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
So if we're assuming AMD is lieing about the performance of the nano, should we start assuming Nvdia will constantly lie about the specs of their cards and what features they support? Nothing should be assumed regarding either side and their claims.
They had a nice write up about whole issue of no nano review samples. Its pretty ugly when some of it.
edit: just read it in full and that kinda PR is more damaging then any nano review will ever be. Roy of AMD is a massive idiot, makes me think of Homer Simpson.
methinks that Roy is about to have a very very bad week
Things have gotten way out of hand though.... Somehow having a huge graphics card with a million heat pipes going everywhere is a good thing. I'm surprised that there aren't cases of people computers just bursting into flames because their water pump dies.
Now, all the sudden they wanna make a card how it's supposed to be (almost), using less components, but charge us even more for it?
LOL... and when I type "r9 nano review" into google, first thing that pops up is this thread... Good job AMD! Wow...
Next step is Renaming the card...
techreport.com/news/29011/amd-vp-explains-nano-exclusion-tr-reviews-arent-fair
hardocp.com/article/2015/09/09/amd_roy_taylor_nano_press/2#.VfDyxnCqpBd
techreport.com/news/29011/updated-amd-vp-explains-nano-exclusion-apologizes
Sad thing is they wanted to avoid bad review but all this PR over this is worse then any nano review.
I sure wouldnt be buying a nano without a TPU review first, because of all the inconsistency of other websites - 5 sites can call a product quiet, and i get it and its screaming loud (or the opposite with my 290, every review i found of it says it overheats and is loud, yet i get neither)
tpu lose by dont have review of nano , come on tpu get an nano .. :p
we all know why nobody is getting a NANO pre-retail
it can't live up to the hype sure it will likely offer 290x type performance but I would expect the following cadvants
1. frame times are going to suffer this happens anytime you start playing with clock speeds on the fly (let alone possible flicker issues because powerplay never works right)
2. it is GOING to throttle,thats the only way they get around the TDP/Wattage issue and can use such a tiny pcb
3.if they had ANY sense they would release this in a 3/4 or full-size gpu with proper cooling and price it at ~400.00 and they would have a 970 killer
and personally I am not at all interested in it AMD seems to be on a downward spiral lately and I don't wanna be stuck with a 650.00 dollar investment and not get any software support on it
I see. Some of my buddies however are using liquid-cooling brackets for their 290, since it solves both heat & noise issues as they have the reference model for cheaps... said they too never have any throttling issues whatsoever after making the switch & is happy about it. Bracket I mentioned is Corsair's HG10 A1 Kit + Hydro H75 AIO Kit.