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  • ImSpartacus - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Good to see that Anandtech got a Nano.
  • Wreckage - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I'm sure they agreed to give a "fair" review. I think everyone should wait for independent reviews after the whole Roy Taylor incident.
  • HOOfan 1 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I bet AMD knew the numbers would be exactly the same at all the big name sites. It is the conclusions they were worried about.
  • close - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Wreckage, you would say that of course after being "motivated" by no less then two 980 graphic cards as gifts just in the last 6 weeks. What kind of credibility do you expect after this?
  • theduckofdeath - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    New review on a hardware review site, comment section full of bitching.
    Yeah, this is the tech news of 2015. Whining and trolling instead of discussing tech.
  • LoganPowell - Friday, November 27, 2015 - link

    It's too bad that the AMD Radeon r9 Nano does so bad among consumer based rankings (see http://www.consumerrunner.com/top-10-best-hard-dri... for example...)
  • theNiZer - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Spot on mate! (sry for double posting)
  • gw74 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The R9 Nano was about to make me interested in AMD cards finally. On finding out about what they've been up to denying review copies to certain outlets, I am now not interested any more and they are dead to me as a brand.
  • silverblue - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Roy apologised to Scott Wasson and said that he didn't consider The Tech Report as an unfair site, however the reason for their exclusion still hasn't been made known. I suspect he got confused between TechPowerUp and TheTechReport. :)

    Still, excluding anybody, intentional or otherwise, does your reputation a world of hurt, and starts to provoke questions about those who were included. What a tangled web we weave.
  • milli - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I don't want to burst your bubble but Scott Wasson has been very pro nVidia for the past ten years. He's just very good at doing it very subliminally, so most won't even notice. As a long time TR reader, it has been pretty obvious to me.
  • LoneWolf15 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    And as someone who has been a long time TR reader and has met him multiple times, I am in complete disagreement with you. His testing is some of the most detailed and accurate that I know.

    I have little faith in your ability to determine someone's subliminal gifts.
  • Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Unfortunately a great many people are incapable of projecting their own biases onto someone else. Tomshardware and Anandtech have been accused of being pro one team or the other for years.

    I remember an article i read a few years back, i wish i could remember the guys name, but he was chief editor for one of the macintosh magazines, and he was talking about how he got so fed up with users because if he said literally anything negative about the product he would get his email inbox blown up with accusations of being a MS nutswinger, and fellating Bill Gates, and various other things. He gave an example of one of the ipods which he gave like a 90%+ review, and the ONLY negative things he said was that the casing was shiny, so it took fingerprints really well and was hard to keep looking clean, and that he wished the battery life was a little bit longer. He said he got the most vitriolic and ridiculous emails he'd ever seen.

    The problem is people want confirmation that they made the right choice, and if they don't get that, then rather than admit that they made a mistake, they would rather attack the reviewer as being a fanboy or something equally hideous.
  • medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    In Fermi times Anand found it "appropriate" to compare cherry picked OCed nVidia card vs stock AMD.

    "Subtle bias" my ass.
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    It's something we've apologized for, repeatedly. It was a poor idea and we readily admit as much.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/3988/the-use-of-evga...
  • mapesdhs - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    I never saw the need to apologise; the price of the FTW meant it was the far better choice to buy back then (I bought two for SLI).
  • fuicharles - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    I used to go to The Tech Reports to read the Top News contents everyday. Their Top News was always updated and shared lots of recent development.

    However, recently something fishy, Tech Reports doesn't share any news on the recent Gamesworks and Asyn Compute tragedy in their sites.

    And try to pin point the Pump Whine problem even after AMD has already come up new revision of Fury Card which solve the problems.

    I don't want to believe Scott Wasson is biased either, but isn't that as a journalist you should share the bad/good for both camp to let the readers judge themselves
  • milli - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    'most detailed and accurate' ≠ unbiased
    Don't worry that you didn't notice the hidden bias. It took me a while to realize it. After reading TR for a couple years, around 2006 I started noticing the bias. It's not what he says that's biased but what he doesn't say/report that makes him biased. He's smart.
    Well he's getting better at hiding his bias these last years. In the previous decade he would often pit OC'd nVidia cards with stock AMD cards in his 'reviews'.
    Just like many knew that Anand was biased towards Apple with his ridiculously positive reviews until the final proof came when he went to actually work for them.
  • slickr - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    He has been shilling for Nvidia for good several years now, everything Nvidia does = great, amazing, unique, always winning in some ultra specific aspect even if realistically the card is garbage, when he talks about AMD = power consumption is 10W or 20W more than Nvidia, Nvidia clear winner, price and performance don't matter, only those 10W difference matters.

    No way for AMD to win, I would have not sent review copies to a whole more websites, there are at least 4-5 of top of my head that are Nvidia shill town and they not even doing it subtly.
  • althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    nVidia have had a lead in performance for half a decade or more now - it's not tech reviewers fault that AMD are using more power to deliver worse performance at similar prices.
  • chrnochime - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    And we're suppose to have faith in YOUR view of SW? LOL
  • Will Robinson - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Yup,I agree.
    Dammed with faint praise is the best you'll see for AMD cards there.
    Their comments section is an NV fanboy fest led by Chuckula/Chizow and approved by TR.
  • silverblue - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Semiaccurate would've most likely gone the same way had Charlie not locked it all down to subscribers. The only downside is the lack of a daily drashek fix.

    I think wccftech is another of chizow's haunts, but don't quote me on that.
  • Gasaraki88 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Oh come on. AMD didn't give a card to Kyle from HardOCP also. So you're saying all the review sites out there are bias against AMD?
  • jardows2 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    After reading several recent H's reviews of AMD products, where their testing shows the AMD card slightly slower than the nVidia product, then the conclusion stating the AMD product is a piece of trash and not worth anyone's money, without any of their own testing data backing up such a harsh conclusion, I don't blame AMD for not sending them a card.
  • Alexvrb - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Yeah I kind of saw that one coming. I still read H sometimes, but you really have to draw your own conclusions and keep the salt handy. With TR, it's not only what they report, it's what they refuse to report. It's far from the worse, but there's a pattern.

    AT is my favorite overall, anyway.
  • InquisitorDavid - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    I don't know what your level of 'recent' is, but the R9 380 and R9 390x both got decent reviews. The 390x got a silver award, basically being touted as a cheaper, more power-hungry 980 with more VRAM (truth), and the R9 380 was given a Gold award because it performed better than a 960 at the same price range.

    The Fury got no awards for being on-par with the stock 980, while costing more. They saw the 390x having better value (thus the silver award), despite the increased power draw.

    If anything, AMD has been getting a lot of crap because they've been losing for a while now. Less efficiency, rebrands, and all. OC'ing the 390x gets it to the same level as a 980 reference, and will consume about 200w more. It's cheaper, however, and we all know that's what AMD has been doing for a while now - value for money. It's the only battlefield they can claim any sort of real victory on. With the Fury and Nano, that gets completely thrown out the window.

    The Fury X was hamstrung by the release of the 980ti (which was clearly a blocking maneuver by NV). Without the 980ti, it would've been the king of value. The "overclocker's dream" statement was still a bald-faced lie.
  • althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    If prices are equal and the AMD card is slightly slower, then the AMD card *IS* worthless. Who would pay the same money to get slightly worse performance and use more power? Only idiots.
  • althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    Anybody that hasn't been pro-nVidia for the past few years has been doing it wrong. AMD have been using more power to offer less performance (at similar prices) - they have been behind for *ages* now. They still are, but at least it looks like HBM will bring the performance needed (next generation probably, it's obviously not there yet).
  • anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    I like TechReport, and find their coverage of tech very detailed, but yes, I have to agree with you that they've essentially been portraying AMD as just not quite as good as nVidia, yet all the while minimizing or ignoring the Green Goblin's dubious business practices ($200 G-Sync tax) and misrepresentation of their products (the 3.5GB GTX970 that somehow didn't completely torpedo that card's recommendation).
  • Frenetic Pony - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I've looked at Tech Report, fuck Tech Report. None of their tests seem to reflect anyone elses, I tried a few of the graphs and they're literally a statistical outlier (at least for my quick tests).
  • SeanJ76 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    AMD is about to claim bankruptcy......
  • silverblue - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Somebody just bought 20% of their shares. If you want them to file chapter 11, be a little more patient, grasshopper.
  • close - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Guess Nvidia is dead to you as a brand also for the whole 3.5GB issue (which we all know how well was handled). That leaves you with the Intel iGPU. But some people have the little fetish of being crapped on from a single direction.

