Let's Talk about Fairly Testing GPU Performance R.E. Warming Up GPUs

Brent_Justice said:
Think of it like this, it is a cycle.

You may have a bunch of games that game developers have chosen to use NVIDIA tech right now. But a year from now, we may be in a cycle where they chose to use AMD tech.

At any given time you are going to have your games that use NV tech, and or AMD tech. It is up to the developer.

It just is, it is just the way things are, we cannot ignore games either way, else we'd have nothing to use!

As a poster above stated, how are you to know the game engine itself isn't biased toward a vendor?

You just cannot do that when it comes to playing games and reviewing video cards. You just have to say, it is what it is, the game dev used that tech, so let's just see how it performs and looks and how video cards compare and tell the end user what the best value is to play that game. It is that simple.

How things are now, in this cycle, may not always be. Right now game devs are choosing to use NV 3D effects, that means something, and it is just the way it is, that's the cycle we are in. Perhaps AMD should up its game in terms of evangelizing its features to game developers. AMD needs to make an impact with game devs and prove why their stuff is better. In the end, the game developer chooses what to use.
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You can't straight compare nVidia titles vs. AMD titles. At least not until AMD has the same access that nVidia does to the game's code.
 
Brent_Justice said:
Think of it like this, it is a cycle.

You may have a bunch of games that game developers have chosen to use NVIDIA tech right now. But a year from now, we may be in a cycle where they chose to use AMD tech...
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The problem with that is that games that use AMD tech usually run better than the Nvidia ones. Which means that "they don't stress the gpu", which means that they aren't suitable for benchmarks around here.
 
This thread essentially assumes the other review sites don't know what they are doing. I would expect most sites to test a card in a case when doing temperature tests and also compare that temp to the test rig temps. If they are within a few degrees then we can assume temps/clockspeeds while gaming won't fluctuate.

With all this latest nano controversy I hope the sites who did get a review sample do it properly to shut up the naysayers.
 
I disagree with you, Brent.


Here is how ALL review sites should do FAIR reviews.

  • No benchmark or "measurement" tools can be used that is made by a specific video card vendor such as FCAT tools as an example unless open source.
  • ALL benchmark software MUST be open source so that any "foul" code that takes advantage of a vendor's specific hardware capabilities can be spotted and removed.
  • All benchmark software must adhere STRICTLY to the requirements of Mircosoft's DirectX and Khronos Groups OpenGL standards. None of this special sauce benchmarks that cater to specific hardware (refer to point 2).
  • Any games used for performance testing must not have any enhancements by Nvidia or AMD. This means all game with Nvidia's Gamworks, TWIMTP or AMD's Gaming Evolved will not be allowed. Only code that is written to STRICTLY follow the developer's code manuals of DriectX or OpenGL.



My suggestion is that you guys hire an in-house programmer to make benchmark software that tests DirectX performance capabilities and OpenGL capabilities of video cards. You must also post the source code of all your benchmarks so that we can guarantee that you or other review sites are not being paid by competitors to put in "poison" code or performance-enhancing code.
 
limitedaccess said:
I'm curious how many of the same people who are complaining about the testing suite now being a small sample and Nvidia title's heavy can actually cite their comments back in 2013 also taking the same stance?

The problem with a lot of "bias" accusations is that there is tendency for them to be brought out simply due to a disagreement over conclusions.
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Why are you curious about that? Do you find it weird or strange that people talk about benchmark suit bias topic in a thread created by the GPU editor of [H] regarding "fairly testing GPU performance"?

Its actually a good discussion. An argument if [H] should make an effort creating a vendor neutral benchmark suit or if they should throw fairness out the windows and rather focus on which games they think the audience would like the cards to be benchmarked in.
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
Why are you curious about that? Do you find it weird or strange that people talk about benchmark suit bias topic in a thread created by the GPU editor of [H] regarding "fairly testing GPU performance"?

Its actually a good discussion. An argument if [H] should make an effort creating a vendor neutral benchmark suit or if they should throw fairness out the windows and rather focus on which games they think the audience would like the cards to be benchmarked in.
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I'm questing whether or not the frequency of this issue being brought up now occured back then. If individuals questioning it now did not bother to speak out back then what is the reason for doing so now?

