3DMark Fire Strike and Unigine Heaven
Now that we have taken a look at our gaming tests using our Frame Rating metrics and testing methods, we are including a set of tests from more standard benchmarks like Unigine Heaven and the new 3DMark benchmark.
I consider these tests to be somewhat of a "best case" for all the cards in our comparison. We aren't using our frame capture system, we aren't measuring frame latency, nothing like that; I think this should give you an idea of graphics performance if each vendor had the best result for each game.
The Fire Strike tests show the expected scaling for the AMD products, even if that doesn't quite match up with the results in the real-world gaming experience testing we did on the previous 7 pages. It clearly steps from the Fury X, to the Fury and the R9 Nano in base, Extreme and Ultra presets, with the GTX 970 DC Mini falling as much as 32% behind the new Nano.
Interestingly the results in Unigine Heaven have the R9 Nano a bit further behind the AMD Fury than expected – 15% based on the Extreme tessellation setting. I am guessing that the workload of Heaven is quite extreme and is thus keeping the dynamic clock speeds of the R9 Nano lower than we might have seen in any other of gaming titles.
Seriously…Good luck AMD
Seriously…Good luck AMD with this card, as I think its a fail at $650, when I can buy 970 mini at half the price and OC to 1400mhz! As it is the Nano only just pips 970 at 1080, 1440 okay, but once to clock the NV card, <10% diff if that....4k, hell even the 980Ti struggles....
Wow! I know it shouldn’t
Wow! I know it shouldn’t surprise me at this point, but there’s nothing like a new product to really bring the idiots out of the woodwork. That said, great job on thee review Ryan. It was well written and informative as usual. Ignore the haters and basement-dwellers that wouldn’t know HBM from one of their BMs. You guys do a great job here, keep it up! 😀
Thanks!
Thanks!
Grammar check, last page,
Grammar check, last page, last line:
“The AMD Fury, Fury X, GTX 980 or GTX 980 Ti are going to provided more performance with less tradeoffs (cost, noise, etc.).”
Cheers.
Great review, seems like a
Great review, seems like a really great albeit rather niche card.
Out of curiosity, since coil whine was at its worst in in-game menus and other situations where the frame rate would have been much higher than normal did you try turning on the frame rate limit in Catalyst Control Center at all to see if that kept it quieter? More wondering for my own purposes, considering a SFF build with this and just want to know if I can limit that coil whine.
Yah, it would definitely make
Yah, it would definitely make things quieter if you enable that. But honestly, users shouldn't HAVE to do that.
No I understand they
No I understand they shouldn’t have to, was just wondering if it would help is all
I’ve got a buddy, the only
I’ve got a buddy, the only friend from highschool who has “All the money” and he wasnts me to build him a system with 2 of these in the next 5-6 months. I like his idea, he wants a stark, empty eATX system, electric blue, no cables showing, baren, simple, stark pale blue LEDs, no shine, big window.
At this point I’m not sure if I can pull it off EXACTLY the way he wants, but I love the concept, and the challenge. And….. YEA, FUCK YEA!!!!!
Your friend is an idiot, sir.
Your friend is an idiot, sir.
I’d argue that this card
I’d argue that this card would be a good choice in a Phanteks Enthoo Evolve mATX, crossfire & watercooled . If I hadn’t gone got myself a 980ti after fury x reviews I’d have most likely gone with that set up. Good luck trying the same with two 980ti’s!
My view on the card looking at the power limit increases and corresponding clocks suggest a well binned fury x chip in a small package. Well worth the price tag imo if you can get the clocks up to the fury x and fancy watercooling it.
Personally wish they had released this sooner 🙁
Excellent. The little midget
Excellent. The little midget comes out making much noise and kicking much ass. If the runt is this powerful… just think of all the rekt ass that will be handed out by the bigger members of the Radeon family soon enough. Really exiting and game changing products are coming… I can’t wait.
Cool idea, but the price
Cool idea, but the price point…eh.. not so much.
That SFF GTX 970 is half the price and still competitive on performance, while being a year old.
