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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Will Robinson - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Yup,I agree.Dammed with faint praise is the best you'll see for AMD cards there.
Their comments section is an NV fanboy fest led by Chuckula/Chizow and approved by TR.
silverblue - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Semiaccurate would've most likely gone the same way had Charlie not locked it all down to subscribers. The only downside is the lack of a daily drashek fix.I think wccftech is another of chizow's haunts, but don't quote me on that.
Gasaraki88 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Oh come on. AMD didn't give a card to Kyle from HardOCP also. So you're saying all the review sites out there are bias against AMD?jardows2 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
After reading several recent H's reviews of AMD products, where their testing shows the AMD card slightly slower than the nVidia product, then the conclusion stating the AMD product is a piece of trash and not worth anyone's money, without any of their own testing data backing up such a harsh conclusion, I don't blame AMD for not sending them a card.Alexvrb - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Yeah I kind of saw that one coming. I still read H sometimes, but you really have to draw your own conclusions and keep the salt handy. With TR, it's not only what they report, it's what they refuse to report. It's far from the worse, but there's a pattern.AT is my favorite overall, anyway.
InquisitorDavid - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
I don't know what your level of 'recent' is, but the R9 380 and R9 390x both got decent reviews. The 390x got a silver award, basically being touted as a cheaper, more power-hungry 980 with more VRAM (truth), and the R9 380 was given a Gold award because it performed better than a 960 at the same price range.The Fury got no awards for being on-par with the stock 980, while costing more. They saw the 390x having better value (thus the silver award), despite the increased power draw.
If anything, AMD has been getting a lot of crap because they've been losing for a while now. Less efficiency, rebrands, and all. OC'ing the 390x gets it to the same level as a 980 reference, and will consume about 200w more. It's cheaper, however, and we all know that's what AMD has been doing for a while now - value for money. It's the only battlefield they can claim any sort of real victory on. With the Fury and Nano, that gets completely thrown out the window.
The Fury X was hamstrung by the release of the 980ti (which was clearly a blocking maneuver by NV). Without the 980ti, it would've been the king of value. The "overclocker's dream" statement was still a bald-faced lie.
althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
If prices are equal and the AMD card is slightly slower, then the AMD card *IS* worthless. Who would pay the same money to get slightly worse performance and use more power? Only idiots.althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
Anybody that hasn't been pro-nVidia for the past few years has been doing it wrong. AMD have been using more power to offer less performance (at similar prices) - they have been behind for *ages* now. They still are, but at least it looks like HBM will bring the performance needed (next generation probably, it's obviously not there yet).anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link
I like TechReport, and find their coverage of tech very detailed, but yes, I have to agree with you that they've essentially been portraying AMD as just not quite as good as nVidia, yet all the while minimizing or ignoring the Green Goblin's dubious business practices ($200 G-Sync tax) and misrepresentation of their products (the 3.5GB GTX970 that somehow didn't completely torpedo that card's recommendation).Frenetic Pony - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I've looked at Tech Report, fuck Tech Report. None of their tests seem to reflect anyone elses, I tried a few of the graphs and they're literally a statistical outlier (at least for my quick tests).