This thread or the recent Nano review situation is not what I am referring to either. In the initial Fury X review and the discussions regarding Gamework's the comment was frequently brought up that the HardOCP test have an Nvidia bias to the test suite. I'm simply interested if people with those sentiments felt the same way back in 2013 and were commenting as such. If not, why not?

Certainly not singling you out but it's a general comment and question I've asked before but didn't have any takers.

In terms of discussing HardOCPs test suite itself I feel it is pretty adequate and consistent with their position while factoring in realistic demands (eg. they can't do Techpowerup volume with this type of testing, oddly a site on the other side of the methology spectrum that is being denied as well). I remember it being brought up how reflective HardOCPs test suite is but it does seem pretty reflective of the communities demands if you go by interest in the gaming forum section here.

Over the next half year HardOCPs test suite could very well be dominated by AMD titles with Star Wars Battlefront, Hitman, Mirror's Edge Catalyst and Deus Ex Mankind Divided being high profile demanding titles over the next 6 months.
 
limitedaccess said:
I'm questing whether or not the frequency of this issue being brought up now occured back then. If individuals questioning it now did not bother to speak out back then what is the reason for doing so now?

This thread or the recent Nano review situation is not what I am referring to either. In the initial Fury X review and the discussions regarding Gamework's the comment was frequently brought up that the HardOCP test have an Nvidia bias to the test suite. I'm simply interested if people with those sentiments felt the same way back in 2013 and were commenting as such. If not, why not?

Certainly not singling you out but it's a general comment and question I've asked before but didn't have any takers.

In terms of discussing HardOCPs test suite itself I feel it is pretty adequate and consistent with their position while factoring in realistic demands (eg. they can't do Techpowerup volume with this type of testing, oddly a site on the other side of the methology spectrum that is being denied as well). I remember it being brought up how reflective HardOCPs test suite is but it does seem pretty reflective of the communities demands if you go by interest in the gaming forum section here.

Over the next half year HardOCPs test suite could very well be dominated by AMD titles with Star Wars Battlefront, Hitman, Mirror's Edge Catalyst and Deus Ex Mankind Divided being high profile demanding titles over the next 6 months.
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Of course you are not singeling me out. :) I havent brought it up earlier and havent brought it up in any of the newer review threads either. Its not about which direction the bias leans, but this is a thread spesifically about fairness in reviews, so it was a good time to post some input. Many have brought it up earlier though, It was a big debate about Tomb raider in its time and how Nvidia havent had time to optimize for it.

Point is that this is the GPU editor of [H] himself taking this up, which gives more incentive to come with an input. Having a netural benchmark suit goes both ways and should be good for all vendors, but especially for us consumers.

I havent seen your thread about this topic, but I assume that you find it to be a good thing that Brent made this topic and that people are discussing it? Normally this is brought up under reviews and reads more to me like thread crapping then a discussion. Its refreshing that Brent made this thread and a place to talk about it.

Its interesting to hear Brents reasons why "fairness" has less focus in his benchmark suit selection. As you pointed out, the bias has leaned towards AMD earlier. Thats not good either, which is why this discussion is nice to have. As you point out, there is a lot of AMD games coming, so the bias might change. Perhaps its fruitful that they make an effort selecting a vendor neutral benchmark suit?
 
 
Remon said:
That doesn't mean that it was an AMD sponsored title. Is Bioshock Infinite an AMD title too? I'm not saying that it's an Nvidia title either.
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I'm not exactly sure what your criteria is regarding whether or not a game is associated with a specific IHV?

http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1764004
AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced its collaboration with Ubisoft® to support the highly anticipated next chapter in the "Far Cry" franchise, "Far Cry 3®," launching today in North America. Developed in conjunction with the AMD Gaming Evolved program, "Far Cry 3" is fully optimized for a premium PC gaming experience, harnessing the power of AMD Radeon™ graphics including native support for AMD Eyefinity and AMD CrossFire™ technologies, enabling industry-leading multiscreen experiences and high-performance gaming. By working closely together, AMD and Ubisoft have enhanced the "Far Cry 3" experience, allowing gamers to become fully immersed in an epic struggle to survive in one of the most lawless and challenging PC gaming environments to date.
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Bioshock Infinite -
http://www.amd.com/en-us/markets/game/featured/bioshock-infinite#
 
Tamlin_WSGF said:
Of course you are not singeling me out. :) I havent brought it up earlier and havent brought it up in any of the newer review threads either. Its not about which direction the bias leans, but this is a thread spesifically about fairness in reviews, so it was a good time to post some input. Many have brought it up earlier though, It was a big debate about Tomb raider in its time and how Nvidia havent had time to optimize for it.

