290X to R9 Nano?

As i killed my 290X, i want to try something new. I'm currently using a HD 5770, which needs almost half the VRAM to render a 4K desktop. I'm being drawn to the R9 Nano due to it's relative uniqueness, and the fact that it doesn't eat as much power as the Fury X. Is it a good choice still for 4K gaming? (No Nvidia options please)

Doesn't have enough VRAM. I have a Fury X. I've never experienced buyers remorse until the Fury line.

You say no nVidia options but just FYI a 1060 comes in the same form factor, has more VRAM, runs cooler, has about the same performance, and is half the price.

Not sure if you can limp along until Vega... but that would be ideal.

Dayaks said:

Doesn't have enough VRAM. I have a Fury X. I've never experienced buyers remorse until the Fury line.

You say no nVidia options but just FYI a 1060 comes in the same form factor, has more VRAM, runs cooler, has about the same performance, and is half the price.

Not sure if you can limp along until Vega... but that would be ideal.

Click to expand...

For what? What limitation is your 4GB of HBM?

I have a pair of Fury X cards and three HP Omen 32" 1440p monitors in eyefinity.

Freesync and the Fury X crossfire performance has been amazing every game I've tried. I've been super pleased with the setup.

Maybe you need a second Fury X.

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedi...re-triple-4k-eyefinity-11-520x2160/index.html

Archaea said:

For what?

Click to expand...

4GB is not enough for a lot of games at 4k. It's been documented over and over.

Dayaks said:

4GB is not enough for a lot of games at 4k. It's been documented over and over.

Click to expand...

Explain the link above.

That's at 12k resolution. And 4GB HBM is keeping pace with cards with 8 GB and 12GB GDDR5 just fine. Can you tell me what you personally have experienced as a limitation of 4GB HBM with your Fury X?

Honestly. From my perspective I've not encountered a single title that isn't pegged at max FPS at 1440p, and most I can stay in freesync range (48-75fps on my Omens) at 7680x1440 at at least high settings.


Do you have a freesync monitor? I'm super impressed with the Fury X and freesync makes the whole experience that much smoother.

I picked both of mine up for about $335 each. I don't regret it one bit.

The brand new 1080ti is a super card, but that wasn't an option when I bought my Fury X cards --- so you can't hardly have buyers remorse for that.

Archaea said:

Explain the link above.

That's at 12k resolution. And 4GB HBM is keeping pace with cards with 8 GB and 12GB GDDR5 just fine. Can you tell me what you personally have experienced as a limitation of 4GB HBM with your Fury X?

Honestly. From my perspective I've not encountered a single title that isn't pegged at max FPS at 1440p, and most I can stay in freesync range (48-75fps on my Omens) at 7680x1440 at at least high settings.


Do you have a freesync monitor? I'm super impressed with the Fury X and freesync makes the whole experience that much smoother.

I picked both of mine up for about $335 each. I don't regret it one bit.

The brand new 1080ti is a super card, but that wasn't an option when I bought my Fury X cards --- so you can't hardly have buyers remorse for that.

Click to expand...

You need frametimes to compare SLI and crossfire. That link is near useless. At least they have minimums but you can see they are very low for a lot of games (7 FPS, ect.). You'd see lack of VRAM as hangs and stutters...

Dayaks said:

You say no nVidia options but just FYI a 1060 comes in the same form factor, has more VRAM, runs cooler, has about the same performance, and is half the price.

Not sure if you can limp along until Vega... but that would be ideal.

Click to expand...

I say no to nVidia because i do GPGPU computing, not just games. Anything other than Quadros isn't too optimized for non-gaming workloads. The last true GPGPU GeForce card was the 780 Ti.

I will be waiting for Vega, the Nano would be a stopgap until then. Plus, i like the Nano over the 290X since it doesn't eat as much power, and it'll work as my HTPC/test card.

About the VRAM limitations, i played on my 290X and, while it wasn't 1000000 FPSs, i had a satisfactory experience on the games i play. I do not demand Ultra settings, i can compromise.

Starbomba said:

I say no to nVidia because i do GPGPU computing, not just games. Anything other than Quadros isn't too optimized for non-gaming workloads. The last true GPGPU GeForce card was the 780 Ti.

I will be waiting for Vega, the Nano would be a stopgap until then. Plus, i like the Nano over the 290X since it doesn't eat as much power, and it'll work as my HTPC/test card.

About the VRAM limitations, i played on my 290X and, while it wasn't 1000000 FPSs, i had a satisfactory experience on the games i play. I do not demand Ultra settings, i can compromise.

Click to expand...

