretty large segment of users
I promise I'll say only nice words about them and the card.
Performance graph will rock too ... for sure the Nano will be the fastest thing my PC has ever seen :)
AS to working for AMD, I'd not be asking for several million in remuneration, either, and had AMD taken my seriously mayn years ago, they'd have saved literal millions, and maybe had a better presence in the market. Oh well.