The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTGRID Autosport
For the racing game in our benchmark suite we have Codemasters’ GRID Autosport. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, delivering realistic looking environments layered with additional graphical effects. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID Autosport includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty on lower-end cards but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world.
At 3840x2160 we see the R9 Nano only barely fall behind the R9 Fury, trailing it by less than a percent. Unfortunately R9 Nano can’t quite make 60fps here, which for AMD is limited to the R9 Fury X.
The problem for AMD here is that in lieu of hitting 60fps at 4K, the next best option is to drop down to 2560x1440, at which point AMD’s CPU limitations come into full force, allowing the GTX 980 to leapfrog the entire Fiji family. Ultimately this isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but it’s a greater problem for a luxury card like the R9 Nano.
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Qwertilot - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Also Intel's 35w quad cores seem to be getting rather fast nowadays, so overall system power/a very quiet CPU cooler is much easier to handle. Not many really tiny cases mind.Also maybe a question of if you want to go one fan for something with this much power draw - it can be tamed to very, very quiet by 2 fan designs.
mosu - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I wonder how Nvidia will manage HBM2 with no previous experience with HBM. Maybe TSMC will borrow some for them...nathanddrews - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Probably just fine seeing as they have been designing Pascal for a few years and they just began sampling a few months ago, meaning they likely have working chips in their labs right now. AMD managed fine with their first implementation. Intel seems to be doing well with their version of stacked memory. Samsung and Toshiba are also doing fine. No one would be bringing it to the consumer market if they didn't already have a good handle on it.Michael Bay - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I will be an asshole and remind everybody that there is _still_ no 960 review.MrSpadge - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
What exactly would you expect from an AT review now that can not already be found elsewhere? I know they said a review would be coming, but seriously.. let them focus on important topics.bill.rookard - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
You are absolutely right. On both points.Mikemk - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Really?extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
They SAID that there will not be a 960 review.Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Because the 960 was a poor product that made Nvidia look bad?D. Lister - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
No, because AT was understaffed and they kept delaying it, until they realised that they were so late (compared to other sites) that the meager hits their review would get, wouldn't be worth the effort that they would have to put in.As for your inability to find a review, allow me to assist:
https://www.google.com/search?q=960+review&rlz...