Point is that this is the GPU editor of [H] himself taking this up, which gives more incentive to come with an input. Having a netural benchmark suit goes both ways and should be good for all vendors, but especially for us consumers.

I havent seen your thread about this topic, but I assume that you find it to be a good thing that Brent made this topic and that people are discussing it? Normally this is brought up under reviews and reads more to me like thread crapping then a discussion. Its refreshing that Brent made this thread and a place to talk about it.

Its interesting to hear Brents reasons why "fairness" has less focus in his benchmark suit selection. As you pointed out, the bias has leaned towards AMD earlier. Thats not good either, which is why this discussion is nice to have. As you point out, there is a lot of AMD games coming, so the bias might change. Perhaps its fruitful that they make an effort selecting a vendor neutral benchmark suit?
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I'm not seeing a way beyond expansion, which may not be practical, in actually directly addressing the review suite issue. Higher sample sizes would of course be the best reponse but is it practical on the reviewer side? Honestly I'm not the reviewer in this case so I cannot fairly assess their workload to make that type of determination.

From an optics perspective in terms of the actual selection the problem seems to be real world. The last "neutral" high profile and demanding game release was GTA V. The next one is Fallout 4 (that I am aware of). Otherwise it seems like the majority will be titles with one affliation or the other.

In terms of the current situation it is 1 neutral, 3 Nvidia and 1 AMD. Really the small sample is what makes the optics worse since it is really a 1 game swing to make it 2:2. However the AMD options available currently seems to be Dragon Age: Inquisition or Battlefield: Hardline both of which are also Frostbite 3 games. In that case it seems sticking with BF4 would be the better choice if just for some continuity for past comparisons.

It seems to be just an issue timing at the moment. If you look at the gaming section here the current hot trending game discussions of newer and demanding titles are Nvidia tied outside of Frostbite 3 based titles. This is why I said earlier I don't feel the current test suite is doing a disservice to the community or audience as it does seem to accurately reflect and provide data points for what is of interest in the community. All the games currently tested seem to be relevant to the community if you go by the PC gaming forum. Also factor in some continuity (staying power) for past and future comparisons.

Of course there is the other arguement of whether or not optics (in terms of game bias) is really the important criteria which is a more complicated debate all together.

At the end though I think the importance of reviews is simply to provide information. Individuals need to themselves assess and critque said information and make their own judgements. No single review is going to be all encompassing or perfect, that just isn't really possible. But the nature of the industry does mean there is easy access to plenty of data from multiple sources. I'm still interested in Skyrim data as an example which I can still find even information on even though the majority have dropped it completely.
 
Remon said:
Far Cry 3 wasn't an AMD title, if you're referring to it.
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There is no such thing as an "NVIDIA Title" or an "AMD Title." This is the kind of thinking that starts you off in the wrong place when looking at gaming performance.

This thinking is happening too much nowadays.
 
limitedaccess said:
I'm not exactly sure what your criteria is regarding whether or not a game is associated with a specific IHV?

http://ir.amd.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=74093&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1764004


Bioshock Infinite -
http://www.amd.com/en-us/markets/game/featured/bioshock-infinite#
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Bah, you're right, I missed Bioshock on the Gaming Evolved list, and FC 3 isn't listed.

Brent_Justice said:
There is no such thing as an "NVIDIA Title" or an "AMD Title." This is the kind of thinking that starts you off in the wrong place when looking at gaming performance.

This thinking is happening too much nowadays.
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AMD/Nvidia "sponsored" titles. I used that wording on my next post.
 
Relayer said:
Don't worry, if it throttles, it will be known. If it can be made to throttle, they will do it. nVidia will figure out how to get the worst performance out of Nano and spread the word.
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:rolleyes:

Don't worry AMD will only give review samples to Semiaccurate.com for testing, so you can get all your "fair" benchmarks there.
 
Brent_Justice said:
There is no such thing as an "NVIDIA Title" or an "AMD Title." This is the kind of thinking that starts you off in the wrong place when looking at gaming performance.

This thinking is happening too much nowadays.
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AMD/Nvidia "sponsored" titles. I used that wording on my next post.