    Saying "they're dead to me as a brand" is the same as saying "from now on I will disconsider their offerings even if they may be better value or simply better". And this does you no favors, trust me.
  • Azix - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Does AMD not give out review guidelines? It seems that's something nvidia does. eg when the Ashes benchmark came out they told review sites not to use AA, a lot didn't. Maybe AMD figures some sites will ignore this guidance. eg. if they said nano was not to be compared to the 980ti or fury X and was a niche product for small cases, some sites like kitguru would still compare it to a 980ti rather than the closest mini GPU
  • gw74 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    It is none of the companies' business how their products are reviewed. Their only business to make good products. Anyone can compare anything they like to anything else and benchmark it using anything they want.
  • ianmills - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I wish it was but even anandtech falls in line with this and overuses company's marketing terms to make it hard to compare to previous generations
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Interesting. I'm certainly not trying to "fall in line" or otherwise use specific marketing terms, so if I'm doing that then it's unplanned. What terms have I been using, so that I can watch out for it in the future?
  • Alexvrb - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Yeah! Tell em gw! Same with automotive testing. No guidelines, no rules! If they loan you a 1-ton pickup truck and you compare it to sports cars on a twisty track, bash the truck and give it a horrible review for "poor handling vs 500K exotic sports cars" - well that's none of their business!

    /sarcasm
  • gw74 - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link

    I am talking about no guidelines or rules from the manufacturers, genius. That obviously does not mean the reviewing party does not use its brain to compare and test in a sensible way. You absolute clown.
  • Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    They're not demands, they're just telling people ahead of time if there is a particular game that is exhibiting issues with a particular setting. Which especially if its an in progress issue they're debugging, doesn't paint a good picture of the product, and only serves to give ammunition for detractors to cherry pick data points to use in their crusades.
  • gw74 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    there is no evidence or reason to believe the 3.5GB was anything but an honest mistake, and it was all handled admirably by Nvidia once discovered.

    You are not the arbiter of what is and is not dead to me, and your condescending attempt to explain its consequences to me is not required.

    The point about AMD is that their actions reveal untrustworthiness. Buying a product from someone untrustworthy can have all sorts of negative consequences, whatever the apparent quality or value at the time of purchase.

    Pipe down. Have a seat. Have a Diet Coke.
  • RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "there is no evidence or reason to believe the 3.5GB was anything but an honest mistake, and it was all handled admirably by Nvidia once discovered."

    Yes, the engineers accidentally designed the card with 3.5GB of VRAM and gimped ROPs. Sure, it was just an accident. Not only that, after it was found out, NV didn't change the specifications for ROPs and VRAM on the boxes of newly produced GTX970 cards. GTX970 doesn't have full speed GDDR5 memory and doesn't have the full stack of ROP performance of GTX980 card. Therefore, it's not a true 4GB GDDR5 card because the last 0.5GB operate at only 28GB/sec which is basically useless.

    "and it was all handled admirably by Nvidia once discovered."

    NV did absolutely nothing. They showed 0 remorse. It was AIBs that accepted returns. NV didn't provide a return program for existing customers, didn't offer discount coupons for future NV GPUs, they didn't offer a game coupon, they literally did nothing. In fact, they tried to cover it under the rug with PR mouthpieces from sites like PCPerspective how 3.5GB of VRAM doesn't matter.

    "The point about AMD is that their actions reveal untrustworthiness. Buying a product from someone untrustworthy can have all sorts of negative consequences, whatever the apparent quality or value at the time of purchase."

    What so untrustworthy about AMD's Nano or AMD's graphics cards? The Nano beats GTX970 mini by at least 30%, just like AMD stated. AMD never aimed or claimed to have the Nano being a price/performance king.
  • gw74 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    This has nothing to do with engineering, the mistakes were in marketing. Nvidia self-evidently showed remorse by admitting and correcting the mistakes and facilitating refunds with retailers. Nvidia don't produce reference 970s, the drop-in card manufacturers do, so which boxes do you mean?

    For what is untrustworthy try reading my comments.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    You should read his rebuttal since clearly you didn't.
  • gw74 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    who should read who's rebuttal?
  • RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    @gm74,

    Even if you state that marketing is 100% at fault, which is hard to believe, NV is still responsible for how the product is marketed after the facts came out. It was AIBs that agreed to accept the cards back, not Nvidia. It would be akin to AT&T or Verizon accepting returns of flawed Blackberry phones but Blackberry not offering any refunds directly. NV never offered direct refunds, never issues any game vouchers or discounts as remorse. Stating online that the are sorry does nothing. It's empty PR.

    The way professional companies deal with mistakes is completely different than how NV handles it. After the disastrous Bumpgate scandal, the way they treated GTX970 fiasco is shockingly poor.

    Mazda after they made a mistake:

    "Mazda is offering to buy back most of the 3,551 RX-8 rotary-engine sports cars sold since the July launch because engine power is as much as 5% less than advertised — an important difference to sports car enthusiasts.

    Those who tell Mazda they will keep their cars get free scheduled maintenance for the four-year, 50,000-mile warranty period, plus $500."
    http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/2003-09...

    What did Nvidia do in particular for GTX970 owners? Nothing, 0, zilch, nada.

    You state that NV isn't responsible for what goes on the marketing boxes of its AIBs? Are you serious. So after NV was caught lying about specifications, did it tell its AIBs to change the specs on their newly printed boxes? If not, they are still lying to consumers and they are OK with AIBs misrepresenting the data.
  • Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Im not going to get into the whole debate, but since we're clearly being pedantic here. It was a 4gb card. It absolutely has 4gb of vram. They never advertised it as "4gb (but with .5gb of slower ram!)", so if you want to get on them for that, go for it. But claiming its a 3.5 gb card when it *is* a 4gb card is just as ridiculous as any of the other assertions you're getting on him for making.
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    You're not being pedantic. You're being wrong. A lie of omission is a form of lie. 28 GB/s VRAM performance, half that of a midrange card from 2007, is NOT a reasonable expectation for an enthusiast-level card or even any card with DDR5.
  • gw74 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    it's not a lie of omission.
  • anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    Of course it's a misrepresentation. Nobody who reads '4GB' will assume that the last .5GB is so slow that it's essentially necessary to limit game textures to 3.5GB or the game will be suddenly stuttering and the card will be brought to its knees. Give me a break. That's like me marketing a gold bar as 1KG of 'pure gold', but in fact, it's only 750grams of 24K gold, and 250 grams of 10K gold. It's willfully and deliberately deceptive, and if you don't say so, you're complicit in their scam.
  • gw74 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Everything you say here is refuted by my previous comment.
  • slickr - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    LOL. Either you are one of the biggest dumbasses out there or a shill yourself. To believe it was a "honest mistake" is like believing the earth is made out of cheese.

    They had at least 2 months to fix it and to rectify it, did they not read any of the hundred of reviews? They tried to cover it up and it was only when average CONSUMERS started noticing it and testing it that it was found out it had been a major fraud.
  • gw74 - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    insulting me, setting up a false dichotomy and a false analogy will not help you.

    They did not realise there had been an error during those 2 months, and none of the reviews mentioned it, because it does not noticeably affect performance except in certain SLI / 4K low framerate edge cases. It was only when until users starting reporting it in mid Jan. They had meetings between marketing and engineering then released a statement to PCPer on 24th Jan.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link

    Nvidia continued to lie to the public on its website by stating that the 970 has 224 GB/s, long after Anandtech's Correcting the Specs article was published — which made it clear enough that the card can't reach that number. Quit shilling.
  • Alexvrb - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Err, uh, the engineers only communicate in binary! The translator was sick that week! Locusts! It wasn't their fault!!

    Reality: "Well technically it has 4GB on there so we'll just... leave that detail out... they won't notice for months anyway. Then we'll apologize and a bunch of fanboys will defend us till the bitter end anyway."

    If AMD had pulled a stunt like that they would have been raked through the coals till there were only ashes.
  • gw74 - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    no. that is not "reality". That is speculation.
  • bigboxes - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Utter nonsense. Nvidia knew damn well that they had a technical and marketing issue and lied through their teeth. Misleading reviewers, customers and the general tech community. It eventually came out and they went into full damage control. And before you say it, I bought an MSI GTX 970 Gaming 4G card after all this went down. I'm happy with this card, but it is what it is.
  • gw74 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    you forgot to include evidence of them lying, or a reason for why they would lie.
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    It's called reality, dude.
  • gw74 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    meaningless
  • anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    "you forgot to include evidence of them lying, or a reason for why they would lie."

    Are you for real? Evidence of misrepresentation is that the box says '4GB', and you can only practically use 3.5GB of the 4GB in a game, or the performance will tank. How much more evidence do you require?