That makes sense. An air cooled Fury might be cheaper & quieter. I'd look up a nano review... I think you'd have to crank the fan to obnoxious to avoid thermal limiting on the nano. Not sure what your case situation is.

https://m.hardocp.com/article/2015/11/24/radeon_r9_nano_small_form_factor_competition_review/3

Archaea said:

Explain the link above.

.

Click to expand...

Lol you love to mention that same link one and one and another time in each possible thread you have the chance, but you don't take the time to analyze it, First important thing to notice, ALL games are at medium settings, just by that you are actually removing A LOT of textures and distance details which have a HUGE impact on the VRAM, I don't know who can be so freaking proud of running that resolution at mid settings just to be able to reach borderline of uncomfortable FPS with drops below 10FPS in somes cases, that's just plain stupid.

NONE of the cards used in that review are actually playable in those games which are btw VERY OLD and irrelevant to any modern gaming they are far to reach any vRAM wall with those settings as can happen with modern games EVEN at 1080P.

Second, just because the games you play (IIRC all from other threads very old ones) are "playable" doesn't mean everyone are going to have the same experience, all of the games you always mention are actually irrelevant compared to modern games, you always speak about your amazing very old gaming experience and please just trust something: no one cares about that, people care about new games, and those for sure convert a Fury X into an irrelevant card in the market...

I truly would want to see your pair of Fury X cards running that 7680x2160 Resident evil 7 at MAX settings, or maybe DOOM with nightmare settings (oh wait you even won't be able to enable that due to have less than 5GB)

This is what happens when you try to run DOOM on a card with 4GB vRAM



yeah, the performance tank enough to be below of an R9 390

Wait... also happen in RE7



Wait.. really? watch dogs 2 too?.



oh.. really again?.




did you see that? Fury X is better than 980Ti in every setting until is pushed out of VRAM, same happens with A LOT of games which can easily go beyond even 6GB of VRAM usage.

yea, that's what happens when you running out of vRAM in modern gaming at "JUST" 4K.. can not imagine how easy would be drive 7680x2160 for a pair of Fury X I guess that combo with a FreeSync Panel can actually convert 4 FPS into a glory of gaming. Doesn't matter how godly that Jesus Cum can convert HBM into the holy grail of memory, running out of VRAM is gona behave exactly the same.

Starbomba said:

As i killed my 290X, i want to try something new. I'm currently using a HD 5770, which needs almost half the VRAM to render a 4K desktop. I'm being drawn to the R9 Nano due to it's relative uniqueness, and the fact that it doesn't eat as much power as the Fury X. Is it a good choice still for 4K gaming? (No Nvidia options please)

Click to expand...

I have both - unless space is a severe constraint (or you get a killer second hand deal which is why I have mine), there is no percetable difference in performance. An overclocked 290x is bascially within striking distance of the nano.

As an example, using one 290x overclocked to 1200/1600 (1.3v) - I would score 14100 in Firestrike GPU. The Nano scored 14500~ on the same system.

The nano is a great card for specific use purposes (SFF), but isn't a particularly compelling value proposition, especially at 4k. You would be better served getting a GTX 1080 if you want to game at 4k, or wait to see what Vega brings to the table if you are sticking with team RED.

Araxie said:

Lol you love to mention that same link one and one and another time in each possible thread you have the chance, but you don't take the time to analyze it, First important thing to notice, ALL games are at medium settings, just by that you are actually removing A LOT of textures and distance details which have a HUGE impact on the VRAM, I don't know who can be so freaking proud of running that resolution at mid settings just to be able to reach borderline of uncomfortable FPS with drops below 10FPS in somes cases, that's just plain stupid.

NONE of the cards used in that review are actually playable in those games which are btw VERY OLD and irrelevant to any modern gaming they are far to reach any vRAM wall with those settings as can happen with modern games EVEN at 1080P.

Second, just because the games you play (IIRC all from other threads very old ones) are "playable" doesn't mean everyone are going to have the same experience, all of the games you always mention are actually irrelevant compared to modern games, you always speak about your amazing very old gaming experience and please just trust something: no one cares about that, people care about new games, and those for sure convert a Fury X into an irrelevant card in the market...

I truly would want to see your pair of Fury X cards running that 7680x2160 Resident evil 7 at MAX settings, or maybe DOOM with nightmare settings (oh wait you even won't be able to enable that due to have less than 5GB)

This is what happens when you try to run DOOM on a card with 4GB vRAM

yeah, the performance tank enough to be below of an R9 390

Wait... also happen in RE7

View attachment 19745

Wait.. really? watch dogs 2 too?.

View attachment 19746

oh.. really again?.


View attachment 19747

did you see that? Fury X is better than 980Ti in every setting until is pushed out of VRAM, same happens with A LOT of games which can easily go beyond even 6GB of VRAM usage.

yea, that's what happens when you running out of vRAM in modern gaming at "JUST" 4K.. can not imagine how easy would be drive 7680x2160 for a pair of Fury X I guess that combo with a FreeSync Panel can actually convert 4 FPS into a glory of gaming. Doesn't matter how godly that Jesus Cum can convert HBM into the holy grail of memory, running out of VRAM is gona behave exactly the same.

