AMD Radeon R9 Nano Video Card PAPER Launch @ [H]

Terminus said:
I'm kind of torn here guys.

So AMD gets called out on the front page (understandably the way they been acting) but you let Intel get away with their shitty Skylake paper launch and spinning the press about shitty security features and 30% performance increases every generation, which have been flat out lies.

Aren't we supposed to be neutral here?
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I am a little lost on this. Did you read our review of Skylake....that we put on the front page?

Also, how many other hardware websites had ANYTHING about product availability in their reviews? Actually, this is an honest question as I did not read any other reviews, but here is what we had to say.

Skylake's Dirty Little Secret

I have been able to confirm from multiple sources (or I would not be telling you this) that Intel will not have its projected amount of Skylake processor inventory in the retail sales channel on launch day. I could not get any information when more Skylake inventory would be coming. While I would like to go into more specifics, that is all I can tell you currently. What I can tell you is this. BUY ONE NOW if you want one! I am on vacation this week and I will be getting online and buying a few for us for testing.
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As for whatever claims Intel made on Skylake speed, well, we certainly covered those comparisons as we went back two architecture generations and shared data on that, and we did certainly address supply.....in writing in our review.
 
§kynet;1041835533 said:
You have a funny definition of popular plus your criteria is heavily loaded with subjectivity. You know what's really interesting? This site criticized TWIMTBP but has no problems with GameWorks which is an amplification of the concept. We'll see if you consider AMD sponsored titles that heavily use the DX12 standard Async Compute as "popular" and include all of those in your test suite.

Also I believe this site refused to bench an AMD sponsored game due to effects that ran poorly on Nvidia hardware. My memory is a bit fuzzy I'm sure someone can find the link.
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I'm not sure what you are referring to, but we praised Alien Isolation for its use of AMD features the developer chose to integrate - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/11/06/alien_isolation_video_card_performance_review/1

I also think you are using "sponsers" incorrectly. A game utilizing NV, or AMD features, is not automatically a sponsored game from either one.

In the past we have used many games that were on AMD's Never Settle gaming bundles you would get with cards, should we not have used any of those games?
 
§kynet;1041835533 said:
You have a funny definition of popular plus your criteria is heavily loaded with subjectivity. You know what's really interesting? This site criticized TWIMTBP but has no problems with GameWorks which is an amplification of the concept. We'll see if you consider AMD sponsored titles that heavily use the DX12 standard Async Compute as "popular" and include all of those in your test suite.

Also I believe this site refused to bench an AMD sponsored game due to effects that ran poorly on Nvidia hardware. My memory is a bit fuzzy I'm sure someone can find the link.
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Yes, there is subjectivity for sure in how we pick games for our gaming suites. If you have a purely objective model that fits into our way of content production I am all ears. We generally stick with First Person Shooter type games that are/were considered Triple A titles and ones that we find to push GPUs in one way or another.

As for your last statement, and if you are going to make these kinds of statements, please provide some documentation when you post those, please.

And yes I would agree, the way we think about what games we use changes over time. No doubt about that. The market and gaming landscape also changes. For us to not adapt to those changes would be ludicrous.
 
I've been a member on [H] far longer than on OCN, and it's primarily because of Kyle and Brent's hard work.

Seeing the continuous amount of criticism on reviewers always makes me chuckle. How many people put out there work, FOR free, and then have to deal with a constant stream of complaints?

And I'm kind of chuckling on Kyle hanging up on that call hahah - that's awesome.
 
Terminus said:
I'm kind of torn here guys.

So AMD gets called out on the front page (understandably the way they been acting) but you let Intel get away with their shitty Skylake paper launch and spinning the press about shitty security features and 30% performance increases every generation, which have been flat out lies.

Aren't we supposed to be neutral here?
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Skylake wasnt a paper launch.
Either that or the fake gear has improved so much that it is now appearing at launch and performs like the real thing.
I wonder what I've been using for the last month?

ipc improvement since my 2500K is at least 25%.
I know this from games where I was CPU limited and am no longer.
This is the reason I upgraded and has proven well justified.
 
