The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
Not unlike Crysis 3, this is another game where the R9 Nano is on guard against NVIDIA thanks to the sub-Fury performance. Overall performance is still plenty, cracking 90fps at 2560x1440, but none the less it trails the power-similar GTX 980. The upside for AMD here is that for the size-similar GTX 970 Mini, the R9 Nano is still easily in the lead.
As for minimums, not unlike Shadow of Mordor, the R9 Nano is in a tough spot. Even with the advantage of Mantle, it always delivers slightly lower minimums than the GTX 980.
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zodiacfml - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
Yawnn.. It's not bad till you get to the price. Fury X now has better value as you get watercooling.paravorheim - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
"Meanwhile Fury X’s massive power headroom has been significantly curtailed, from a TBP of 275W (and in practice a cap much higher than that) to a much harder TBP limit of 175W for the R9 Nano."You say TBP here, is that supposed to be "TDP"? I saw it in a few other places as well.
SunnyNW - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
TBP (Thermal Board Power) vs TDP (Thermal Design Power)The0ne - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
Bin parts for power and cooling efficiency instead of a good design isn't something to rave about. It should be something to write off of because, lets faced it, nothing is different from the previous designs.medi03 - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
Yeah, "previous designs". Like 290x that beat that day Titan at a fraction of price.Gnomer87 - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
While an improvement in the efficiency segment, this card still loses out to Nvidias alternatives, most notably the older 980. The 980 performs only marginally worse, while having a smaller price tag.It's still a walkover, if I were to replace my hd 7950b today, it'd still be nvidia. This is a problem, if AMD doesn't get their shit together, they're going bankrupt.
And that means monopoly.
Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
Is there a 980 in this form factor? If not, then it doesn't lose because there is an AMD card that outperforms the 980 for less money as far as I know.IlllI - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
love the nano, can't justify the price. up until now i thought it was going to be $499. the Fury X i can justify the price b/c you can look at it as having a $100 liquid cooler included. but for the nano to be the same price as the Fury X.. I just can't.gw74 - Wednesday, September 16, 2015 - link
AMD_Roy twitter account has been deleted!JonnyDough - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
Wow, lots of crap in the comment's section. I'll post my own. Smaller is better. The trend of hotter, louder, heavier, and more energy guzzling cards was terrible. Not only did it KILL some of my PCI-E slots after awhile from the sheer weight of the card, but most of the old hot running cards are now dead and don't work. It's nice to see a nano card that can fit in an ITX case comfortably. Here's to LAN parties of the future, and more room on/under desks!