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 no, your post was 667th and mine was 666th, yiu had right first but in the end you were wrong :)
And dude, I caught your friend too,
You and your friend's profile and behavior are suspicious, it doesn't take a click to tell but I need evidence so I clicked into your profile page and SSed.
I didn't clicked into all other members have positive attitude towards AMD and I have nothing to say to these people.
DAMMIT! I WISH MINE WAS THE 666TH.Yeah with most X2's, they do it with their flagship chip and most of the time they downclock it and they call it flagshipX2. Even when they don't downclock it they still call it flagshipX2, and power requirement will always be less than 2xflagship.
The point is - whether they downclock it or not it will not be small format, so it is a FuryXX2.
Isn't the only one 8pin PCIe going to be a limiting factor for high overclocks? The card looks like it was made for 225W max TDP, so maybe you can't go high enough anyway, even if the chip does have the potential, because you can't supply it with enough power to go that high.
Damn, they are stupid... They gave cards to every Nvidia loving site, thinking that this will make those sites change their ways of views and show more love to AMD in the future, and they didn't gave cards to sites that they know that, whatever happens, those sites will continue posting fair reviews. This is politics. Politics of the morons. I see this kind of politics constantly in Greece, and I don't think I have to mention the results.
The variability arises in the amperage. A cheaper PSU using 18 AWG cabling is capable of sustaining less amperage than a higher quality PSU using 16 AWG for example ( >> relative amperage guidelines << ). If you were using a reasonably strong PSU, then ~8A per line should be a reasonable standard to work from (so, 3 * 12 * 8 = 288W per 8-pin) in theory.
Where the theory differs from reality is the strength of the PSU ( how stable the load is and rail loading), and the card itself. The PCB traces (lands/wiring) needs to be able to sustain the load, so trace thickness and distance between traces needs to taken into account. Usually PCB real estate is at a premium so the traces are laid out across the PCB as well as vertically through the PCB layers. The larger the number of layers, the greater the separation - cleaner power delivery at higher amperage's reducing crosstalk. The second variable is the VRM circuitry itself - rated and actual load. A lot of variables to consider, which is why the PCI-SIG is conservative in its rating.
Another thing to consider would be AMD's board power limit, which would render the theoretical limits strictly theoretical.
I just started posting recently, however I've been following this site and other tech sites for years.
Am I biased ... maybe I don't know.
I'm actually one of the guys which bought an 8 core AMD FX and returned it 2 days later and went Intel, but I do have an R9 in my system and I bought it while I was truly impressed by the GTX 900 series.
But I chose what I though it would best fit my needs, I didn't care if it is company A or B.
I do wish AMD will succeed, because if not ... we are all doomed to extremely high prices and little progress.
The plain and simple truth is that Nano's weaknesses would have been revealed here and the coil whine is just one problem. Not picking on AMD exclusively. I was on the shit-flinging train when Titan Z came out and the shortcomings of the 970 too even though I owned a 970 and was very happy with it's performance. A lot of people don't remember when the shit hit the fan with the 970 that W1zzard posted "Nvidia lied to us and they lied to you."
BUT
They're all saying how bad the coil whine is....... Far worse than normal. Is there a chance the small PCB with circuitry and traces running closer could have any effect on voltage and the vibrations caused in the chokes?
An unfair review can create a negative image for a product. An unfair editorial can create a negative image for a whole company. The first one you can deal with it. Improve your product. The second one you can't deal with it, or at least it will take much more time. No matter what you do, no matter how good products you will make, people will be negative towards you for a long time.
NVidia went through a shitstorm with the 3.5GB thing. Did that stop them from sending future press samples to every site which wrote about it?
Nope.