Also, when you, the fair reviewer, tell me that I don't have to use the Gamework features in my AMD cards, should I not take that as segregation that has been imposed by one company?
 
Brent_Justice said:
There is no such thing as an "NVIDIA Title" or an "AMD Title." This is the kind of thinking that starts you off in the wrong place when looking at gaming performance.

This thinking is happening too much nowadays.
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Games should be tested based on popularity, game engine variety and genre variety. Period. End of story.

Anyone looking to buy a new video card wants to know how it will play in popular games that were recently released.

Anyone who says "this game or that game should not be benchmarked because it's unfair" is just trying to protect their favorite brand, nothing more. You don't need to cater to those people as they don't buy cards based on benchmarks anyways (or they got their card for free).
 
Look at it this way:
Games exist. People want to play games. That's why they're buying GPUs in the first place.
If there are a bunch of games that are using Technology X from Vendor Y, and people want to play those games, then those are the games that need to be tested with new cards.
Whether Technology X favours Vendor Y or Vendor Z makes absolutely no difference whatsoever when your end goal is to play games rather than compare whose-number-is-biggest.
 
Brent_Justice said:
This is how "FAIR" review sites, test cards. This is how we, at HardOCP, as a "FAIR" website, test video cards. This is how we would have tested Nano.

As you look forward to reviews this week, keep this topic in mind.
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So you are basically telling us all ahead of time you will shit on the Nano in your "fair" and unbalanced review? Displaying bias or hinting at it beforehand already shows that any named product will not get a fair review.

This is unprofessional behavior and only serves to weaken your own argument about how you are going to do a fair review.
 
Brent_Justice said:
If you have a problem with the features the game developers implement in their games, take that issue up with them.

Games that either use features from NVIDIA. or AMD, are not "vendor biased" or biased toward either GPU. We have dispelled this myth on several occasions. One of the most popular game titles out right now, The Witcher 3, for example, takes the same burden enabling HairWorks on NVIDIA or AMD GPUs, as we have tested, dispelling the myth. It is one of the most neautral games in terms of performance, trading blows between NV and AMD. Do not eat the hype, stick with the facts. Just because it has GameWorks features doesn't mean it is vendor biased. Just because it has TressFX, doesn't mean it is vendor biased. It goes both ways. We had no complaints when we used the TressFX in Tomb Raider all its time during use.

Do not confuse sponsorship's with game features either. A game sponsored by AMD or NVIDIA does also not mean it will automatically be faster on either GPU. A sponsorship is very different from the game developer chosing to implement NVIDIA or AMD supplied technology.

Selecting games, based on who's technology it implements, is in itself a biased act. The game suite is an ever changing suite of games, as new games come out, we will implement new games. It takes time to do so, so be patient.
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I would love to see something like Crysis 3 be brought back. Crysis 3 is still a very gpu intensive game and a lot of people have played the game and are familiar with the franchise.
 
Last edited:
Let it be known by [H] for the proper and fair way to review AMD cards from now on.

Use canned benchmarks
NO, no by heavens sake NO maximum playable settings
No playable gameplay experience
Use AMD recommended settings so it can show its faster than maxwell @4k
Be sure to post 4k results where AMD is faster even though its unplayable.

And last but certainly not least.
Do not hang up on AMD :D:D
 
DeadSkull said:
Try using games other then Gameworks titles which are know to cripple AMD cards performance at default game settings.
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Or try picking your video card based on games you want to play and not on some sort of political agenda.

Most people could probably give 2 shits on what brand of hardware is in their computer, as long as it does a good job of playing the games they like without problems.
 
DeadSkull said:
Why should we email game devs when it is you who picks the games?!?!

Try using games other then Gameworks titles which are know to cripple AMD cards performance at default game settings. I would love to see something like Crysis 3 be brought back. Crysis 3 is still a very gpu intensive game and a lot of people have played the game and are familiar with the franchise.
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Known by whom? Tested by whom? Do you have facts or just heresay?

Are you talking about pCars? Like http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1041593386#post1041593386?

cageymaru said:
Ian Bell's post verbatim. 5/7/2015

"Of course.

Looking through company mails the last I can see they (AMD) talked to us was October of last year. I'm holding an internal investigation now as I'm seriously pissed at this allegation.

Categorically, Nvidia have not paid us a penny. They have though been very forthcoming with support and co-marketing work at their instigation.

