[TweakTown] Fiji Nano is NOT "Full Fiji".

[Mondozei]

So TweakTown is out with their leaks on the nano. They have a decent record of late on AMD so it's worth looking at it.

Killer Quote(s):

Radeon R9 Fury will feature 3584 Stream Processors, down from the 4096 on the full Fury X. The Fiji-based GPU will be clocked at 1050MHz, which is identical to that of the Fury X.

We shouldn't expect performance to be that much less, probably 10-15% less than Fury X

The speculation on pricing was 549 dollars. That seems way too high. Fiji almost got whupped by GTX 980 (non-Ti) at 1080p at stock speeds and that's without OC'ing. 1080p is the resolution the vast majority of gamers are on, including those with high-end GPUs.

A Fiji Nano could posisbly get its ass kicked by an overclocked 970, considering how terribly Fiji is overclocking. Also, since the GTX 980 is at 500 dollars, the nano would probably be at 450 dollars or so to be competitive, which would be problematic because the 390X is so close. At 500, the GTX 980 would be a much better buy.

 

[jpiniero]

I don't see anything about the Nano in that article.

 

[bryanW1995]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showpost.php?p=37531438&postcount=16

I think that I'll take Ryan Smith's statement over Tweaktown's.

 

[cen1]

Maybe it won't be much faster at 1080p but it should be on higher res. So I don't see how the price is unreasonable.

 

[Silverforce11]

That's normal Fury, no mention of Nano.

I bet Nano is gonna be niche expensive, they gonna charge a premium on form factor and perf/w.

Normal Air Fury will be there bang for buck is at.

 

[shady28]

I don't get that pricing.

What are they saying, Pro will be $600 and Nano $550? That would be a ridiculous pricing structure.

I think it's a lot more likely Nano will be $450. If it is as fast as OC 970s (running around $300-$350), then it's a $100 premium for half-slot and improved power efficiency / heat generation and usability in many OEM 500W boxes. That is palatable. At $550 it would be a hard sell, suitable only for a niche market.

 

[tviceman]

The more I think about it, the more Nano just doesn't make sense, not as a price-premium product anyways. Mini-ITX 970's exist and, since most (if not all) 970's consume the same amount of power as a 980, there is no reason a mini-ITX 980 can't exist either. The 980 is 40-50% more efficient than Fury X at 1440p and 1080p respectively, and Fury Nano would have to be downclocked low enough to meet it's 175w goal, which would likely put it into direct competition with the 980. Then to put a price premium on it?????? Doesn't make any sense. Nvidia could just pre-empt the Fury Nano with an ITX size GTX 980 and bam, Fury Nano looks even more silly than Fury X at launch.

 

[ShintaiDK]

It wouldnt make sense to sell nano as full fiji in any case. The only card that was question about is the aircooled Fury.

 

[AtenRa]

The more I think about it, the more Nano just doesn't make sense, not as a price-premium product anyways. Mini-ITX 970's exist and, since most (if not all) 970's consume the same amount of power as a 980, there is no reason a mini-ITX 980 can't exist either. The 980 is 40-50% more efficient than Fury X at 1440p and 1080p respectively, and Fury Nano would have to be downclocked low enough to meet it's 175w goal, which would likely put it into direct competition with the 980. Then to put a price premium on it?????? Doesn't make any sense. Nvidia could just pre-empt the Fury Nano with an ITX size GTX 980 and bam, Fury Nano looks even more silly than Fury X at launch.

How is Nano looking silly at MSRP of $550 if it is as fast (or faster ??) as GTX980 with MSRP $550 ???

 

[AtenRa]

I don't get that pricing.

What are they saying, Pro will be $600 and Nano $550? That would be a ridiculous pricing structure.

I think it's a lot more likely Nano will be $450. If it is as fast as OC 970s (running around $300-$350), then it's a $100 premium for half-slot and improved power efficiency / heat generation and usability in many OEM 500W boxes. That is palatable. At $550 it would be a hard sell, suitable only for a niche market.

AMD have said Nano will be faster than 390X. Since 390X is faster than 970 then Nano is competing against GTX980, that means $550 because AMD will not sell at lower MSRP than NVIDIA at the same performance metrics anymore.