    As for a reason why they would do this? You've got to be joking. $$! That's why. The memory controller they used to make a '4GB' card was cheaper than one that would have run all the memory at full speed. That would likely have pushed the price of the card well above $400, and outside of the targeted dupe market of $350-$400. The cheaper, gimped memory controller also meant that nVidia made more profit per card. They just hoped nobody would catch their use of a gimped memory controller before they'd ripped off tens of thousands of slavishly loyal nVidiots who all mindlessly rushed out to computer stores to plunk down their money. And it worked. Tens of thousands have plunked down their money, and nVidia has posted better than ever earnings. What a surprise.
  • anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link

    HA HA HA! An 'honest' mistake? Give me a break! Are you saying nVidia just didn't realize that the cheap memory controller they saddled the GTX970 had a flaw? Yeah, right. They just didn't know that the last .5GB of memory would be gimped by running it at 1/7 the speed of the other 3.5GB. And of course, the decision to use that cheaper memory controller didn't have ANYTHING to do with padding their already fat profit margins at the expense of their customers. Meanwhile, they have the audacity to print '4GB Ram' on all the boxes. As if nVidia just didn't realize that tens of thousands of nVidiots wouldn't go out and buy the cards for a few months before an independent reviewer finally caught them in the act. nVidia is as guilty as a cat in a goldfish bowl, and if you're going to pretend that this whole fiasco was 'handled admirably' by nVidia, then you must really be a fan of Jen Hsun. Seriously, at least have the self-respect to call a spade a spade and admit that nVidia tried to pull a fast one just to line their pockets and got caught.
  • SolMiester - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Oh please, its already been stated that you have to load up beyond normal use before the .5Gb ram comes into play and for the majority or users at 1080, its doesnt effect them.
  • RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    @SolMeiser, 1080P is fine but some gamers who purchased GTX970 did so for their 2560x1440/1600 monitors, in addition to others who bought GTX970 SLI. Also, even if in the majority of games the 3.5GB RAM isn't an issue, it's how NV responded to the situation is what's telling.
  • Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    So, what do you have to say about all the dubious shit AMD said during the pre fiji release? They claimed several times it was the fastest card in the world, when it wasn't, and they KNEW it wasn't.

    I'm tired of people being inconsistent, if you're going to point out questionable behavior in one company then you have to do it for the other.
  • silverblue - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    They could've run benchmarks well before the launch, and then fallen behind once NVIDIA had brought out new drivers, or they could've straight out lied. What I'd like to see is AMD's 4K Gaming Performance Benchmarks bar chart scrutinised for every game to see how far out of reality the results were with the setups that were used, then we can be 100% sure (after all, Fiji is more competitive at 4K than lower resolutions).
  • fuicharles - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Not giving a review copies to certain reviewer is worse or the one who create gameworks is worse ?
  • Horza - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Thank you for being the impartial voice of reason Wreckage. I've always enjoyed your measured and balanced approach to assessing the merits of the two big dGPU players. Your attack on Anandtech's credibility holds so much more weight coming from a person with a track record of non-partisan, unbiased viewpoints such as yourself. Thank you again.
  • ingwe - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    If you read the final words, I think this is a very fair review. To me it says: "This is better than usual form AMD, but it isn't enough and it is too expensive." Seems accurate and unbiased.
  • bill.rookard - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Actually, I do find it 'enough', it -is- a very good, supremely capable card that comes in at 2/3 of the size with 90% of the performance. Heck, it's faster than the GTX 980. My problem? It is too expensive. I know that prime Fiji chips are in short supply at the moment, but it needs to be about $200 cheaper.

    If they can get their supply running smoothly and get their yields of the full-fat Fiji up, drop the price to about GTX 980 levels they'd never be able to keep them in stock.
  • looncraz - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Indeed. At $200 cheaper I'd consider buying two of them, rather than none.

    The lack of a DL-DVI port, though, would probably limit me to just one.
  • Alexvrb - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Agreed I think it's a great compact card but for their sake I hope they drop the price gradually as yields improve. Personally I will be waiting to see what happens with HBM2, I'm hoping that with the improvements in density they'll be able to push it into mid-range cards as well next time.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I didn't see much about DX 12 and how it should counter all the energy efficiency stuff that is being pretty much obsessed about. The conclusion, for instance, talks so much about energy efficiency when in fact the real point of this card is not performance per watt but the form factor.

    I don't see anything about Ashes — not even a word about why it wasn't included.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "I don't see anything about Ashes — not even a word about why it wasn't included."

    We don't include non-release software in our GPU evaluations. Ashes isn't a complete game, it's still an alpha.
  • AS118 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I feel like that's totally valid. Until multiple finalized DX12 benches come out, I don't feel that we can really understand how current cards will work with DX12.
  • Oxford Guy - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    It still merits a mention, even if it's just to say that.
  • AS118 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I agree. In fact, this review seems as honest as every other Nano one. They all say "it's niche" and "it's too expensive for the performance if you don't need the small size, and regardless of what Roy said, the sites that were given a card are quite critical of the Nano, and most recommend getting a bigger, faster, cheaper card instead if you don't need something tiny.

    They say "It's a great product, but only for people that really must have the strongest mini-card".
  • RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Wreckage = trolls like Rollo, but minus the facts.
  • Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Whats the Roy Taylor incident? Im not aware.
  • at80eighty - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    If there's anyone championing the cause of objectivity, it's you
  • jay401 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    The only thing wrong with the Nano and the rest of the Fury lineup is the price. They should all have debuted $50 cheaper than they did.
  • theNiZer - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    My thoughts exactly :)
  • HisDivineOrder - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Nice to see that Anandtech didn't mind getting their card with whatever promises they had to make to get it. I'm reminded of the AMD Red section that this site once had and I begin to wonder if that payment scheme ever really ended or just went "underground?"
  • garbagedisposal - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Jesus Christ, you are one especially rabid and unpleasant person. Please don't comment on this website.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    If you think this site is pro-AMD you clearly don't read the reviews, like the review of Broadwell that included like 8 slow APUs and not a single FX chip at a reasonable clockspeed (like 4.5 GHz), even though FX, not APUs, offers the best desktop performance from AMD.
  • Creig - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Looks like we have a new generation of Wounded [H] Children on our hands.
  • Will Robinson - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Seeing that Tech Report's Graphics forum used to be sponsored by Nvidia....I guess it went to the same place hmm?
  • eanazag - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link

    I want one, but not at that price. They need a version of the nano at $300-50 that smacks the 970 mini from cheek to cheek. Though with the whole Fiji series I am disappointed it maxes out at 4 GB of VRAM.

    Anyhow, I would be interested in the best performance a vendor could offer in a single slot cooler. Not the usual duds that come with a single slot cooler. Ooorrrrr okay performance with a water cooler, when I say okay performance I'm thinking what usually comes in at the $180+-$225 price range.
  • colonelclaw - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    As someone who is currently heavily invested in Nvidia tech, I would just like to say well done to AMD, this a great (little) product!
    980 nano please :)
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Probably not a 980 Nano, but a 1080 Nano is more likely. This is the future of GPUs. Next year we get FinFET and HBM2 from NVIDIA and ATI. It's only a matter of time before both AMD and NVIDIA have full lineups of SFF GPUs. Why pay more for all that PCB space if you don't need it?
  • Qwertilot - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Also Intel's 35w quad cores seem to be getting rather fast nowadays, so overall system power/a very quiet CPU cooler is much easier to handle. Not many really tiny cases mind.

    Also maybe a question of if you want to go one fan for something with this much power draw - it can be tamed to very, very quiet by 2 fan designs.
  • mosu - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I wonder how Nvidia will manage HBM2 with no previous experience with HBM. Maybe TSMC will borrow some for them...
  • nathanddrews - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Probably just fine seeing as they have been designing Pascal for a few years and they just began sampling a few months ago, meaning they likely have working chips in their labs right now. AMD managed fine with their first implementation. Intel seems to be doing well with their version of stacked memory. Samsung and Toshiba are also doing fine. No one would be bringing it to the consumer market if they didn't already have a good handle on it.
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I will be an asshole and remind everybody that there is _still_ no 960 review.
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    What exactly would you expect from an AT review now that can not already be found elsewhere? I know they said a review would be coming, but seriously.. let them focus on important topics.
  • bill.rookard - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    You are absolutely right. On both points.
  • Mikemk - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Really?
  • extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    They SAID that there will not be a 960 review.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Because the 960 was a poor product that made Nvidia look bad?
  • D. Lister - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link

    No, because AT was understaffed and they kept delaying it, until they realised that they were so late (compared to other sites) that the meager hits their review would get, wouldn't be worth the effort that they would have to put in.

    As for your inability to find a review, allow me to assist:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=960+review&rlz...
  • HOOfan 1 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Plenty of SFF cases fit full size cards now, unless you just have money burning holes in your pocket, why not buy one of those and get a regular non-X Fury or a 390X?
  • przemo_li - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    ROTFL

    390X & 980 are TWICE as long.

    That is SFF. Yeah, right. I will write SFF on my ITX tower. It will be so cool :P
  • trentchau - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    My Obsidian 250D is considered SFF (close to not being one) and it has a 980Ti in it. Why the laughter?
  • HOOfan 1 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Fractal Node 202 will fit a GTX 980...are you going to tell me that is not small form factor?
  • ingwe - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    For me there is a difference between a truly small form factor design and one that is "small form factor" but built to house a card twice as large as this. I am not saying this is an important distinction to everyone, but it is one that I would make. There is just a lot of size variability in mini-ITX cases.

