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
Disclaimer: I'm not paid TPU staff
How AMD promotes it's hardware is their problem, as Nvidia's promotional lies about their hardware specs, is also a problem that they should deal with it and not keep doing it in the future. But they will keep doing it in the future.
You want AMD to be flawless, but how about a 6 months lie about 970's specs? How about a fake support about async shaders? How about Fermi still not being ready for DX12? You seem to worry about AMD's image because it will take 15-30-60 days to see a review of a card that CAN NOT be manufactured in large quantities, but at the same time what is your opinion about a company that gives (deliberately?) incorrect specs about it's products. They probably thought that no one will test the VRAM speed on GTX 970. They probably thought that there wouldn't be a program using async shaders, before they manage to create something that looks like async shaders in their drivers. They probably thought that they could fake DX12 support on Fermi cards, before Windows 10 comes out. They probably thought that no one will notice. Still you worry about AMD? Really?The reviewers who will make the reviews in two days, will have to worry for the reviews that will come out 2-3 weeks latter from the sites that didn't got that card. If those reviews contradict their findings, they will have to give plenty of explanations. So, don't expect to see reviews in two days showing Nano crushing Titan X.
If TPU had a card and every other side didn't, what would have been your conclusion. That TPU sold out to AMD? And would that conclusion being valid today before seeing the review and before being able to compare it with other reviews, or would you wait for a month to see the other reviews first? But it is so easy for you to bash AMD.It seems you know pretty much about "most people". The way you describe them, I would say double digit IQ, best case scenario. Probably that's why you are on a mission to save them from the claws of bad AMD and offer them to the angelic company named Nvidia(as a sacrifice). Seriously now, I never had problem with Project Cars being included in the database. As it was already being said, it is a game that people play, so it is logical to be there.
Gameworks. You are rebelling because AMD wouldn't give a card at TPU and you will find the slimy truth about Nano 15-30 days latter. But then you cannot understand why a closed library that no one can have access in it, coming from a GPU manufacturer is considered bad? It's like watching a basketball game where the heads of referees are covered by hoods, so you can't tell if those referees are in fact the owners of one of the two teams playing.
It's extremely funny comparing the situation with Nano and Gameworks. NO ACCESS is totally different with what you like to call as limited access. Also Nano doesn't affect in any supernatural way the performance of your 780 LSI. Don't worry and when you will run at 10th September your favorite benchmarks, scores wouldn't go down because Nano was released. In fact you are the first person that should question the GameWorks performance on Kepler cards compared with the GameWorks performance on Maxwell cards.
And as I have told you in the past, when it comes for you to defend your lovely company you are full of smoke. And do you really argue with what I wrote in that post(the one you linked)? I think not.You are one of the biggest Nvidia fanboys and defenders in here. Why give a shit about Nano? As for propaganda, AMD is just an amateur compared to your lovely company.
JMO
With this post i am done with talking to someone that is a complete and massive fool. (clicks ignore button)
As a side note to TR and that linked story on trinity. I Applaud TR for not accepting those terms. They want keep their integrity as reviews in tact cause when you get cault being a shill like that for a company you lose your credibility as a review site.
I, and most people don't expect AMD to be flawless - why would we? They've never demonstrated that capacity in the past.
What I do expect is some kind of consistency. There is no real reason why a well regarded authoritative tech site should be denied access to the card at the expense of some superficial glib social network channel - at least not in my book.Yes it is - and I'm commenting upon it. Are you now placing restrictions on that too?Immaterial. I've already commented on the issue in the relevant forum threads.Well done! You've missed the context once again. I'm not worrying about AMD's image - what I am interested in is seeing a review by my preferred reviewer.
The fact that you can't even parse a simple concept such as this without imprinting your own false assumptions all over it doesn't fill me with confidence that you'll be able to parse this post either, but hey, I'll give it one more shot before putting you on ignore.1. It isn't really relevant to the discussion at hand
2. How indolent do you have to be to ask the question rather than run a quick search? Since you seem incapable...1. Lucky TPU - an exclusive!
