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
I want the AMD that brought out the HD5870. That was the company that brought out better performing products at lower prices than their competitors.
@btarunr Over 630 posts and counting. You've lit a fire with this one. :D
All of W1zzard's hard work slandered in a single line, ouch.
Looks like hexus got a card somehow.
It's all fair though! Honest!
OR will someone do it for me, and just let me run it? :p
SO we have our own user review.. full of disappointment, if largely influenced by our lack of a review sample. Sounds like an Editorial.That's a sexy PC, I must say. Is it bad that I want one to add to my collection?
We'd then get to hear a few honest home truths from a trusted source about it's performance and I'll bet it won't be pretty.
You up for it?
WTF AMD?
No thanks...
I wonder if supply will be very limited (thinking low volume, high cost).
All being said, given how Fury performs, the Nano isn't that great as a performance part. In fact, the whole AIO water cooler now looks contrived, as if to artificially create 3 segments. Fury X is already small enough to impress so it makes Nano less 'wow'. Of course, Fury X on air would render Nano pretty pointless, though Fury X on air would presumably be noisy (if keeping PCB size).
I think AMD missed a trick with Fury X.
It's that sort of stuff the sites that didn't get cards typically look at, isn't it?
"The amount of noise this pint-sized card’s PWM puts out is nothing short of astronomical. It wails, squeals, chugs and emits all sorts of other electrical blather. Granted, some gamers will be more susceptible to hearing it than others and there are certain cases on the market that will reduce the amount of perceptible noise but this is still unacceptable on any $650 card released in 2015. AMD is aware of this but they don’t count it as a problem. We will have to see how widespread it is once the Nano gets into the hands of end users. It is important to note that we're not sure how widespread this is or whether or not we received one of the "louder" samples. We just report it as we see it. "
Oops AMD.
Every tech site I go to, this is all I am reading for a week now. Let's move on.