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Sixteen pages in and you guys are still engaging some of these folks... Props for your dedication to your community.

I just don't get AMD's thought re not providing a test sample for the Nano to [H]. It's not like the review won't be written, and be written the same way. The Nano is what it is, for better or worse, and pissing off what could be brand ambassadors (see the R9 390x review) is not a great plan, and if anything will bias a reviewer, it's being necessarily snubbed. Not to mention the bad optics it generates in the eyes of that reviewer's audience.

The way I see it, there are a finite number of reasons for their choice:

1- They didn't like the Nano Paper Launch article. See above why this is not a good reason...

2- They don't like the [H] testing methodology or current game lineup. THis would be a fair complaint. (From a business perspective, not that there is actually a problem with it)If they felt that the current game lineup happened to represent games in which their cards don't show up well (which is their own damn fault of course, given their crappy driver-development and deployment program and history), why not get [H] on the horn and make some suggestions. "Hey, Brent/Kyle, we appreciate the work you do and the reviews of AMD products you put out, but can we suggest you include [GAME X] in your testing suite lineup. We think the games you use don't accurately reflect the capabilities of AMD cards because [BS reason], and think [GAME X] does." AT LEAST, in that case, there's some kind of dialogue.

3- They already know the Nano is a bust, and won't be giving any cards to sites that do real-world, non-benchmark testing because they've tweaked the drivers t over perform in canned benchmarks.

It's a shame too, because the Nano is actually very appealing for someone building a 1080p or 1440 HTPC designed for some futureproofing.
 
Bahanime said:
Don't you realize mITX is a very popular niche these days?
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iOojmjC.gif


Dota 2, Counter Strike, Team Fortress 2 no point in benchmarking games that run at 200fps on old cards.

You do know that [H] does popular titles/titles that push graphics cards limits not push to see if you can hit as high score in fps.

Brent_Justice said:
I remember how "biased" we were during the launch and reign of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and 7000 series, especially against Fermi, which the 7970 was released alongside. AMD had a performance and efficiency advantage, and more VRAM and a new technology the competition did not have, Eyefinity, and we sang praises of its achievements. We were called, very harshly, AMD biased, and shills.

This is just another wave on the roller coaster of video card evaluations.
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You're called bias every-time you don't sing from the roof tops the praises of one card, ironically it's because you're not bias enough you get called bias of AMD and Nvidia. Although you get called Intel biased but life is just bias to intel vs amd, get it together amd entry market value is so boring.
 
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Brent_Justice said:
I'm not sure what you are referring to, but we praised Alien Isolation for its use of AMD features the developer chose to integrate - http://www.hardocp.com/article/2014/11/06/alien_isolation_video_card_performance_review/1

I also think you are using "sponsers" incorrectly. A game utilizing NV, or AMD features, is not automatically a sponsored game from either one.

In the past we have used many games that were on AMD's Never Settle gaming bundles you would get with cards, should we not have used any of those games?
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The reasons for not adding the game to the testing suite are also clearly spelled out.

Also, I think this quote highlighting the last few sentences in the conclusion are particularly relevant to the current thread of discussion.

"We think that Alien: Isolation is a template that other game designers should take notice of. We love the use of open technologies based on DirectCompute and the absence of proprietary technologies that make Alien: Isolation truly a great title. Team Green and game devs please take notice of this, as this is what pushes the gaming industry forward as a whole. And that is simply good for all of us."
 
WorldExclusive said:
AMD has already admitted their cards are also missing some DX12 features. Should [H] target AMDs weakness and write about it? No.

Play game, turn up the settings, and let the results determine your buying decision.
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Agree with this part!

Actual in-game performance OF THE TITLES YOU PLAY beats anything else, from a buying decision perspective.

We are a diverse community with different tastes in games though, and reviewers can't possibly benchmark them all, so usually the titles I am personally interested in are not tested. I try to look at comparative benchmarks in titles that at least use the same engine, and similar render distances / map sizes, and put greater emphasis on those when I make my buying decision.