    Your question though does really illustrate how much of a niche product this is though. You literally need to be going for the smallest package possible while retaining most of the performance--and not care about cost. It is an interesting product, but it is a mixed bag like the interview says.
  • tviceman - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Clearly the Nano is a more interesting card to review but the obvious elephant in the room here is that Anandtech have completely dropped the ball on the last two major Nvidia releases (gtx 960 and gtx 950). Not only that, but you were also late with the Fury X review (being bed ridden can be a valid excuse but when deadlines are continually missed excuses run dry).

    Ryan you have great analysis, fair reviews, and strong writing. You've also had days, weeks (and months) to get reviews out (and on time) with the above mentioned cards and have failed to do so. You obviously need more help with reviews.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The 960 wasn't reviewed, most likely, because it was turkey.
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    How am I supposed to know it was turkey without either reading the review that doesn't exist, or buying one myself and being seriously disappointed? You don't just skip reviewing products that aren't very good, otherwise that defeats the point in reviews.
  • K_Space - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    @Gigaplex
    I think Of is insinuating that Anandtech would not review a product that defaces nVidia (though I disagree). Getting the Nano review as a priority plus being chief editor (who probably proof reads other reviews), add in various administritive duties and it all takes its toll. The annual call up for reviewers has gone out recently; I think Anandtech made it clear enough they would love a helping hand in getting timely reviews... On time.
  • K_Space - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    OG*
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link

    I'll leave you to ponder this.
  • Gunbuster - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    What a great little card for a miniature $3000+ boutique HTPC. Oh wait, no HDMI 2.0 for 4K.
  • Asomething - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    you know you can add a passive dp-hdmi adapter right? its hard to find one that supports dp 1.2 but they exist. if $3000 plus an extra $30 is too much maybe dont make a $3000 HTPC.
  • Gunbuster - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Did you mean the fabled DP to HDMI 2.0 active converter that AMD keeps saying the channel will have "soon"
    Also once soon arrives we will have to see how well it actual works and if it introduces any input lag.
  • Fallen Kell - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    No, you can't buy a passive dp-hdmi adapter that supports proper HDMI 2.0+HDCP 2.2 that is needed for proper video content playback. These devices still do not exist. Parade Technologies has made an announcement on a chip/device to do this job, but they do not make end-user/consumer goods (think AMD/Nvidia when they do not make a reference card) and simply sell the chips to a vendor that makes the devices. They announced the product August 10th, 2015. It will be a good 4-6 months still before we see a vendor decide to make a product that uses that chip.
  • ThomasS31 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    So GTX980 Performance for GTX980Ti price... well.

    Some will probably interested in it... but this is "mispositioned" atm.
  • rhysiam - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Kind of missing the point there I think. It's also slower and more expensive than a Fury (nonX), so if you don't want/need a small card then of course the Nano makes no sense whatsoever.

    The whole point of this card is it's size and (relative for AMD) efficiency, but naturally you need to either pay a little more or accept lower performance at the same price-point... that's the tradeoff.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    but, if efficiency and size is a major selling point, why choose this over the 970 mini, which is half the price and uses less power?

    This makes the nano's market people who want a small mini itx card (so a HTPC case, as most itx gaming cases can take full size cards), which is efficient, but can't fathom buying an nvidia card, despite using less power while still performing well, and are willing to fork over 980ti levels of cash for 980 performance, to drive a 4k or 1440p displayport monitor (as there is no hdmi 2.0 on nano, so 4k tvs are out, and 1080p would favor the 970).

    That's, like, a niche of a niche of a niche of a niche. Not really a major money making market for AMD.
  • przemo_li - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    But less performance too.

    I do not get why people get distracted with "energy efficiency" at all.

    Its KING OF THE JUNGLE gpu. It's all about performance.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    When you are building a small HTPC, which is the market AMD is aiming for with the nano, efficiency is very important. All that heat has to go SOMEWHERE. a lower consumption part won't produce as much heat. If you want a KING OF THE JUNGLE gpu, why are you looking at nano, and not titan x or fury x?
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Because the Titan X is too big. This is a product that competes with the 970 mini in size (and efficiency to some extent) while being faster.
  • RafaelHerschel - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Because people like me build small systems. I do have a 'performance' system, but even that system isn't that big. A lot of energy means a lot of heat. There are quite a few practical reasons for smaller systems, but perhaps the most important one is that it seems silly to build a behemoth for a few extra frames per second.
  • ThomasS31 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Yet, still if I could save $150 just for going a bit bigger case, or a different structured case, that can host longer cards... I would go with the latter as save money. :)

    My point in "positioning".
  • ThomasS31 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    And ofc, I may get other benefits with that. Like not noisy like this (a good thing in a living room), and better temps.
  • medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    5% faster than gtx 980 at 65% of 980Ti price.
  • mapesdhs - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    The Nano and 980 Ti are the same price in the UK, with a particular model of 980 Ti being the far more sensible choice wrt performance.

    The Nano needs to be a lot cheaper to be worth bothering with. I'd rather use a larger case with a 980 Ti for the same cost, or a mini 970 since a product without HDMI 2.0 isn't suitable for 4K by default IMO.
  • Drumsticks - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I kind of like the Nano. Small form factor stuff is always interesting to me.

    Also, is there any chance that we can get a directx12 preview of the fury and high end Nvidia cards? Given results other places were seeing for the 390x, I'm REALLY interested.
  • digitalgriffin - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    This makes ZERO sense. Why buy now for DX12 performance when a good crop DX12 games are at least 1, 2 years off? (Due to adoption of windows 10 and development time). You would be an idiot to buy now.

    Wait for the refresh in about 12 -> 18 months and AMD to get HBM2, fix the lack of ROPs and drop the DP FP support that adds a lot of unneeded transistors (my guess)...if they are still in business.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Not to mention, by the time DX12 becomes mainstream, these GPUs will be irrelevant. Like the first DX11 gpus, the geforce 400s. Sure, they work with modern DX11 titles, but they are too slow to be used in said games. nano, fury x, and maxwell will have the same issue.
  • anubis44 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    DX12 games are not 1-2 years off, they're imminent, since porting can be done pretty well directly to DX12 from consoles now. All that's required is Windows 10, and Steam is reporting Win10 already has a 17% adoption rate after only 1 month! At this rate, every gamer on Steam will be running Win10 by Christmas.
  • Drumsticks - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    ??? I never said I was going to buy the Nano. You just said exactly what my plan was, to buy a GPU when 16nm FF hits. I'm still chugging along with 1080p and a 7850, but I'll probably be grabbing QuadHD or 4K next year with a big GPU upgrade.

    That doesn't mean that looking at potential DX12 performance now won't give a hint of what's to come, though. AMD stands to gain a lot from dx12 from what we've seen.
  • mosu - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    With a 16nm FinFet you'll get Nvidia, a 14nm FinFET will come from Glo-Foundries, so you'll get something from AMD.
  • extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    It's NOT a lack of ROP's guys, its a lack of geometry bhardware. Check out the pixel fill rate tests, that does NOT indicate a lack of ROP's. This car beats the 980 at high res, but not low res, thats NOT a ROP issue, that's either driver overheard and/or geometry issue.
  • silverblue - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    I wonder if AMD has ever responded to the issue of driver overhead. If not, they should. It's a massacre at lower resolutions and detail levels at times.
  • jardows2 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I do not see any enthusiast buying this card for their own build. Where I do see this card selling is in boutique systems sold for a combination of style and performance. In a tiny system targeted for 1440 gaming, which I think should be the focus rather than 4k, this would do great!
  • MrSpadge - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    That voltage-frequency curve looks horrible! From the average clocks speeds we know the card is mostly running between 800 and 900 MHz. Yet on that plot we see no power states defined between 0.93 V and 1.04 V. Yet that's where the card would need to operate between 750 and 850 MHz. Why is AMD limiting their power efficiency by providing too few power states? Or is it simply a matter of measuring the low voltages correctly?
  • teiresias - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    What were the terms Anandtech agreed to with Roy Taylor in order to secure this Nano sample? I honestly can't take any review of this product seriously unless the editorials of each site come out with statements on what their agreements with AMD were concerning review content.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "What were the terms Anandtech agreed to with Roy Taylor in order to secure this Nano sample?"

    For the record I didn't need to agree to any terms. Nor have I conversed with Roy in quite some time.
  • jtrdfw - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Thats good.
  • Wreckage - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    If they agreed to anything it would probably be covered under a "non disclosure agreement" so legally they would not be able to say anything. Such an agreement would come from AMD marketing, not from Roy directly. I assume there was some sort of reviewers guide they wanted people to follow. How strictly any site followed that guide or why certain sites were deemed "fair" by AMD will most likely remain speculation
  • wperry - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Man, going by the comments, there's piss in many a bowls of Cheerios this morning.
  • DanNeely - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    For anyone who doesn't know what's going on, HardOCP put out a good writeup yesterday.

    http://www.hardocp.com/article/2015/09/09/amd_roy_...

