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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
284 Comments
View All Comments
jay401 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
The only thing wrong with the Nano and the rest of the Fury lineup is the price. They should all have debuted $50 cheaper than they did.theNiZer - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
My thoughts exactly :)HisDivineOrder - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Nice to see that Anandtech didn't mind getting their card with whatever promises they had to make to get it. I'm reminded of the AMD Red section that this site once had and I begin to wonder if that payment scheme ever really ended or just went "underground?"garbagedisposal - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Jesus Christ, you are one especially rabid and unpleasant person. Please don't comment on this website.Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
If you think this site is pro-AMD you clearly don't read the reviews, like the review of Broadwell that included like 8 slow APUs and not a single FX chip at a reasonable clockspeed (like 4.5 GHz), even though FX, not APUs, offers the best desktop performance from AMD.Creig - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Looks like we have a new generation of Wounded [H] Children on our hands.Will Robinson - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Seeing that Tech Report's Graphics forum used to be sponsored by Nvidia....I guess it went to the same place hmm?eanazag - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
I want one, but not at that price. They need a version of the nano at $300-50 that smacks the 970 mini from cheek to cheek. Though with the whole Fiji series I am disappointed it maxes out at 4 GB of VRAM.Anyhow, I would be interested in the best performance a vendor could offer in a single slot cooler. Not the usual duds that come with a single slot cooler. Ooorrrrr okay performance with a water cooler, when I say okay performance I'm thinking what usually comes in at the $180+-$225 price range.
colonelclaw - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
As someone who is currently heavily invested in Nvidia tech, I would just like to say well done to AMD, this a great (little) product!980 nano please :)
nathanddrews - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Probably not a 980 Nano, but a 1080 Nano is more likely. This is the future of GPUs. Next year we get FinFET and HBM2 from NVIDIA and ATI. It's only a matter of time before both AMD and NVIDIA have full lineups of SFF GPUs. Why pay more for all that PCB space if you don't need it?