Click to expand...

The point of that article I link is to show that 4GB vs 12GB are similar performance numbers. They used medium settings because higher than that was a slide show on all the cards at 12k. Didn't matter if you have 12GB of RAM at your disposal.

By the time you hit the 4GB limit the card is out of processing power anyway.

Fury X beats 1060 with its 6GB of RAM. Fury X beats RX480 with its 8GB of RAM.

Yes if you exceed the RAM limit. ( I can do it at 7680x1440 then frame rates go down miserably) but that isn't at exactly 4GB (proven not strictly 4GB because of intelligent fast paging) when you encounter that you can drop AA or lower one or two settings from ultra to high and notice a super minimal difference in image quality, but notice a huge jump back to normal frame rate So just cranking everything to ultra is apple to apples benchmarks, but doesn't mean you have to sit there with 3fps dismal performance on a particular effected game with everything completely maxed out.
4k doesn't need AA for instance. I personally don't even think 1440 needs AA. That being said I haven't found a single game I can't max out at 1440p except Doom's nightmare setting.

As to only old games? I've played Battlefield1 just fine at 7680x1440 on high settings no problem.

I play the games I'm interested in with over 200 games in my Steam catalogue and so far not one title has been unplayable with my Fury X, or crossfire pair. Heck since I started using crossfire I've not even had to turn it off a single time because of an incompatibility. I've just set it up and let it run. It works great. Even if the game does t support it I don't know about it cause it just has worked for me.

Also you'd do well to show me one screen shot were nightmare settings on doom look noticeably better than ultra. That's the one gotcha card everybody plays against the 2year old Fury X and it's a testament to E-penis only. Even LOW looks great on Doom. I can't tell the minute difference between ultra and nightmare on doom in gameplay. And I've played it beginning to end on ultra at 1440p and it looks and plays fantastic.

The 4gb will be a limiting factor going forward. However, the compromises to visual fidelity won't be major.

I was unable to play Shadows of Mordor with ultra textures and I have to turn down texture streaming in Titanfall 2.

I have a Nano and 4K FreeSync Monitor - does just fine. Doom I play Ultra 4K. Mirror's Edge Ultra 85% rendering (still looks great) 4K resolution. Duess Ex - 1440p DX 12. BF1 I use DX 12 and 4K as well.

Nightmare settings in Doom destroys the Nano's performance at 4K. Very high textures in Rise of the Tomb raider (if you can even notice) makes the Nano struggle. I also OC to 1050mhz as well making it basically the same performance as a FuryX.

FreeSync is the main thing I think makes playing at 4K possible with the Nano - great technology that gives a very noticeable benefit.

The RX480 is in between the 290X and Nano. It can be found for ~$150. I see amazing deals in the hot deals section all the time. It will probably resell better than a nano when Vega launches.

Starbomba, go ahead and pick it up, you will be happy with it. (You did not say how much it costs though.) That said, it is a fantastic 4K card but, as you already are aware, you will have to turn down some of the settings. For me, I simply disable AA or turn on only FXAA with my 2 x Air cooled Fury's in crossfire and they are good to go.

The everything must be maxed or it is not worth it crowd may be vocal but, it does not make them right. If I could get 2 x Fury Nano's for cheap, I would have done that instead but, they where never cheap, at least that I could find.

Araxie said:

This is what happens when you try to run DOOM on a card with 4GB vRAM

yeah, the performance tank enough to be below of an R9 390

Click to expand...

Your post is so intellectually dishonest - I'm calling you out. I've not had time, and probably won't have time today to look any farther than your first link. But since it's a farce, then I'm going to view the rest of your cherry picked charts as suspect as well until I've had time to look them over.

The PCGamer article you linked provided the following:
http://www.pcgamer.com/dooms-nightmare-graphics-image-quality-compared-and-benchmarked/

Image quality comparison

Doom at Nightmare image quality


Doom at Ultra image quality

Doom at High image quality

Doom at Medium image quality

Doom at Low image quality


Then they said this:
These shots are from outside, and there's blowing dust and debris plus the animated fire, so don't get distracted by variations there. Instead, pay close attention to the level of detail on the shadows, because that's the primary change. Texture quality also drops a bit, and in other scenes you'll see a drop in the rendering distance for certain effects.
.
.
.
And then there's the Ultra + Nightmare quality. It may not look substantially different, but at least it doesn't tank performance too badly...except for the Fury X

End quote for PC Gamer article.