Edit - More info below. Lot's of communications with them around March and more yesterday.

Gains that were made with an earlier driver they released were lost in a later release. Our internal analysis shows only very marginal gains available from our side (around 1%) with an excessive amount of work.

We've had emails back and forth with them yesterday also. I reiterate that this is mainly a driver issue but we'll obviously do anything we can from our side."

Some great gains we saw from an earlier driver they released have been lost in a later driver they released. So I'd say driver is where we start.

Again, if there's anything we can do we will.

I've now conducted my mini investigation and have seen lots of correspondence between AMD and ourselves as late as March and again yesterday.

The software render person says that AMD drivers create too much of a load on the CPU. The PhysX runs on the CPU in this game for AMD users. The PhysX makes 600 calculations per second on the CPU. Basically the AMD drivers + PhysX running at 600 calculations per second is killing performance in the game. The person responsible for it is freaking awesome. So I'm not angry. But this is the current workaround without all the sensationalism.

The best advice I can give while we work with AMD is to reduce settings which influence CPU load. Specifically in this order:

Shadow Detail -> Medium
Reflections -> Medium
Environment Map-> Medium
Car Detail -> Medium or High
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That's GameWorks sabotaging performance, alright :rolleyes:

Or this?

"We've been working with CD Projeckt Red from the beginning," said Huddy. "We've been giving them detailed feedback all the way through. Around two months before release, or thereabouts, the GameWorks code arrived with HairWorks, and it completely sabotaged our performance as far as we're concerned. We were running well before that... it's wrecked our performance, almost as if it was put in to achieve that goal."
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GameWorks shits on both sides' GPUs, no bias at all. Hard proved that.

As far as pre-GameWorks goes, nobody but AMD can test it so all you can do is take what he says at face value. So basically he's free to say whatever because it can't be proved/disproved.

How hard is it to cobble together a few benchmark runs pre-GameWorks and post-GameWorks and make a PR stunt out of it? i.e. put your money where you mouth is? Why wait until release and cry foul? Why not cry foul while the game was developed?

Any other examples?
 
Therefore, A.) the reviewer must find out what the dynamic clock speeds are and report the actual clock speed after a long period of gaming, B.) test video cards after this warm up period, C.) use tests that are long enough to realize these real-world clock frequencies and never do a cold start test.

This is how "FAIR" review sites, test cards. This is how we, at HardOCP, as a "FAIR" website, test video cards. This is how we would have tested Nano.

As you look forward to reviews this week, keep this topic in mind.
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I wonder if you tested gpus the same way you do PSUs. Only the strong survive. :D:D
 
PRIME1 said:
Or try picking your video card based on games you want to play and not on some sort of political agenda.

Most people could probably give 2 shits on what brand of hardware is in their computer, as long as it does a good job of playing the games they like without problems.
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Or maybe I am not interested in playing Dying Light or another Far Cry knockoff?
 
I agree that in order to avoid the GPUs from throttling you should place a huge $1,000 fan in front of it while testing games.

hrdp-1103-02-o%2bchassis-dyno-testing%2bmuscle-motors.jpg



DynoRoomMufflerArt.jpg
 
Electricpower said:
I disagree with you, Brent.


Here is how ALL review sites should do FAIR reviews.

  • No benchmark or "measurement" tools can be used that is made by a specific video card vendor such as FCAT tools as an example unless open source.
  • ALL benchmark software MUST be open source so that any "foul" code that takes advantage of a vendor's specific hardware capabilities can be spotted and removed.
  • All benchmark software must adhere STRICTLY to the requirements of Mircosoft's DirectX and Khronos Groups OpenGL standards. None of this special sauce benchmarks that cater to specific hardware (refer to point 2).
  • Any games used for performance testing must not have any enhancements by Nvidia or AMD. This means all game with Nvidia's Gamworks, TWIMTP or AMD's Gaming Evolved will not be allowed. Only code that is written to STRICTLY follow the developer's code manuals of DriectX or OpenGL.