2. One card for review? That's some real crappy yield and launch right there.Sure.
When I see a company attempting to commit ritual suicide and it affects my future hardware choices. I sure do. One glance around the net has already shown how well received this cherry-picked reviewer strategy is, and it hasn't even launched yet. If you think this strategy is a positive move for AMD - great. I personally don't think it is. AMD were always going to sell whatever limited amount of cards regardless - the Fury X is perpetually OoS, so presumably they sell what goes into the channel. If they sell regardless, why accompany the launch with sourness from denying mainstream enthusiast sites at the expense of less authoritative reviewers?Again....I didn't say you did. Try not to make it personal when that obviously what wasn't inferred - it just makes you sound like a whiner. What I was referring to was a wider sentiment, as should have been apparent from the way I worded the post. Once again, you're interpreting rather than reading.Propaganda is propaganda. Don't excuse one company because they aren't particularly adept at implementing it....oh, and by the way, I've probably owned more AMD/ATI hardware than you have. I think I can come up with a fair amount of verified proof if you'd like to take a wager on it. Loser donates money to the charity of the winners choice via PayPal OK for you?
arbiter
So a quick reply. It's not one tiny lie. Have a little dignity when quoting someone and try not to change his post in your answer. They can't control reviews.
I though Nvidia fanboys where saying that Nvidia was first at DX12 with Microsoft and AMD just rush to make it like it was their idea a low level API. Now it is a tech that was added after Maxwell was finished? And why does Nvidia says it supports that technology. You don't mind contradicting yourself in what you and others where writing in the past. You just have to write something I guess.
HumanSmoke
I also want a review of GTX 980Ti from my neighbor. Until Nvidia gives a card to my neighbor that is the only person I trust, I will not trust them. Not to mention that no one forbids W1zzard to test a Nano. TPU was NOT denied access. For some reason it was not given a free card. But that can't stop TPU from writing a review. The review is just going to be done latter and TPU will own NOTHING to AMD because they didn't got a free card.
So this argument and the biggest part of your post, is in fact, smokewith a few cocnlusions about me,but I shouldn't take it personally. :laugh:
Nice work . :toast:
But, it could all be coincidence, although bloggers getting these 'rare' cards makes that seem unlikely.
On the other hand, eTeknix published a few hours ago that it didn't got one, and I bet KitGuru will also have to buy AMD cards, not just in Nano's case, but in the near future also.
That's alot of site traffic and name recognition for TPU!
I wouldn't class PCWorld as a PC Enthusiast site. That place is more for the middletons.
It seems that one of the selling points for the Nano is "I want one because it's so cute". That's part of the appeal of the Nano. A thorough test of the Nano, like it would get on this site, isn't part of AMD's game plan for this card.
Oh and one thing if you have to purchase hardware for a review instead of having it given to you you will go thru more lengnths to justify that purchase, thus rate higher, that's one reason review sites depend on donor hardware so they don't have the purchase bias and they don't have any emotional attatchement to the hardware. It's not theirs so they will be more likely to beat it up for benches and more likely to call out BS. If you bought something with your hard earned money you are more likely to succumb to finding some way you didn't "fuck up" by getting it.
Before CD and DVD Roms were Cheap enough to buy for everyday use i went out and bought a LS120 drive ( for moving big files )
Drive still works but times have passed on and the drive / format never caught on
because of the pricedrop / availability of CD's
Even today i can still find a use for it Excuse coming
its ide and 1.44 backwards compatable so can be used on not so old systems that do not have a 3 1/2" floppy drive for flashing from 1.44 media or loading retro programs from "Floppys" excuse ended and thats the justification i'm sticking to :)
Seems like it would have been logical to use the cut down Fiji pro chip, bin those out a bit to keep power down, then put them out there for a reasonable price (Like maybe 550 ish). Heck, they could have just scrapped the Fury Pro and just did the Nano as the reference design of Fury (While reducing the clocks maybe even a bit more to accommodate the power reduction needed) while allowing non-reference soon after and kept the size but allow for more coolers. Then we could have had the extreme OC edition cards along with micro sized cards available at the same time.
That is all just IMHO about the Fury Nano...
In fact, 30% faster by AMD metrics but 90% more expensive..... Hmm.. Now we can argue the 970 only has 3.5gb memory but most people (including Guru) have said its performance is still stellar for its price and power consumption.
So, the Nano, if priced at the presumed level with 970 beating performance is almost 'Titanesque' price/perf metric.
And I did not know the RTP stood for Red Team Plus. That's just embarrassing.