 

[Lepton87]

How is Nano looking silly at MSRP of $550 if it is as fast (or faster ??) as GTX980 with MSRP $550 ???

Somehow people expect AMD to always be faster than NV at the same price point. Well, I could understand that at least until what happened with Kepler and GCN 1.0. GCN aged way better than Kepler and I don't expect that to change with current cards. I for one, would pick an AMD card over an equivalent NV card because I don't trust NV with maintaining their drivers when they launch a new architecture. Just look at 780TI and R290X. At launch 780Ti was clearly the faster card and and look at those cards now, R290X not only caught up to 780Ti but surpassed it in performance and right now is very close to 980.

 

[tviceman]

How is Nano looking silly at MSRP of $550 if it is as fast (or faster ??) as GTX980 with MSRP $550 ???

Hard to imagine it being as fast or much faster than 980 at 1080p and 1440p unless a massive driver improvement is incoming. And if it is $550 (which is still not known), it will be more expensive than the GTX 980. It won't be any more efficient and, as I said, Nvidia could easily launch an ITX-based GTX 980 to spoil the Nano which would be nearly the same size (maybe a half inch longer).

It just doesn't make sense. Fiji is not nearly as efficient as GM204, and the downclock / vcore drop needed to achieve a 50% performance/w is going to make a much more expensive 600mm2 competing with a 398mm2 chip at a similar performance and price. Where is the economics in this?

 

[monstercameron]

Hard to imagine it being as fast or much faster than 980 at 1080p and 1440p unless a massive driver improvement is incoming. And if it is $550 (which is still not known), it will be more expensive than the GTX 980. It won't be any more efficient and, as I said, Nvidia could easily launch an ITX-based GTX 980 to spoil the Nano which would be nearly the same size (maybe a half inch longer).

It just doesn't make sense. Fiji is not nearly as efficient as GM204, and the downclock / vcore drop needed to achieve a 50% performance/w is going to make a much more expensive 600mm2 competing with a 398mm2 chip at a similar performance and price. Where is the economics in this?

Die size comparisons are kinda useless on such large dice for both companies with Mature 28nm yields, besides as you alluded to, small form factors and miniaturization is worth a premium.

 

[tviceman]

First of all, I never alluded to small form factors and miniaturization being a price premium.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125706
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121912

Not much of a price premium for one and no price premium for the other. Why would Fury Nano be justified with a noticeable price premium when other products in the same category aren't?

Second of all, die size comparisons aren't useless. A 600mm2 chip with very new technology attached to it is undoubtedly has yields lower than a 398mm2 chip. On top of that, many more 398mm2 chips can be fit onto the same wafer. For every two 600mm2 chips, three 398 chips can be produced assuming yields are the same (which they aren't). So before taking yields into consideration, a 300mm wafer makes 1.5x as many GM204 chips as it does GM200 or Fiji chips.

 

[shady28]

AMD have said Nano will be faster than 390X. Since 390X is faster than 970 then Nano is competing against GTX980, that means $550 because AMD will not sell at lower MSRP than NVIDIA at the same performance metrics anymore.

If it is as fast as a 980 at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K that would make sense.

The question is, will it be? Based on the Fury X performance @ 400W with water cooling, I suspect Nano will come in at or just a bit above 970 performance while the Fury Pro will probably just edge out a 980.

You can already get a GTX 970 mini (half slot) OC card with a max power draw of 173W and gaming draw of 165W, see reference comparison below :

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...tml?prod[7296]=on&prod[7476]=on&prod[7478]=on

That 970 is selling for $329 without rebates etc.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...pvxXnbDypH9sTAsK6opfEaApQ48P8HAQ&gclsrc=aw.ds

AMD had better offer something more than a fancy name and a nice box to beat that.

 

[Lepton87]

If it is as fast as a 980 at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K that would make sense.

The question is, will it be? Based on the Fury X performance @ 400W with water cooling, I suspect Nano will come in at or just a bit above 970 performance while the Fury Pro will probably just edge out a 980.


AMD had better offer something more than a fancy name and a nice box to beat that.

A 390X is already as fast as a 980 so you expect this card to be within 10% of 390X?