    TLDR version: A senior AMD manager said some really stupid stuff on twitter.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Shocker, Kyle at HardOCP is butthurt....
  • pt2501 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    After reading the commentary at HardOCP, I generally agree with the senior AMD manager. Nothing he said insinuated that HardOCP was an unfair site, what was said is that HardOCPs focus is for top performance especially overclocking performance. Fury Nano designed to fill a niche for a small but high performance build. We all know the ongoing supply issues exist with Fiji and if you have limited supply you must choose where cards go that produce no income or customer satisfaction or else it will be ANOTHER PAPER launch. The reviewer began his argument by bitching about paper launches on the first page when this limited sample reviews might be designed to mitigate this situation.

    He complains about AMD only wanting things painted in a favorable light but he illustrates that his is willing to remove content that he finds unfavorable when THE REVIEWER THEN REMOVED A FORUM POST OF A CUSTOM FURY NANO BECAUSE IT WAS NOT IN LINE WITH THE SITE'S FOCUS. Bottom line when this guy even admits he is an asshole. I just cannot accept people taking this reviewer and by extension HardOCPs butthurt attitude about being excluded. The AMD manager didn't even mention HardOCP, his posts where in response to other sites. HardOCP just assumed that this extended to them.

    As a reference Anandtech has never been an enthusiastic fan of AMDs' cards since the 9700 pro. Yet AMD and Nvidia have NEVER failed to give them a card to review. Doesn't this seem to speak more about the authenticity and reputation of the review site? While I am wary of venders choosing who gets cards to review, with a product as difficult as the Fiji cards to keep up with demand I more than understand their desire to get cards into people computers. AMD knows these are niche cards but at least they want these cards to get make them money, which AMD needs.
  • Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    That site is so amateurish. They didn't even include a single objective noise measurement in power supply reviews.
  • lmcd - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    I didn't realize HardOCP was more than a forum...
  • at80eighty - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    lmfao @ Kyle. his tears are practically soaking my screen.
  • BrokenCrayons - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Thanks for the great review. I think the benchmarks ultimately end up underscoring how much graphics power it currently takes to run games at 4k and certainly argues the case for lower resolutions when it comes to single-GPU situations. Even though the Nano is a much less wattage-absurd GPU, I personally think 175 watts is just too much to be reasonable. I like having warm feet in the winter, but when the CPU is happy with 65 watts, pairing up a graphics card with it that needs almost 3x that much power is frustratingly annoying.
  • Communism - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Take a Fury X, remove some VRMs, remove the closed loop water cooler, set Powertune to -50%, lower voltages a bit.

    Then sell at the same goddamned price as Fury X with a horrible open air cooler that would be a bad idea in any case that wouldn't be able to fit a Fury X to start with.

    Fanboy milking at it's finest.
  • Asomething - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I partially agree with this, they should have dropped the price, though you are hating on the cooler a bit too much. its keeping in line with the 970 mini's cooler for noise/temps while cooling a hotter card, the cooler exhausts half out the case and half into the the case which is a hell of alot better than the 970 mini which exhausts in all directions (which is about 75% in the case and the rest out the back).
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Not quite. They didn't actually lower voltages.
  • Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    OC load power consumption under Crysis 3 is the same as stock load power consumption. What went wrong there? Is the card really not overclocking or do you have the wrong data?
  • Communism - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Powertune is the limiter, which sets a soft long wattage limit.

    In other words, you can overclock the card to 9000 mhz and it would still use the same long term max power.

    What's happening is that the card is simply throttling even more heavily compared to stock clocks.
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Power consumption went up by 59W: http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph9621/77410...
  • Shadowmaster625 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    GTX980 crushes this thing. You can easily fit a GTX 980 into a Corsair Air 240. There really isnt much to be gained by going smaller than a Corsair Air 240. If AMD really wants to go after mini pc market, then they need to strip out 10% of those compute cores, replace them with carrizo modules, quadruple the amount of HBM, and replace one of the HBM chips with a flash chip. They could create an entire motherboard that would be roughly the size of that Nano pcb. Slap it into a tiny case and boom you have a product no one can match.
  • jardows2 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Like I mentioned earlier. This card is for a niche boutique build. I wouldn't buy one for myself, as I don't need the power in such a small product. But general mass consumers are well known for buying something for looks rather than practicality. A tiny computer that is only big enough to fit the Nano? There are people who would spend the money to buy it!
  • medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    "R9 Nano demonstrates slightly better performance than GTX 980 –around 5% at 2560x1440"

    Crushes, eh?
  • Peichen - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    What a fail. More than twice as expensive as GTX970 mini but only 20% faster and runs hotter, louder and hungrier as well. The FURY chips are very inefficient compares with Nvidia's offerings and I am not sure how many people would pay $370 more just for 20% in an ITX setup. Most ITX case can take 10" card as well.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    You answered your own question. The card is 20+% faster than the closest competitor in this space.
  • TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    so who would pay twice as much for 20% more performance? not many, seeing as the 970 is good enough for 1080p and is still surprisingly good at 1440p.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Such a double standard... If that is the case why does the Titan exist? The same can be said with ANY halo card. Being top of the market is going to cost more for consumers. It has ALWAYS been this way. Don't sit there and pretend that Nvidia wouldn't have done the exact same thing, if not worse, when it comes to pricing this product.
  • Kjella - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Having the absolutely fastest card possible for the performance freaks is quite different from having the fastest card in a niche that clearly values other attributes over maximum performance. Best battery life in a laptop is valuable. Best battery life in a gaming laptop, not so much. Or if you prefer car analogies, best compact car for pulling a trailer.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Your analogy is terrible. A better analogy would be comparing cars that are built for handling and all around performance like the M3 or WRX STI vs big HP cars like the Camaro, Mustang, or Challenger.
  • Peichen - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    You can just get the GTX970 and overclock to make up the 20% difference. GTX970 easily go to 1450Mhz boosted from stock 1178MHz boosted.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The 970 mini cards don't have the same overclocking potential as the standard ones. Also, the HSF setup on those mini cards sound like a miniature leaf blower when you overclock them. The "efficiency" also goes out the window.

    Also, overclocking doesn't do much to improve 4K performance on those.
  • nikaldro - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    It's not like this card is good for 4K either
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    It is fine if you don't just max all the settings. Anyone who ACTUALLY games at 4K knows that max settings on every game is a pipe dream at this point in time.
  • TallestJon96 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    It's an interesting product, but is just short of being great.

    If it was $500 it would be great.

    If it came out 6 months ago, it would be great.

    If it was built on 20nm, and had corresponding power reductions, it would be great.

    If it performed 10% better, it would be great.

    But it's not, it's just ok. As of right now, 99% of people would be better suited with either a 970, or 980 ti.
  • lmcd - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    It's a great product for its niche target. At this point neither company will likely release a "great" product because they want their money's worth.
  • SeanJ76 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    What a joke!! 650$ and it doesn't even beat the 500$ 980GTX!!
  • Communism - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The real sad part is that you could just take a 980GTX and overclock it the requisite amount to make it equal in performance to the Fury Nano, as Nvidia's Maxwell has no end-user voltage controls, meaning the extra clockspeed would increase power consumption only linearly.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Once again, the Fury Nano is competing against the 970 GTX Mini, not the 980 GTX, which is beats handily.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The Fury Nano is competing against the 970 GTX Mini, not the 980 GTX, which is beats handily.
  • medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    If you read the review you'd know it is 5% faster than 980.
  • SeanJ76 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Why would anyone pay $100 more than 980GTX for less performance?? Doesn't make much sense does it?
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Can you link me to where I can buy a 980 GTX the size of the Fury Nano?
  • takeship - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Can you point me to a single ITX case that has can both 1: take an ATX power supply, 2: will not also take a GTX980?
  • meacupla - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Lian-Li PC-Q21, PC-Q33

    On the other hand, Silverstone makes mITX cases that use SFX PSUs, but can still fit a 268mm (10.5in) long card in a 10.5L case (SG-13), or a 13" long card in an 11L case (RVZ02/ML08).

    Interesting thing to note about RVZ02/ML08 is that you can trade graphics card length for an extra 3.5" HDD. http://silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=607&...
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    What about boutique PC builders that use custom case designs? Steam PCs and similar devices are trying to get smaller and smaller, this is yet another step toward that.

    This is a niche product, you seem to be forgetting that fact.
  • RafaelHerschel - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    There are quite a few cases but the Cooltek Coolcube comes to mind. The ASUS GTX970-DCMOC-4GD5 is perhaps a more sensible option, but the AMD card is tempting. The Coolcube isn't just small, it also has convenient dimensions.
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Do they pay you, at least?
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    AMD can't afford me.
  • DigitalFreak - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Maybe not, but I hear they pass your mother around at parties.
  • at80eighty - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    ugh
  • D. Lister - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    @DigitalFreak

    That was needlessly rude.
  • lmcd - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    I can't wait for a comment system where I can report you, DigitalFreak.

