First off, thanks for that section regarding DX12. I've been wondering why different reports were coming out regarding both AMD and Nvidia's compatibility and which fully supports DX12, and this clarification that neither *fully* support it but rather focused on different aspects makes sense.
Regarding the card - that's too bad. This is not the card AMD needed. Performance ranging somewhere from less to equal to a 980 Ti, higher power consumption - in part due to the pump - reliance on water, poor overclocking, no HDMI 2.0. Unfortunately, these are the things people will carry forward, not that AMD brought us HBM.
It's main advantage is it's performance relative to it's physical size - it's essentially the card I was waiting for to throw into the M1 - especially if one is willing to get rid of the AIO and go custom loop. What remains to be seen at this point is
1) Will the air cooled Fury be a short card, providing a better option for those who want air and custom loop solutions?
2) Will the R9 Nano end up being the best option for SFF builds
It's pretty clear to me my 980 won't be going anywhere until Arctic Islands/Pascal.
About the cooler, I like liquid AIO coolers, but couldn't this pose a real issue for people who want to build Crossfire Fury X card systems without doing a full custom loop? Some cases might support putting two, maybe three of the rads in the front of a case, that might work, but I would think the options are limited, and more so if you have other AIO cooled components and rads already in case spots. Not to mention you would have tubing going everywhere to get to available fan mounts! This design might work for people building a complete custom loop if the existing rad could be removed and a user can more easily attach their own cooling. Certainly will be interesting to see how people incorporate them into Crossfire builds.
AMDs philosophy behind this is that if you are using more than 3 (realistically 2), you'd be going custom - whether that's purchased by yourself or comes pre-packaged from a AIB - or going with the standard air cooled Fury's and putting a block on those.
Just for reference, they talked about it in this video:
https://youtu.be/BWbRSHtHI6c?t=100