My suggestion is that you guys hire an in-house programmer to make benchmark software that tests DirectX performance capabilities and OpenGL capabilities of video cards. You must also post the source code of all your benchmarks so that we can guarantee that you or other review sites are not being paid by competitors to put in "poison" code or performance-enhancing code.
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Why would they do that. The current way they do testing shows exactly what you can expect in the games tested. A benchmark doesn't tell any of us what the maximum settings in BF4 will be and what kind of fps to expect. There is no other way to get this information. The only issue with this kind of testing is that it is time consuming and you can not test as many games as you could with canned benchmarks. If a popular game like BF4 is a gaming evolved title shouldn't it still be tested so we all know exactly how it will perform with various cards. As the bottom line is finding out what you can expect to get playing X video game with Y graphics card and not what you get playing Z benchmark with Y graphics card. I don't play benchmarks but for those that do there are sites for that. As for the games they are what they are, whether the game devs, AMD or NVidia do whatever they do to them. So [H]ardocp tells us exactly what we can expect right now in reality and not in some special magical place where gameworks/twimtbp/gaming evolved does not exist.
 
Actually this does bring up a good point. The open bench testing method is just stupid, use a case please and not an expensive one, a fairly generic one that is average.

Also with the whole I use my Vid card for gaming on a TV, can we get a SFF case test pleassseeeee. I bought a full tower and it was a stupid idea in hindsight, I want something small that can go on the shelf in front of it and play at 1080p.
 
shad0w4life said:
Actually this does bring up a good point. The open bench testing method is just stupid, use a case please and not an expensive one, a fairly generic one that is average.
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And be consistent, use the same average mid tower for cards that are intended in that environment. Notice how this site was planning to test Nano in a small case? WTF? Why only that card? Either test all cards in an appropriate case or don't do any of them that way.

Oh but I forgot this site is the paradigm of "real world" testing. Sure.
 
shad0w4life said:
Actually this does bring up a good point. The open bench testing method is just stupid, use a case please and not an expensive one, a fairly generic one that is average.

Also with the whole I use my Vid card for gaming on a TV, can we get a SFF case test pleassseeeee. I bought a full tower and it was a stupid idea in hindsight, I want something small that can go on the shelf in front of it and play at 1080p.
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I thought the point of using an open air case was to remove the case as a factor. There is no way for a reviewer to accurately duplicate every user environment. the idea is to accurately measure against a known measure. If all video cards are tested in the same open air environment you can easily compare how one does against the others.

I will agree that i the case of the nano what we need to see are small case comparisons against other cards you might choose instead, but only because this is a very niche device.

No matter what case they choose you will complain, its too big, its too small, it has too many fans, not enough fans, and it would be never ending.

I don't think it is a bad idea to also provide some tempatures from some sort of standard case, but I wouldn't want that to be the primary testing platform
 
Does any site run a card for 5 min to test a game then shut down the PC, let the card cool, turn the PC back on and repeat this 10 times for every game or do they just keep going with the tests one after another while reviewing? Every site now posts power and temp numbers, are those done in 5 minutes?

I think the concern over cold cards is not realistic.
 
rinaldo00 said:
Does any site run a card for 5 min to test a game then shut down the PC, let the card cool, turn the PC back on and repeat this 10 times for every game or do they just keep going with the tests one after another while reviewing? Every site now posts power and temp numbers, are those done in 5 minutes?

I think the concern over cold cards is not realistic.
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Depends on how long the break is between rounds. It takes just a minute or two for a card to drop back to idle temps from full load temps, so even going back to the desktop, label the output files and move on to the next thing you want to do is often enough to make it a "cold" card for purposes of the next test.
 
§kynet;1041847405 said:
And be consistent, use the same average mid tower for cards that are intended in that environment. Notice how this site was planning to test Nano in a small case? WTF? Why only that card? Either test all cards in an appropriate case or don't do any of them that way.

Oh but I forgot this site is the paradigm of "real world" testing. Sure.
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AMDs marketing saying that the Nano is the mini ITX card to get for 4k with SFF cases is why they were going to do that. Which is actually giving AMD the benefit of the doubt, AMD is the ones that said this card is for a niche market and that the price is right. If AMD marketing is going to talk the talk then they should be able to walk the walk or get called out for it. It doesn't get any more "real world" then actually testing it exactly in AMDs intended use of the card. If its worth $650 it will run circles around the 970 [H]ard got their hands.
 
