R9 Nano Reviews Tip Up, But Will Be Not Too Useful For Linux Gamers Right Now

[phoronix]

Phoronix: R9 Nano Reviews Tip Up, But Will Be Not Too Useful For Linux Gamers Right Now

At the end of August AMD paper-launched the Radeon R9 Nano with a $650+ USD price-tag for this high-performance graphics card aimed at mini-ITX owners. The review embargo lifted this morning on the R9 Nano so there's a lot of people talking about it this morning, under Windows...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=AMD-R9-Nano-Reviews

[duby229]

There is one thing Kyle Bennett said that I agree with and that is that protectionism never works. Publicly defending yourself is perfectly fine, And personally I think AMD should seriously step up their game in that regard. But not sending review samples was definitely the wrong thing to do. It's true AMD does in fct get unfair bad reviews that are mostly lies. But what they should be doing in those cases is refuting the conclusions and pointing out specific lies.

What they are doing by not sending review samples is discrediting themselves. But what they should be doing is discrediting unfair reviews.

EDIT: I'll bet these same review sites are still going to review this hardware as soon as they can get the card. So AMD has postponed the unfair reviews. They are still going to have to refute those unfair reviews.

[schmidtbag]

There is one thing Kyle Bennett said that I agree with and that is that protectionism never works. Publicly defending yourself is perfectly fine, And personally I think AMD should seriously step up their game in that regard. But not sending review samples was definitely the wrong thing to do. It's true AMD does in fct get unfair bad reviews that are mostly lies. But what they should be doing in those cases is refuting the conclusions and pointing out specific lies.

What they are doing by not sending review samples is discrediting themselves. But what they should be doing is discrediting unfair reviews.

It depends. There are a lot of sources out there who aren't just biased but actually skew results. Tom's Hardware comes to mind, but I'm pretty sure Anandtech has done this before (though they don't seem to be repeat offenders).

In the eyes of the manufacturer, there's really no point in sending something that they know will be reviewed poorly. That's why they don't send anything to phoronix - it WILL get a bad review. Sites like bit-tech and guru3D are pretty un-biased, their testing is thorough, and they also measure more things than most review sites. So even if the overall performance isn't the best, they still take into account other things that distinguish the product's value.

That being said, I personally like phoronix due to honest results and for getting extensive linux measurements, and, for showing things like "performance-per-watt" and "performance-per-dollar" which I'm really surprised other sites don't use, because that's a really cool metric IMO. But, aside from AMD's lacking linux performance, phoronix doesn't go into a lot of depth explaining the product. The thing is, phoronix CAN'T focus on that, because many of the advertised features don't work, so it'd be false advertising and AMD doesn't want that kind of attention.

[hoohoo]

What I'm going to say is not meant as flamage or trollage...

AMD does not care about (or cannot afford to care about) desktop Linux. AMD cares about Windows and maybe MacOS. You can see this in the lack of performance and support for desktop Linux. It's sad but true.

AMD has no incentive to send Phoronix or any other Linux site a review sample.

[duby229]

It depends. There are a lot of sources out there who aren't just biased but actually skew results. Tom's Hardware comes to mind, but I'm pretty sure Anandtech has done this before (though they don't seem to be repeat offenders).

In the eyes of the manufacturer, there's really no point in sending something that they know will be reviewed poorly. That's why they don't send anything to phoronix - it WILL get a bad review. Sites like bit-tech and guru3D are pretty un-biased, their testing is thorough, and they also measure more things than most review sites. So even if the overall performance isn't the best, they still take into account other things that distinguish the product's value.

That being said, I personally like phoronix due to honest results and for getting extensive linux measurements, and, for showing things like "performance-per-watt" and "performance-per-dollar" which I'm really surprised other sites don't use, because that's a really cool metric IMO. But, aside from AMD's lacking linux performance, phoronix doesn't go into a lot of depth explaining the product. The thing is, phoronix CAN'T focus on that, because many of the advertised features don't work, so it'd be false advertising and AMD doesn't want that kind of attention.

Yeah I like Phoronix articles too. A bit negative I think but lately as more and more games become available they have improved a lot. I just hope that game developers making linux ports think ahead far enough to work with michael to make them benchmark friendly. Of course Michael is entitled to his own opinion primarily because he backs it up.

[discordian]

@schmidtbag:
Actually sending samples to reviewers will skew the results. There are quite a few review sites making a (rich) living by selling off the samples and companies like Samsung are really keen on sending out tons of devices. Seems that the more "simple" (not to say incompetent) those reviews are, the more popular the sites writing them

[vortex]

@schmidtbag:
Actually sending samples to reviewers will skew the results. There are quite a few review sites making a (rich) living by selling off the samples and companies like Samsung are really keen on sending out tons of devices. Seems that the more "simple" (not to say incompetent) those reviews are, the more popular the sites writing them

It is worse than that, the ONLY reason some sites are around is because they get the free stuff. Then, they reward those sending in free stuff by spouting out stuff that makes the company look good. However, when there is some competition involved, then, they give the best review to the ones that send them the most free stuff.
Then that free stuff turns into ad revenue because they get more clicks for reviews.
A vicious circle.

This is why there is no reason at all for truly independent sites to whine about not getting free stuff.

This site is a prime example of always crying about not getting free stuff, when Linux is .0000001% of the target audience for (in this case) gamers.
It is like a broken record, and should be stopped, it drags the site down.

[schmidtbag]

@schmidtbag:
Actually sending samples to reviewers will skew the results. There are quite a few review sites making a (rich) living by selling off the samples and companies like Samsung are really keen on sending out tons of devices. Seems that the more "simple" (not to say incompetent) those reviews are, the more popular the sites writing them

A few things to note:
1. Sending out review samples (or maybe even engineering samples) isn't really that expensive for OEMs. The vast majority of what you're paying for are the engineers and the factories. The actual product isn't worth much, so I don't think a company like AMD really cares about their product being sold off (not sure if you were implying that).
2. The sites with a good reputation don't sell off their GPUs so quickly, if ever. Some of them will keep their review samples for years, due to needing to benchmark new games.
3. As long as a product functions well under linux, sending review samples to phoronix is basically a constant advertisement. Michael benchmarks the same products for YEARS, which I actually really appreciate.

@hoohoo
You're probably right, AMD doesn't have much interest in the linux desktop. They do, however, have a big interest in linux servers. OpenCL performance for AMD is fantastic.

[Xaero_Vincent]

It probably makes sense why AMD doesn't send review samples of their Radeon cards to Phoronix. They know Michael will give them honest benchmarking and if they fall flat due to bad drivers, Michael will flat out tell it like it is.

Of course, I suppose it kind of makes sense why AMD isn't too interested in attempting to re-work their driver OpenGL implementation when they have more pressing things, like how to restructure their company to avoid bankruptcy. It's a sad thing because AMD is a good open-source patron but in a way it makes sense for AMD to put their resources in the most dominate gaming platform in their current state of affairs.

[Adarion]

Without testing the R9 Nano myself under Linux, I can pretty much already tell you that it will be a waste right now.

I'd call this bad journalism. If you want to be a serious HW reviewer go test ist - then write something about it. (Regardless what past experiences we had with the free stack supporting ultra-new-HW or experiences with fglrx.)
And eventually even suggesting the 3.5 GB (etc. etc.) GTX 970. Wow.