    Besides, palindrome's comments have all been reasonable, even if a tad biased.
  • medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    "R9 Nano demonstrates slightly better performance than GTX 980 –around 5% at 2560x1440"
  • TheCurve - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Thanks for the quality review, Ryan. Easy to read, yet descriptive when it counts. And whoever did the editing did well, I didn't notice any typos or other weirdness. For what it's worth, I thought you were very impartial. You praised the Nano when it deserved it and criticized it when it came up short. I'm not sure what else these rude commenters want. I have a feeling they didn't really read the review in its entirety -- probably just skimmed.
  • lmcd - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Seconded since I'm too lazy to type a paragraph.
  • RandSec - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "Energy efficiency compared to NVIDIA’s GM204 lineup (GTX 980/970) is not much better, which for AMD represents a significant improvement, but also means they don’t have any kind of clear advantage over NVIDIA."

    Although commonly accepted, this comment reveals a lack of understanding of two different design directions. In the past that was seen as reasonable because benchmarks. But benchmarks are inherently architecturally biased, in this case for DX11. That has resulted in users buying Nvidia while not understanding the tradeoffs and potential consequences.

    AMD and Nvidia made different design decisions. Nvidia apparently designed for DX11, which used almost no GPU compute, and so removed much of the compute from their chips, making them smaller and "more efficient." On DX11.

    In contrast, AMD seems to have designed for GPU compute, thus making their chips necessarily larger and less "efficient" on DX11. But now we see that DX12 allows and even requires more GPU compute, which the AMD GCN chips can handle.

    OF COURSE Nvidia will be "more efficient" if they do not put as much stuff on their chips. But that does not make them better, it instead makes them "brittle" in the sense of not being able to easily respond to change. In the end, Nvidia may benefit from users buying another board. But that is not only a clever consequence of Nvidia design and marketing, but also the reviewing press, who allowed this weakness to pass unnoticed and uncommented for years on end. As it turns out, it is easy to make an "efficient" device, when it does not have the parts needed for the future.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    See the 780Ti as a perfect example.
  • Michael Bay - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Wow, nV designed chips for what was appropriate at the time and AMD did not! That`s how bad nV is!

    AMD apologies are not even anymore funny at this point, just sad.
  • palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Man, I wish I had the money to drop $600+ on a GPU every year like some of you NV die-hards...
  • HollyDOL - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I suspect when Dx12 gets widely adopted the requirements of games will exceed what any card today can provide. My bet is it will take at least first generation of HBM2 cards on new (<28nm) process to handle it well. So maybe for a certain period AMD might get upper hand, but I expect that's all.
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    DX12 lowers the requirements, it doesn't increase them. It'll be a long time before the majority of games require hardware faster than current cards, due to the console port phenomenon.
  • HollyDOL - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Ye, I know it does, but... during all those years (let's say in last ~15-18 years or so) game requirements in full detail settings steadily grow, it would surprise me a lot if the requirements suddenly dropped, but I won't complain if that happens :-)
  • lmcd - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    @Gigaplex
    *lowers the cpu requirements, it doesn't increase them

    FIFY

    And you just neglected game advancements and all the work that'll be best offloaded to the GPU (to avoid traveling over the bus).
  • D. Lister - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    By the time dx12 becomes mainstream, which could take 3-4 years, you'll probably have to buy the Radeon brand from someone like Samsung. That is, if they care to keep the brand alive at all.
  • K_Space - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link

    Lots of talk about the potential AMD buy out on seeking Alpha, most think it'll be post 2019 though (and depending on Zen and DX12 +/- console porting maybe not any time soon).
  • D. Lister - Thursday, September 17, 2015 - link

    What is 2015 + 4?
  • kallogan - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    buy an asus directcu gtx 970 mini-itx, oc it a bit, same perf same power consumption for half the price :)
  • Asomething - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    and thats only gonna work at 1080p, even funnier is that you think the 970 dcu mini cooler is adequate for an oc, its running at 74c at its boost speed (not an oc). you wont get much more out of it compared to a full sized 970 (you might get another 100-150mhz at best before you start hitting some limits as kitguru found) which wont get you close enough to the nano's performance above 1080p.
  • Peichen - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Any GTX970 can go up to 1450Mhz boosted if not 1500Mhz from 1178Mhz stock boost. That's more than an 20% overclock and as voltage cannot be changed on Nvidia cards, heat will only go up linearly not exponentially.
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    The cooler on the mini isn't sufficient to support such a large overclock without sounding like a leaf blower.
  • medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Same perf?
    Nano is 5% faster than 980, it wipes the floor with 970.

    Jeez.
  • mobutu - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    As much as I want AMD to succed in both CPU and GPU fields, I'm afraid this R9 Nano is not good enough.
    All it takes is a mini980 from nvidia/partners priced at lets say 550 (because of the better cooling solution) and R9 Nano is busted.
    Eh, maybe next year with 16-20nm tech and hbm2 ...
  • HollyDOL - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I'd say it's a case of technology lacking behind architecture. To me Nano seems to simply struggle on generating too much heat for it's capacity to get rid of it... Thus limited frequency and lower performance. It was already visible with water cooled Fury X, but it hurts much more in this small form factor. So for me it's more proof of concept than actually elite class card.
  • T1beriu - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Did you read the review?! It's not about heat. It's about limited power consumption.
  • Gigaplex - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Limited power consumption... to keep the heat output in check. Simple thermodynamics.
  • tipoo - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    That rear resistor layout. Nice detail, AMD.

    http://images.anandtech.com/doci/9621/RearFull.jpg
  • brikbot - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    *capacitor ;)
  • tipoo - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Nah, capacitors are the big cylindrical ones

    http://www.thenakedpc.com/dan/Bulging_Capacitors/c...

    Resistors are the little ones scattered all over motherboards and other PCBs

    https://www.google.ca/search?q=motherboard+resisto...
  • extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    No, those are capacitors. They are for decoupling for the GPU power rails, and that's why they have to be right under the GPU as it's as close to the chip as they can get.

    Furthermore, you can see the designations on the PCB are Cxxx indicating again that they are capacitors.

    SMD resistors and capacitors can look identical. You are thinking of electrolytic capacitors (the big round ones) where as these are ceramic capacitors. Also the large black ones with a grey line on the side which are on the opposite side of the PCB relative to the MOSFETS are tantalum capacitors. There are MANY types.

    However one rule of thumb that is not always true, but usually is, the tan colored small SMD devices are usually capacitors whereas black ones tend to be resistors, although I stress that this is not always the case. Best way to find out is look at the component designation on the board, if they start with C they are caps, and resistors will start with R.
  • brikbot - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    This exactly. And a good example of an exception are film capacitors, which tend to be black.
  • brikbot - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Regarding power consumption for gaming vs FurMark: what impact could AMD's drivers be having? As in, we see cases where the AMD cards are CPU limited and nVidia's cards are not, implying that the AMD drivers drive a higher CPU load that nVidia. This would make sense in my mind with FurMark which loads the GPU down without really applying any loading on the CPU. I guess I'm wondering if the higher power load in gaming, being measured from the wall, is being driven by a higher CPU load as the drivers try to keep the GPU fed whereas in FurMark the drivers do not have the same work, letting the CPU idle, resulting in the lower power numbers.
    It might make an interesting metric to check in the future, given DX12 changing the impact of drivers.
  • slapdashbr - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Furmark draws substantially more power at a given clock speed than... anything else. It's like intel burn test. It's an unrealistic workload.
  • Daniel Egger - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "GTX 970 is also cheaper and designed to draw less power"

    Not true, for some stupid reason most mini GTX 970 draw more power and require 2 PCIe connectors.
  • extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Requiring 2 connectors doesnt mean it draws more power, and they are probably 2x6pin which is rated for the same as 1x8pin
  • Daniel Egger - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    True, there's still the problem that a few mini PSUs only have 1x8 pin PCIe connector and the cards will not start if only one is connected. I'd rather not fool arounds with Y-adapters or other tricks at this amp-age; that can go south rather quickly...
  • Daniel Egger - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    "And while we disagree that this card is suitable for 4K gaming based on its sub-Fury performance, we’re including 4K results anyhow to serve as a point of comparison."