WorldExclusive said:
This. Compute and gaming is never used in the same sentence.
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This one I disagree with though. Compute is used as part of games all the time. Civ 5 HEAVILY used DX11 compute features for on the fly texture compression. PhysX and other physics calculations are a form of compute and also done on the GPU in many cases.
 
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GilmourD said:
Kyle, you're such an AMD/ATI fanboi.

201206081649CXT.gif
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Flip flopper IMO, I bought 2x HD 6950 when they were singing AMD's praises and hosting events for the community to sample Eyefinity (seems so far away now), but then they turn around and stab AMD in the back by praising Titan and labeling Nano a paper launch...

Whatever will I do! My r9 290 are clearly worthless if Hard can't get along with whatever childish rep is running AMD's PR... Err, oops, I could only do the tongue in cheek fanboy thing for about a paragraph and a half. :D
 
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Oh No, Kyle has been doing some late night drinking and editing again.
 
I assume my questions will not be answered, your site, your choice. Again, thanks for the reviews.
 
Modred189 said:
It's a shame too, because the Nano is actually very appealing for someone building a 1080p or 1440 HTPC designed for some futureproofing.
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Not at $650 it isn't, and not if a mildly OC'd 970-ITX gets close to its performance at less than half the price.

And you mention futureproofing, but someone building an HTPC will likely appreciate the ability to play 4K videos at 60FPS, even if it neither card has enough horsepower to play the newest games at 4K60. But Nano can't do that thanks to lack of HDMI 2.0

So again, I don't really know who this card is intended for except a few wingnuts or amateur reviewers
 
As bitter as I am about the limited availability of Skylake (after two launch events mind you), there has been some availability, specially outside the US... Maybe the fact that I already have my own 6700K is softening me up on Intel a little. /shrug 6600K has been widely available tho.

Denying Hard a review sample just seems foolish regardless of what Kyle said or posted on the front page... The bad press it would surely result in is worse than whatever negative review about the price/performance ratio Hard could've published, and will likely publish regardless.

All it's doing is showing how badly the marketing boys at AMD understand their audience and industry. Totally boneheaded business move IMO.
 
DPI said:
Not at $650 it isn't, and not if a mildly OC'd 970-ITX gets close to its performance at less than half the price.
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Of course, and I posted on page 1, without HDMI 2.0 it also is a bit of a non-starter.
And OOOOOH, i didn't know they had mini 970s... Maybe "appealing" is not the word that I should have used. It's appealing in the sense that we have a flagship, mini-itx sized card which will help push the format forward, since they have a tendency to be few and far between.
 
Mugato said:
Couldn't help myself...

Have you seen my question about procurement of GPU's?

I don't know if my last post went through; no, it is not "on topic" but related to the topic as you have discussed in detail the conference call. What are they using? What have you used in the past? We are currently using GTM and it's shmeh. I was looking at iMeet, pretty good but lacks concurrent meetings, which we need.
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Mugato said:
I assume my questions will not be answered, your site, your choice. Again, thanks for the reviews.
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I really don't really understand what you are asking.
 
I think he wants you to detail their conference call setup and talk about your preferred conference call setup. :eek:
 
Brent_Justice said:
To chose a game, based on whether it has AMD 3D effects, or NVIDIA 3D effects would be biased. Therefore, we do not do this.
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It just so happens that every game in our suite is Nvidia sponsored, minus one.

Fucks sake, Dying Light isn't as relevant anymore, and you still use it. Shadow of Mordor has almost the same players in-game on Steam, but I'm guessing that's a "bad game"?
 
There's only one problem with the short-length 970 cards - their width - which some people refer to as height, or how tall they are, is larger than reference PCB. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal - but some cases - and I'm not even talking about sub 20L SFF cases - won't accommodate this.

It's not that big of a deal when MSI and Asus roll out 980 Ti's with absurdly wide PCBs to be used in ATX cases, but it becomes more of a problem when they shorten the length of a card only to increase the width in a smaller case.