Why would they release a card with samish performance less memory and a bigger die than the card they already sell?

 

[parvadomus]

So TweakTown is out with their leaks A Fiji Nano could posisbly get its ass kicked by an overclocked 970, considering how terribly Fiji is overclocking. Also, since the GTX 980 is at 500 dollars, the nano would probably be at 450 dollars or so to be competitive, which would be problematic because the 390X is so close. At 500, the GTX 980 would be a much better buy.

Fury will be almost the same as Fury X. And nano will be faster than 980s.. The 970 is not even near.
And this, why? Cause Fiji is too power conservative, we have seen that from overclocking, take some shaders out of the core, and the rest will happily use the gained headroom.

 

[cen1]

Nano would have to be severely downclocked to be slower than 980 or 390X. Why would AMD make a bigger and more expensive chip that is at the same time slower than their old flagship which costs way less? It doesn't make any economic sense. As with Fury X speculations, I'd rather wait for the reviews than go on tangents about the performance..

 

[ShintaiDK]

Old card ~300W. New card ~175W. In an age of performance/watt.

The only problem is they dont have anything else to put there. And using Fiji chips is more like a hotfix solution.

 

[tviceman]

AMD have said Nano will be faster than 390X. Since 390X is faster than 970 then Nano is competing against GTX980, that means $550 because AMD will not sell at lower MSRP than NVIDIA at the same performance metrics anymore.

AMD also said Fiji was "the world's fastest" and "most efficient" GPU ever. AMD's slides also showed Fury X beating a 980 TI. All were wrong.

 

[Lepton87]

Old card ~300W. New card ~175W. In an age of performance/watt.

The only problem is they dont have anything else to put there. And using Fiji chips is more like a hotfix solution.

Do gamers really care about such metrics? It is a card geared towards gamers not general population. I for one, don't as long as noise level is under control. It does matter to off the cord usage but I don't see Fiji landing into a laptop.
BTW. What's the fastest mobile AMD card?

 

[yacoub]

So TweakTown is out with their leaks on the nano. They have a decent record of late on AMD so it's worth looking at it.

The speculation on pricing was 549 dollars. That seems way too high.

Of course, just like the Fury X and everything else. Fury X needs to drop to $599 asap, and the air-cooled Fury that is launching within a couple weeks needs to launch at no more than $499 if they want it to actually be competitive and appealing price-wise.

 

[AnandThenMan]

Fury X needs to drop to $599 asap,

The card is sold out so obviously not.

 

[shady28]

A 390X is already as fast as a 980 so you expect this card to be within 10% of 390X?

Why would they release a card with samish performance less memory and a bigger die than the card they already sell?

First of all, I didn't say that - I said I thought it would have less than 980 performance, more like an AIB OC 970.

The 390X while close to a 980 in pure performance is far from an across the board match to the 980. From the very site you linked to - which has the more favorable reviews of the 390X vs other sites I've seen - they said this :

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/R9_390X_Gaming/

"The MSI R9 390X Gaming roughly matches GTX 980 performance in 4K and 1440p when averaged over all our benchmarks. At lower resolutions like 1080p though, it is only as fast as the GTX 970. "

In other words it matches the 980 at 1440p and 4K, it falls behind at 1080p.

That 390X gets totally destroyed by a 980 in terms of power draw and hence how much heat it will radiate :

And despite the fact the 390x that was tested has a 3rd party fan solution, the reference GTX 980 also destroys it in terms of noise :

These things matter. The Fury Nano at 175W if it were to match the 980 would actually be a really nice card at $550.

If it fails to match the 980 / 390X, and winds up where I think it will - which would be like an OC 970 which can be had for $339 - it's going to be a dud at that ($550) price point. Even at $450 it's going to have a hard time competing with half-slot 173W 970s.

 

[tviceman]

The card is sold out so obviously not.

"Seling out" literally means nothing in the face of limited launches. AMD chose not to give Fury X cards to some reviewers because of journalistic opinions and "limited product availability." So do you have sales figures? If only 5,000 were released so far I hope that it would have sold out, despite the lukewarm reception.

The point is, selling out a limited release is in no way indicative of the card's on going value at it's current price.