    WTF is this? "And while we disagree that this car is suitable for racing based on its sub-911 GT3 RS performance, we’re including lap times anyway to serve as a point of comparison."
  • extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Top gear ran every car they tested around the same track didn't they? Also you will find tins for the ring on plenty of stuff that isn't as fast as a 911 GT3 RS. Plus the 4k numbers ARE useful to see how the performance scales.
  • extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    tins = times *
  • Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I don't believe the quality compromises are worth it, nor is playing at 30fps on a $650 card. However I know other people disagree with me, which is why I include the data.
  • Daniel Egger - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    The data is exactly what I'd like to see but your comment as the reason why you provided the data in at all is quite off-putting, non-sensical and does not belong there:

    The graphs about that sentence show that it is only 3 FPS slower than the Fury and even faster than the GTX 980, so either the comment should be that neither card is recommended for Battlefield in Ultra Quality 4k (although I do not necessarily why, the shown figures are way above "30fps" ...) and/or save that remark for your final conclusions.
  • extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    In a few months, when AMD finally has enough supply of these things, and they can drop the prices, the while Fury line will be amazing!! They are NOT bad products, they just have bad prices, right now, and they will until the supply issues are resolved. If they can't keep em in stock at these prices, then why lower them? No way.

    But yeah, in 3-4 months or so, I bet we see some pretty big price drops on all of these babies. Good times a comin!
  • Refuge - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I agree that the price is what makes these gems look like crap.

    But I also don't believe a price drop big enough to make them look like the gems they are will be in our future.
  • wintermute000 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    That, and confirmed performance on real AAA DX12 titles
  • D. Lister - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Really? What else can you see in the magic crystal ball? Would we ever colonize Mars? Is a cure for cancer coming anytime soon? Speak man!
  • itproflorida - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    These benchmarks are bogus, my single 970 can do BF campaign @ 4k Ultra no AA, 45 -64 fps avg 57fps. SLI 62 -90fps campaign.
  • nikaldro - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    Multi-player, duh.
  • itproflorida - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    "As these benchmarks are from single player mode" haha,
  • Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I think *overall* AMD has a win with this as they've found a market (albeit small) that they can fill with a product without competition.

    This does lead me to wonder, what can Nvidia do? We know maxwell 2 is a little more power efficient than fiji... could they do a similar binning and back a GM200 chip down a 100mhz or so at a 175w tdp and produce similar results in a similar sized package? I know the HBM makes it a bit easier for the small form factor, but i don't think people will cry over half an inch longer board for an nvidia card in the same market.
  • Peichen - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    GTX980 is already a 175W card. Reference GTX980 have the same power plug requirement as the Nano.
  • slapdashbr - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    nVidia isn't pushing (as far as I know) any of it's AIB partners to do this, but: gigabyte could just make a gtx 980 on the same PCB as that 970 mini. The 980 only uses what, 165W? 180 maybe? it's roughly on par with the nano to be honest, and with the fairly low power draw I really don't see why you can't have a 980 on a shorter card. Honestly an ITX-size 980 was what I wanted as soon as they were announced, for god's sake, the r9-380 can draw more juice than a 980 and those are available in ITX form factor.
  • Kutark - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Fair point. I still wonder though if they did a GM200, basically a 980ti thats backed down on clock rates to meet a lower TDP, what it would look like.
  • medi03 - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    There is more to it: that HBM memory thing allows for more compact designs.
  • extide - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    Well yeah, but there are already ITX sized cards out there with GDDR5 (GTX 970, R9 380, etc) so it's obviously possible. PCB might be a little bit bigger but it can still be ITX sized.
  • Kutark - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link

    Not *that* much more compact. From what i understand we're talking about half an inch or so shorter because of the HBM.
  • Jm09 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    I wish amd would of released a nano and a nano-x with this choice being the nano x as its a binned full Fiji chip. I think an r9 nano competing in the $400 range would of been a huge hit, and raise brand perception which amd needs a ton of right now.
  • Peichen - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Nano is the full chip. It just runs at a lower clock than Fiji X and Fiji, the actual trimmed card.
  • Jm09 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Yes I'm aware, but the nano is binned for the highest quality chips. I wish they would of released two models where one was clocked lower and didn't have binned chips. That alone increased the price of this chip
  • MaddyScientist - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link

    It would be nice to use the latest version of LuxMark 3.1, as this has optimizations for both AMD and NVIDIA GPUs, that makes it run faster on more recent GPUs. This would would give a better picture of the compute benefits of these new GPUS.
  • at80eighty - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Ryan, i realise it's a test bench, but that cable management is making me twitchy :)
  • Ryan Smith - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Noted and agreed. It wasn't really built for public display, it was thrown together for video recording. Small computers are nice, but they're hard to quickly route cables in, especially with my giant hands.
  • awstar - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Review > Compute > Vegas: The Vegas benchmark has peaked. The reviewers should post stats on timeline playback performance, or upgrade the test file to 4K XAVC 32-bit float project levels. This would show a much greater difference between the modern GPUs.
  • Haravikk - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    It's great to see a card like this; finally a proper high end for half-length cards. While there are some good Mini-ITX cases that can take full-length cases, they end up so long that it kind of defeats the point of building small, but half-length cards are usually more in the budget to mid-range bracket, or a generation behind, either way it means a big sacrifice in going small.

    Hopefully we'll see more competition in this case, as I'm one of those who, in going small, is fine with paying a premium to still remain fairly competitive while doing so.

    Regarding the idle noise level though; I still find it weird that there isn't better support out there for switching from integrated to discrete GPUs. Since most people still favour Intel processors this would make a lot of sense given that they have integrated graphics, plus in the Mini-ITX size on the AMD side it can be more cost effective to get an APU anyway. If the integrated GPU could take over for desktop stuff, browsing etc. like we see on laptops, then it would leave the Nano to just function as a set of video interfaces, which would be much better.

    Alternatively, I wonder if they could even just add an APU type GPU as a low-power alternative onto the card; i.e- with a light load and low VRAM requirements it would take over and just use some low cost RAM (or even system RAM) so that the rest of the card can be shut off entirely.
  • Peichen - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Modern graphic card only draws single-digit watt power at idle/2D so the whole hybrid GPU idea was dropped. Routing video through integrated GPU also reduce performance by 2-3% and taken into account the complexity involved with driver just to save 8w makes no sense.
  • atomsymbol - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    R9 Nano: 4096 SP, 1 GHz, 512 GB/s => x+5 FPS, price y+$220
    R9 390X: 2816 SP, 1.05 GHz, 384 GB/s => x FPS, price y

    +35% computational power => +5 FPS
  • Mathos - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    After having read this review. All I can really think of to say about the Nano, is they should of priced it at least the same as the regular R9 Fury. That way you'd easily get GTX 980 performance in a itx form factor, for close to the same price. I must say your review seems a bit more fair than Toms hardware. Somehow they had a regular 980 outperforming the FuryX, so I was like wth Toms.

    I personally had been waiting for the Nano reviews to come out, before deciding what to get. But going by the price, it looks like I'll be getting an R9 Fury, so I can run most games in VSR 1440p, scaled down to 1080p. Either that or I'll just cap my fps at 65 and save power. Should do well once more DX12 games come out too.
  • itproflorida - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    you have no idea what your talking about its all speculation. thank you
  • D. Lister - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    It is interesting how the ratio of AMD fans on every tech website is about 50/50 with Nvidia fans, yet AMD's market share has dropped below 20%. What's up with that? Either a lot of you AMD guys aren't putting your money where your mouth is, or it's like the same 3 fanboys posting their stuff everywhere with multiple accounts. :p
  • Mathos - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Not really a fanboy of either side. I'm usually a fan of whatever will give me the best performance at the price point I can afford. Though currently I'm running an AMD HD7850 2GB, because thats what was best at below 200$ at the time I bought it.
  • itproflorida - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    coincidence I am replying to your post, but of course your not a fan but you will buy another amd card, good for you.
  • Mathos - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    Look I've probably been building and upgrading computer systems, longer than you've been alive there buddy, I've own more video cards than you'll probably ever know. Many of which predate both nVidia and ATI. I'm buying the R9 Fury, because at 550$, it's faster than similarly priced GTX 980's in the games that I have and play. Don't get me wrong, if I could afford more, I'd buy a 980ti. Unlike you, I apparently read bench marks and multiple reviews on such things. Plus I'm not one of these dumb people who buy x brand because they have the fastest top end card.... even though another brand has something faster at the price point I'm looking at.