So in your post above - you say "This is what happens when you try to run DOOM on a card with 4GB vRAM."

That's misleading.

Here is another view of what happens when you run Doom on a card with 4GB of VRAM -- from the very same article. I'm posting the FPS capture graph just a single image above the one you quoted in your one sided reply. And note the Fury X outperforms two cards with more RAM. (980TI and 390) So yeah if you change settings to intentionally go beyond what the card is capable of performance tanks ---- but as I mentioned previously - the image quality difference is insignificant as shown in the screenprints above. So reading about Doom being the prime example of the enormous AMD failure in making a flagship card with a 4GB VRAM limit - holds little sway to me.

From the very link you quoted:
http://www.pcgamer.com/dooms-nightmare-graphics-image-quality-compared-and-benchmarked/

Take a look at Doom with Vulcan.


4K in Vulcan from another PCGamer article:
http://www.pcgamer.com/doom-benchmarks-return-vulkan-vs-opengl/2/

Here is Vulcan for Nvidia's house: (same article) - Notice Fury X and Fury tie 1070 (8GB), beat 980TI and 1060 (6GB)

So no -- even in the instance of a situation where VRAM can be overwhelmed (ie Doom's Nightmare mode) with absolute max settings - it doesn't make the Fury cards a poor choice, or a bad buy, and doesn't make 4GB of HBM VRAM some sort of outright failure that should be avoided. You can lower a setting or two or turn off AA, (arguably not even needed) and have a fantastic experience.

Someone said arguing over the Fury's abilities is largely becoming moot because the card is disappearing off the shelves. True.

But at this point, where people can buy them for a song before they disappear, I get really annoyed reading the misinformation that people drop in here like 4GB won't let you run the newest games, and no enthusiast could enjoy this card, and 4GB VRAM is some treacherous limitation that makes the card worthless for the future. NONSENSE.

That is the problem with reviews, they stick around when the information becomes invalid due to driver updates, game updates etc. Both AMD and particularly Nvidia has improved Vulkan performance. To get how it would perform today you would need to rerun the tests over again.

I will just post a video of me playing in Doom, simple as that, with all the gizmo's measuring as I die a slow death.

Ok, lets test the Nano using as many shaders as possible on a 4K resolution, Doom is a perfect candidate with Async Compute, 1440p window and at the same time the Nano is capturing 60fps 4k resolution. Wattman is open and watch the GPU mhz, I only see it go down significantly once when the frame rate was over 100fps. This is using Ultra settings minus Film Grain and Chromatic Aberration, Motion blur set to low (using Ultimate quality). Needless to say it does play faster on fullscreen and not recording. Best if viewed in 4K. Yes I die a bloodletting death at the end - enjoy.

I had a nano in my system and let's just say I loved the performance for the size but the heat and throttling were notable. I was able to remedy the throttling but I could never really keep that side case cover on due to the heat or at the expense of noise.

Pkirk618 said:

I had a nano in my system and let's just say I loved the performance for the size but the heat and throttling were notable. I was able to remedy the throttling but I could never really keep that side case cover on due to the heat or at the expense of noise.

Click to expand...

The biggest thing with a Nano is keeping good air flow. It is a 175w (GTX 980 stuck in a small case and not exhausting would have the same issue), if one then ups PowerTune then you get like 225w, then if you up the clock speed to FuryX levels (like what I do) now at FuryX level of power. I designed and built a custom case solely around the Nano which allows me to OC to FuryX levels/Performance, keeping it cool and quiet. I can also take her up to 1100mhz but have to raise the PState voltage for the highest level - at that point it is not worth it for me. Over 1100 mhz I get coil whine that I can hear. Maybe I got a Mermaid Nano with golden nipples but it literally kicks ass! When at FuryX clock speeds you are now talking roughly a non-OC 980Ti performance level card that is rather small. Most small cases are not designed adequately for good airflow, the one Kyle used and was able to clock the Nano up to 1050mhz is a good one but he had to really up the fan speed but with the later firmware and drivers that probably would have helped.

If one can get a Nano at a good price they are definitely worth it and is the best Fiji card for what it packs.

Since NVidia is out, I suggest you get the fastest non-Fury AMD card with a min of 6-8GB VRAM that your budget will allow; should hold you over nicely until Vega.

Why not wait a month for VEGA? it seems they will offer more than 3 SKUs for vega. They might produce a Vega Nano just like Fury Nano.

If the leaks are true, this would be 10-30% faster than 1080, and will do a great job at 4k.

crislevinZTAMPj said:

Why not wait a month for VEGA? it seems they will offer more than 3 SKUs for vega. They might produce a Vega Nano just like Fury Nano.

If the leaks are true, this would be 10-30% faster than 1080, and will do a great job at 4k.

Click to expand...

That is what I am hoping for.