The Nano conforms to regular width and as such won't have this problem. I do know of a few very specific cases that this card would fit in, but they are custom/small run cases like the Osmi. In the M1, it opens up a couple of specific options not previously available, but we're talking niche within a niche territory at that point. There's no doubt this card is of limited value for a majority of people, but I view this release more as a preview of what Arctic Islands and Pascal may provide us on a much larger scale.
 
Remon said:
It just so happens that every game in our suite is Nvidia sponsored, minus one.

Fucks sake, Dying Light isn't as relevant anymore, and you still use it. Shadow of Mordor has almost the same players in-game on Steam, but I'm guessing that's a "bad game"?
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Number of players is entirely irrelevant to [H] reviews. The question is: does the game stress a top end card? Does it punish cards to the extent that it allows you to separate the cards' relative performance capabilities? THAT is the question. By your accounting, we'd be using LoL, WoW and CS:GO for testing...
 
Amazing how a few users turned a simple thread into such a shit show!!!

Let me understand this, when Hawaii was launched/benched Kyle and Brent were too Red....now they are too green? Just stop already!!! If you want to be a loyalist fanboy the go to your respective manufacturer forum and stay there.

[H] has been around as long as it has for one reason; they do great reviews and give honest evaluations. Testing doesn't use canned benchmarks like other sites nor are the settings manipulated to give one card/cpu and edge.

How many other sites give a rating of "FAIL" or call out manufacturers? An example that always will stick in my head is [H] vs the Phantom Console. Other sites were foaming at the mouth saying it was the future yet Kyle called them out. That is what you WANT in a site. Just search the reviews for the numerous times [H] has been asked to reevaluate a component by a manufacturer. Do you honestly think if Hard's testing was flawed a manufacturer would go to the extent of asking for another review after tweaking the hardware? And many of those reviews still came out as fails.

So to attempt to claim or imply [H] is a shill site or the reviews are flawed is just fanboy BS.

The benchmarks [H] publishes are true gaming results using popular games that actually use the CPU and GPU. I understand WOT is popular but it is no where near are hard on GPU/CPU as Dying Light or even Metro. It still only recommends a GTX260.

If there is a game you want [H] to use PM them. I still think ARMA 3 would be good but it has yet to make the list.

I as well as many other people who have been coming to the site appreciate Kyle and his teams reviews and opinions on hardware. Even when they give a low opinion on a new piece of hardware I just bought. I still will come back here and other sites with similar credibility.

It would appear AMD is attempting to have launch day reviews done by sympathetic sites. Lets face it the Nano is most likely a mess. It has a small audience, SFF/HTPC, and it doesn't appear, for the price, to be well thought out. AMD has their backs against the wall, which is a shame, and they are turning to anyone possible for good press. Rather than relying on PR or highly vocal employees, especially on twitter, maybe AMD should go back to making amazing cards. The Fury line was a complete and utter disappointment. AMD needs to get their shit together. I want another 9800 Pro!!!



tl;dr: If you don't like the way HardOCP does reviews because they don't constantly rate your manu of choice as the best...then fuck off and go to your Red or Green site. You will be much happier.
 
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Modred189 said:
Number of players is entirely irrelevant to [H] reviews. The question is: does the game stress a top end card? Does it punish cards to the extent that it allows you to separate the cards' relative performance capabilities? THAT is the question. By your accounting, we'd be using LoL, WoW and CS:GO for testing...
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No no, it isn't. Kyle, or Brent, has mentioned popularity before, or better, relevancy.
 
Remon said:
No no, it isn't. Kyle, or Brent, has mentioned popularity before, or better, relevancy.
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(citation required)
No, relevancy != popularity. Though popularity may figure in. For example, Watch Dogs was in the testing suite for a while and was never terribly popular after its botched launch, but because of the graphics capabilities, it was entirely relevant in that it HAMMERED GPUs. BF4 is relevant because it's a Frostbite game and there are more and more games using the engine, thus relevance, despite its age. And yes, many people play it. TW3 is popular AND hammers GPUs.
 
Kyle, when you finally get the Nano, please test it against an overclocked GTX 970. That will be the only possible way to find any REAL value in this $650 heap, since the most powerrful mini cards from Nvidia use this chip.