    And speculation you say? Even though I've already been using said features with my 7850? Mostly just the frame rate limit settings to save power at the moment. Also.... have you not seen the performance difference with the DX 12vs11 benchmarks on other sites?
  • D. Lister - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link

    @Mathos

    I think there is a misunderstanding here - my statement was based on a general observation, not pointed at anyone in particular. You could attach a hamster wheel to your gpu slot and I wouldn't mind as long as you feed the hamster, not to mention it would work nearly just as well for Project Cars or Witcher 3 for less money. Sorry, couldn't resist. :D
  • Mathos - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Oh no, wasn't replying to you, was responding to that Florida person on that harsh reply. As far as your's yeah I figured that. It was kind of ironic, that a fan boy came out to attack my choice on the other post though. I'll have to check out the project cars and witcher 3 bench's. Don't play many racing games, other than Grid and Dirt. I still haven't finished Witcher 1, not worried much about Witcher 3 for a while.
  • Beany2013 - Sunday, October 4, 2015 - link

    Anyone who publicly describes themselves as a 'pro', and subsequently can't even manage basic grammar and punctuation needn't be listened to. Simple as that.
  • medi03 - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    That's because most of the uneducated public with little clue buys nVidia.
  • HollyDOL - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Funny enough, I started to buy nVidia after I become educated in 3D graphics. At that time ATI provided such a terrible developer experience I doubt I'd be able to forgive&forget yet in next few years.
  • medi03 - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link

    nVidia outsold AMD even in Fermi times, with slower, more expensive, more power hungry chips.
    So, nope, sorry to bust your bubble.
  • D. Lister - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link

    The Fermi architecture did indeed have those flaws, not to mention the thermal issues of the 4xx family and the strict power budget of the 5xx series that Nvidia stupidly enforced on its partners. The latter resulting in CTD in the factory overclocked models in some poor PC ports like Crysis 2, where the only solution was to downclock the GPU to its reference state. But despite such rare lapses, Nvidia has evolved steadily, and every generation has rectified the flaws of its predecessor, and improved in terms of features, power usage and temps.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link

    Don't forget the driver that bricked Fermi cards.
  • D. Lister - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link

    @medi03

    Sorry, but that nonsense just doesn't cut it anymore. Not after so many years of the same fraudulent babble going on over and over.

    If someone "uneducated" was told that product A and product B both performed the same, yet product A could be bought for less money, than most people would go for product A.

    If that is not happening than obviously there is more to this than purely performance/dollar(*), and the market is a lot more educated in the year 2015 than your fanboy delusions would've led you to believe.

    Honestly, you AMD fanatics are like the Westboro Baptist Church of technology. I wouldn't be surprised if you lot started picketing outside the Intel and Nvidia HQs with "God hates Intel/Nvidia" placards.

    *-Sadly, thanks to that HBM gimmick, AMD doesn't even have the performance/dollar feature anymore. The Nano's MSRP equals the 20-30% stronger 980Ti's retail value, and because of its rarity, actually is more expensive than the 980Ti.
  • medi03 - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    I don't recall talking about "performance dollar", why do you have to lie like that? Is that your imagination?

    There were CLEAR, HANDS DOWN cases of inferiour products, be it nVidia's Fermi chips, or Intel's Prescott P4 fiasco outselling the competitor. That shows how much clue our "uneducated" public has. End of story.

    Now take a deep breath and think if you really have some argument.
  • D. Lister - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    "I don't recall talking about "performance dollar", why do you have to lie like that? Is that your imagination?"

    Tsk, tsk, "reading" is obviously not your strong suite.

    "There were CLEAR, HANDS DOWN cases of inferiour products, be it nVidia's Fermi chips, or Intel's Prescott P4 fiasco outselling the competitor. That shows how much clue our "uneducated" public has. End of story."

    That's your argument? Really? Where can anyone actually even buy Prescotts or Fermis these days? Who is buying them? In those times AMD's market share was significantly higher than it is now and quite rightfully so, rendering your abysmal argument completely moot. And the story didn't end there you silly little man - after Fermi there was Kepler, and then Maxwell. After Prescott there were over a dozen processor families, each and every single one an improvement, not just in raw performance but also in performance/watt and performance/dollar.

    Granted that AMD has had improvements as well, but thanks to the terrible decisions of the businessmen at the top (e.g. selling their foundries and getting ATI for a lot more than it was worth, not focusing on their primary markets and losing loyal fans to other companies, etc.), not to mention the terrible software support for often very decent hardware and regularly over-promising and under-delivering, they are where they are now. The facts are ultimately in the ledgers, and mindless corporate drones like yourself can make up absurd stories and conspiracy theories as much as you like - fact is that AMD is dying and as their funds keep shrinking, so does the overall quality of their products, especially compared to the competition.

    "Now take a deep breath and think if you really have some argument."

    All I can do is shake my head and smile sadly at how completely you miss the irony in your statement. It's okay, once AMD is inevitably ripped apart and its pieces consumed by the corporate sharks and the AMD and Radeon brands are reduced to forgotten footnotes in tech history, cretins like you will find something else to fill the void in your pathetic, pointless existence. Have a nice life, if you can, I'm done with you.
  • D. Lister - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    Just to make it very clear (again) to any AMD fans that may feel my sentiments to be overtly harsh towards their favored company, I personally believe that whatever has happened to AMD in the last decade or so, is nothing short of a heart-breaking tragedy, where the business fat cats at the top repeatedly made poor short-term decisions and exploited the hard work of brilliant engineers and technicians, giving themselves and their marketing lackeys bigger paychecks while the R&D starved, resulting in AMD as a company never truly reaching its full potential. And we all, as consumers and enthusiasts are worse off for it.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link

    Too bad for that summary that it ignores the well-made products that AMD's customers have enjoyed and the industry has benefited from.
  • D. Lister - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link

    @Oxford Guy

    That is a given, no? A company that is a complete failure from the start, with everybody under the sun hating their products, can't ever hope to eventually go public, let alone go toe-to-toe, even if for a little while, with an industry giant like Intel.

    Unfortunately what AMD did right was rather consistently far outweighed by what they did wrong. For every satisfied customer, they had several that felt screwed over.

    AMD is like a race car that has had very good parts, but a lazy pit crew and blind men at the wheel (I resisted the urge of saying "bad drivers", but I'm being too serious here to indulge with lazy puns). So you're reminding me that they pulled a few laps in good time, while I'm lamenting the race that they have nearly lost.
  • Oxford Guy - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link

    Nice fiction.
  • D. Lister - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link

    lol, thanks. All facts can be reduced to mere fiction when faced with absolute, fanatical denial. But to be fair, yours is hardly the worse, there are still many people who doggedly believe that geocentricism is the truth and all else is lies and fiction.
  • zodiacfml - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    Yawnn.. It's not bad till you get to the price. Fury X now has better value as you get watercooling.
  • paravorheim - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link

    "Meanwhile Fury X’s massive power headroom has been significantly curtailed, from a TBP of 275W (and in practice a cap much higher than that) to a much harder TBP limit of 175W for the R9 Nano."

    You say TBP here, is that supposed to be "TDP"? I saw it in a few other places as well.
  • SunnyNW - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    TBP (Thermal Board Power) vs TDP (Thermal Design Power)
  • The0ne - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    Bin parts for power and cooling efficiency instead of a good design isn't something to rave about. It should be something to write off of because, lets faced it, nothing is different from the previous designs.
  • medi03 - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link

    Yeah, "previous designs". Like 290x that beat that day Titan at a fraction of price.
  • Gnomer87 - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link

    While an improvement in the efficiency segment, this card still loses out to Nvidias alternatives, most notably the older 980. The 980 performs only marginally worse, while having a smaller price tag.

    It's still a walkover, if I were to replace my hd 7950b today, it'd still be nvidia. This is a problem, if AMD doesn't get their shit together, they're going bankrupt.

    And that means monopoly.
  • Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link

    Is there a 980 in this form factor? If not, then it doesn't lose because there is an AMD card that outperforms the 980 for less money as far as I know.
  • IlllI - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link

    love the nano, can't justify the price. up until now i thought it was going to be $499. the Fury X i can justify the price b/c you can look at it as having a $100 liquid cooler included. but for the nano to be the same price as the Fury X.. I just can't.
  • gw74 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link

    AMD_Roy twitter account has been deleted!
  • JonnyDough - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link

    Wow, lots of crap in the comment's section. I'll post my own. Smaller is better. The trend of hotter, louder, heavier, and more energy guzzling cards was terrible. Not only did it KILL some of my PCI-E slots after awhile from the sheer weight of the card, but most of the old hot running cards are now dead and don't work. It's nice to see a nano card that can fit in an ITX case comfortably. Here's to LAN parties of the future, and more room on/under desks!
  • Kutark - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link

    I can only wish LAN parties were still a thing. Some of my fondest memories was playing aliens vs predator, or CoD2/Quake/UT/etc.
  • FMinus - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link

    I'll be honest here, performance vs. price wise this is kind of meh, but the form factor is absolutely amazing. I just wish most cards would be trimmed down to that form factor, it is clearly doable as demonstrated here, maybe not right now, but the future is open. While they're at it, they might start looking at how to make those cards single slot again, that would be my wet dream.
  • vhawkxi - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link

    A great compact card - Installed it on my Intel 4GHz i7-6700K CPU based machine and for what I do with it, it is super. I am not a first-person-shooter fan - for RPG type of games (Myst, Riven) and music production with Avid programs it is more than adequate. Worth the $700 CAD I paid for it.
  • Rehmanpa - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link

    Mind I ask how you guys got your 980 ti to render on Sony vegas pro? I can't get mine to render and I wad hoping you could share how you guys got yours to work. Thanks.

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