Brent.. It would be nice to see you revisit the 290x as to compare the 2013 ref model to a 2015 non-ref model to show how well they fix the throttle issues and where AMD has gained some of it performance from.

but also I guess the 390/390x would also showcase just how well they fix the issues ..
 
c@Nc3r said:
AMDs marketing saying that the Nano is the mini ITX card to get for 4k with SFF cases is why they were going to do that. Which is actually giving AMD the benefit of the doubt, AMD is the ones that said this card is for a niche market and that the price is right. If AMD marketing is going to talk the talk then they should be able to walk the walk or get called out for it. It doesn't get any more "real world" then actually testing it exactly in AMDs intended use of the card. If its worth $650 it will run circles around the 970 [H]ard got their hands.
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WTF are you even talking about. Does [H] need to be told exactly how to test the card otherwise open bench it is? Also go read some reviews Nano in a small case is doing very well but does even better in an open bench setting, like this site uses.

Sounds very much like you don't care about consistency of testing and want to cherry pick depending on the hardware.
 
§kynet;1041847518 said:
WTF are you even talking about. Does [H] need to be told exactly how to test the card otherwise open bench it is? Also go read some reviews Nano in a small case is doing very well but does even better in an open bench setting, like this site uses.

Sounds very much like you don't care about consistency of testing and want to cherry pick depending on the hardware.
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AMD said its worth $650 dollars in a specific niche situation. [H]ard was going to test in that situation because the fact is in any other situation the card fails. Its not a bad card but at $650 its laughable vs the competition and that's fact.

From Anandtech
"In the end then the R9 Nano is a mixed bag for potential buyers. Its $650 price tag is without a doubt steep compared to the R9 Fury X and GTX 980 Ti, but in its niche of Mini-ITX cards it’s the card to beat, and that will give AMD the room they need to charge that price. On the other hand as great as R9 Nano’s power consumption and energy efficiency are, unless you also need the small size it doesn’t do enough to set itself apart from cheaper products like the GTX 980."

So only in the Mini-ITX is it worth the price. So real world testing it in a Mini-ITX situation is what [H]ard was going to do. Put it in an SFF and test vs the competition how great its power usage, thermals, and performance really is. Open air testing is fine when companies don't make stupid comments about how great there card is in a tiny case with no air flow which is what all SFF are. AMD said their card is worth $650 because it is so wonderful when you put it in a SFF. That is the only thing it has going for it because in every other situation its competitors from Nvidia and AMD are better than it. So why is it not okay to test it in that situation. Honestly its the only testing that makes sense, since looking at the specs its obviously not worth $650 compared to a 980ti or even the fury x. So the only way to make it look good is to test in its own special niche.

Just so you understand where I am coming from, I currently have a 270x that was holding me over till this gen from AMD. I haven't had an Nvidia card since the 8800gtx because I don't like the BS they pull and I vote for change with my wallet. I have had bought 6 cards from AMD since the 8800gtx including the 4850 and 6970 I got when they first released. I had very high hopes for AMD this gen and they have not delivered and people should not be defending this crap. The cards would all be great cards at lower price points and there in lies the issue. All of this gen from AMD is overpriced. So much that I am thinking about getting my first NVidia card in almost a decade(although that xfx 290x 8gb card for $300 almost had me before they upped the price). AMD this gen is pulling a con. Their cards aren't worth the MSRP when compared to NVidia cards right now. Its sad but its the truth and the Nano is the worst offender of the bunch.
 
§kynet;1041847405 said:
And be consistent, use the same average mid tower for cards that are intended in that environment. Notice how this site was planning to test Nano in a small case? WTF? Why only that card? Either test all cards in an appropriate case or don't do any of them that way.

Oh but I forgot this site is the paradigm of "real world" testing. Sure.
Click to expand...

The Nano is a small card and was made for Mini ITX cases. You wouldn't buy one to put in a tower when there's bigger faster and cheaper cards for that. I don't think most of the other cards would fit in a mini case. It should be tested in what it was made for.
 
Brent_Justice said:
This is an important topic, and should not be swept under the rug, and something to look for in all reviews in regards to NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. It makes a big difference in the performance results shown. When video cards can dynamically change their clock speed, and it can vary as much as 200MHz in 30 minutes, you betcha it can make a big difference. It is easy to inflate results, it is harder and takes more time to show proper results.
Click to expand...

I definitely agree. I actually wasn't sure that H ran through warm-up procedures on the GPU tests because that isn't listed on the Test Setup pages that I've seen. Have you guys been doing this since variable clocks were introduced on GPUs?
 
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