Been getting the upgrade itch
Been getting the upgrade itch for quite some time now, my 8350 and 680 are still chugging along just fine at 25×14. I’m holding off till Zen and Arctic Islands hit the scene to make the jump but this card makes me want to do a build with a LIAN LI PC-TU200B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower for a 21:9 1440p FreeSync display with four actual GB of memory.
the Geforce 970 also has coil
the Geforce 970 also has coil whine…
https://pcper.com/news/Graphics-Cards/GeForce-GTX-970-Coil-Whine-Concerns
After reading all this &
After reading all this & working w/ my Fury X card I have come to the view that AMD is doing some risky but very smart PR IF all works out for them as these Fiji XT projects were IMHO meant to be halo products, especially the Fury X, to demonstrate the future direction of the industry, AMD’s capacity to engineerproduce these new hardware concepts & make it all work, to get there w/ all this in front of Nvidia to get attention w/ the wait on MS to come thru w/ Win 10 OS & Directx 12 API which has been shown to favor large shader arrays w/ wide bandwidth. I believe that the R9 Nano was the main AMD cross-platform product that they wanted to go with due to still being stuck on 28nm die as this product would set the stage for AMD in 2016 to really hit back hard w/ the FinFet 16nm parts w/ Zen on the CPU side & the Artic Islands GPU’s on HBM2 on the other. I don’t think that AMD needs to sell a ton of product to recover development costs to build these cards……just cause it took them 7 years to do this doesn’t mean that incompetency is rampant at AMD per se……whether we wanted to admit it or not AMD is STILL selling plenty of Radeon R7R9 line of vid cards today on rebranded & refreshed parts, just Nvidia hit them hard w/ their remake of Maxwell on 28nm & maximized it on the rest of the already old & outdated GDDR5 platform….here is where IMHO AMD got caught flat-footed & is trying to catch back up….. I don’t believe that AMD needed to beat Nvidia w/ this new tech outright at this time….just get close enough to Nvidia’s flagship line on the front end in performance then have MS & Win 10 w/ Dx 12 API & the game developers catapult AMD out in front due to the asynchronous shader advantage that they currently hold over Nvidia before Nvidia can respond………. It’s a BIG gamble & in time we’ll see if it pays off.
Ryan-Could those coils be
Ryan-Could those coils be encapsulated in resin and still do
their job?
You’d think with the reduced phases they could use high quality
inductors-even custom if they had to-not like there’s going to
be millions of these made-and plenty wiggle room on cost…….
Look at this in this
Look at this in this way…….w/ the R9 Nano’s debut & the few real review results that are out AMD just laid down a big challenge to Nvidia to put forth a product that can put out near 980-like performance on 175W TDP in a FF size as small as this Nano is RIGHT NOW…………. Don’t lose sight of this fact…….. Remember the review facts that showed Fiji XT GPU’s (Fury X’s)in CrossfireX scale out at near 100%………now here’s 2 R9 Nano’s turn to further drive this home again also in CrossfireX………
Remember also the AMD 2-Fiji XT GPUs part built on HBM w/ both GPU’s & HBM mounted on the same interposer which changes the game concerning the mem limitations of GDDR5 in multi-GPU config (both GPU’s can use all the mem available….all 8 Gb of it due to HBM design)is due to debut later this month, 1st of next…….. I believe this part is going to cut into Nvidia even harder as it should knock the Titan X off in both performance but also relative TDP(the R9 Nano demonstrates this potential)& cost will not be a factor by then…….if AMD gets this part right it will be VERY hard for Nvidia to top w/ current GDDR5 tech until they can respond w/ Pascal on HBM2 next year & by then the results should demonstrate their new focus in engineering prowess at AMD to innovate just as they could back in the ATI days……which is exactly what AMD CEO Lisa Su has been saying & banking on all this time was their story line….thus the resurrected Fury naming for this tech……..
Pricing is simply reflecting the result of having a cutting edge product readily available that the competition has no counter part to compete w/ it…..no different w/ Nvidia & Maxwell…… The real test for AMD is if this part will sell at enough volume to vindicate their game plan as the Nano is the showcase part that demonstrates the validity of this new tech & was the target of all the Fiji XT GPUs & HBM talk in the 1st place………
This is what I believe was AMD’s whole plan from a marketing approach…..the stuff that this Roy spewed out actually did something that could be a positive in a negative light……it’s got y’all’s attention to focus on this part & consequently start drawing more attention to this from others & start up conversation around the Nano……….
Touche’
I can’t believe the frikkin
I can’t believe the frikkin thing is priced so high – what a scalping disappointment.
Why is this card still priced
Why is this card still priced so damn high? AMD’s heads have swollen and for absolutely no reason!I love AMD, But I love AMD because they always had great prices, This year their prices suck! ANd this is also why their stocks are still going down! Because apparently they never learn!