Just use clocks around those in this review. You don't actually have to acquire a 970 Mini to perform the tests:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/graphics/2015/01/15/asus-geforce-gtx-970-directcu-mini-review/9

An overclocked GTX 970 should draw about the same amount of power, and might be dangerously close to the Nano in performance. If it is, then it has no real value.

But if the Nano trounces the OCed 970, then they have a real ace in the hole :D
 
That Nito is sure Neeto.



Cr4ckm0nk3y said:
I still think ARMA 3 would be good but it has yet to make the list.
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ARMA 3 almost made the list a while back, but was ultimately dropped as it was found to be more CPU bound at the higher view distances than GPU bound.

Remon said:
No no, it isn't. Kyle, or Brent, has mentioned popularity before, or better, relevancy.
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What you don't see behind the scenes are all of the games that Brent tries out as candidates to "make the list". He's constantly looking for better options than what we have and certainly pulls the trigger on good games that come along. With respect to Shadow of Mordor, there's nothing revolutionary or forward thinking about its graphics or use of the GPU - the only reason it gets called out over and over is because you can crank textures up to an insane level resulting in tons of VRAM being used. However, once you have enough VRAM, there's nothing left to challenge a GPU in that game.

We can go on and on about this game vs that game all day, but that's probably better discussed in a different thread, as this one is about the Nano and the Nito.
 
Remon said:
It just so happens that every game in our suite is Nvidia sponsored, minus one.

Fucks sake, Dying Light isn't as relevant anymore, and you still use it. Shadow of Mordor has almost the same players in-game on Steam, but I'm guessing that's a "bad game"?
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We do rotate games. It takes time for rotation though, bringing in new games isn't as snap crackle pop as you'd think, a lot goes into it. There is a delay between me selecting a game, playing it, figuring it all out, and disseminating it down to others and integrating it into reviews. I always have my eye on the horizon for what games I am interested in trying out. For example, Fallout 4, got a close eye on it, which means one game goes bye bye.
 
Ah stuff like this is why I've loved this site for years. Never change Kyle and gang. Hard to find "reviewers" who aren't afraid to speak their minds. [H] #1 in my book.
 
Modred189 said:
(citation required)
No, relevancy != popularity. Though popularity may figure in. For example, Watch Dogs was in the testing suite for a while and was never terribly popular after its botched launch, but because of the graphics capabilities, it was entirely relevant in that it HAMMERED GPUs. BF4 is relevant because it's a Frostbite game and there are more and more games using the engine, thus relevance, despite its age. And yes, many people play it. TW3 is popular AND hammers GPUs.
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I don't think we're disagreeing here. Not every game in the suite right now is relevant.
 
Vittra said:
There's only one problem with the short-length 970 cards - their width - which some people refer to as height, or how tall they are, is larger than reference PCB. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal - but some cases - and I'm not even talking about sub 20L SFF cases - won't accommodate this.

It's not that big of a deal when MSI and Asus roll out 980 Ti's with absurdly wide PCBs to be used in ATX cases, but it becomes more of a problem when they shorten the length of a card only to increase the width in a smaller case.

The Nano conforms to regular width and as such won't have this problem. I do know of a few very specific cases that this card would fit in, but they are custom/small run cases like the Osmi. In the M1, it opens up a couple of specific options not previously available, but we're talking niche within a niche territory at that point. There's no doubt this card is of limited value for a majority of people, but I view this release more as a preview of what Arctic Islands and Pascal may provide us on a much larger scale.
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Who cares. With a 970-ITX you've got $325 left over to find a nice case that fits the extra few mm of height. I'm sure that's not going to be a brainbender
 
David_Schroth said:
ARMA 3 almost made the list a while back, but was ultimately dropped as it was found to be more CPU bound at the higher view distances than GPU bound.
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I don't get why you don't use it on your cpu reviews. Still with that Lost Planet.
 
Remon said:
I don't think we're disagreeing here. Not every game in the suite right now is relevant.
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No, I disagree. I think the games currently in the lineup are relevant for the purposes of the reviews [H] does: Comparing graphically intensive games on modern hardware.
 
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