The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Competition
One of the issues in testing an unusual card like the R9 Nano is figuring out what to test it against. By and large most of the video cards we receive are, well, large, which is suitable for evaluating high performance cards, but presents a bit more of a problem when looking for something to compare the R9 Nano to.
Anticipating this problem, AMD offered to send us a competitive NVIDIA card as well, ASUS’s GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini. As a matter of policy we typically don’t accept rival cards from a vendor in this fashion in order to avoid testing pre-arranged (and contrived) scenarios. However in this case we had already been looking into NVIDIA Mini-ITX cards for this review and had previously settled on trying to get one of the GTX 970 minis, so we opted to break from standard policy and accept the card. As a result we want to be transparent about accepting an NVIDIA card from AMD.
Left: AMD Radeon R9 Nano. Right: ASUS GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini
The Test
Meanwhile after some early experimentation on how to best evaluate the R9 Nano, we have opted to break from tradition a little bit here as well and test the card in two rigs. For our published numbers and for the purposes of apples-to-apples comparisons we are using our standard AnandTech GPU Testbed, a full-tower ATX system.
However in order to also test the R9 Nano in cozier conditions more fitting of its small size, we have also run a limited selection of cards within a second testbed as a control. Unfortunately we don’t have any true Mini-ITX systems around that are suitable for testing the R9 Nano, but for the next best thing we have turned to our frame capture workstation. Based on a Silverstone Sugo SG09 microATX case, this rig is built around a Core i7-3770 and typically houses our frame capture hardware for frame time analysis. For our testing we have pulled this out and set it up with some of our video cards in order to ensure that these cards operate similarly in cramped conditions.
The AnandTech microATX Video Capture Workstation w/R9 Nano
By and large the microATX case simply confirmed our results on our regular testbed after accounting for CPU differences, satisfying that testing in our larger regular testbed wasn’t unfairly impacting any of our major cards. However we’ll revisit the microATX case for our look at power, temperature, and noise.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: | AMD Radeon R9 Fury X ASUS STRIX R9 Fury AMD Radeon R9 Nano Club3D R9 390X 8GB royalQueen OC (Underclocked to 1050MHz) AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon R9 285 AMD Radeon HD 7970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 ASUS GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 355.82 AMD Catalyst Cat 15.201.1102 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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Gigaplex - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Because the Titan X is too big. This is a product that competes with the 970 mini in size (and efficiency to some extent) while being faster.RafaelHerschel - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Because people like me build small systems. I do have a 'performance' system, but even that system isn't that big. A lot of energy means a lot of heat. There are quite a few practical reasons for smaller systems, but perhaps the most important one is that it seems silly to build a behemoth for a few extra frames per second.ThomasS31 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Yet, still if I could save $150 just for going a bit bigger case, or a different structured case, that can host longer cards... I would go with the latter as save money. :)My point in "positioning".
ThomasS31 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
And ofc, I may get other benefits with that. Like not noisy like this (a good thing in a living room), and better temps.medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
5% faster than gtx 980 at 65% of 980Ti price.mapesdhs - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
The Nano and 980 Ti are the same price in the UK, with a particular model of 980 Ti being the far more sensible choice wrt performance.The Nano needs to be a lot cheaper to be worth bothering with. I'd rather use a larger case with a 980 Ti for the same cost, or a mini 970 since a product without HDMI 2.0 isn't suitable for 4K by default IMO.
Drumsticks - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I kind of like the Nano. Small form factor stuff is always interesting to me.Also, is there any chance that we can get a directx12 preview of the fury and high end Nvidia cards? Given results other places were seeing for the 390x, I'm REALLY interested.
digitalgriffin - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
This makes ZERO sense. Why buy now for DX12 performance when a good crop DX12 games are at least 1, 2 years off? (Due to adoption of windows 10 and development time). You would be an idiot to buy now.Wait for the refresh in about 12 -> 18 months and AMD to get HBM2, fix the lack of ROPs and drop the DP FP support that adds a lot of unneeded transistors (my guess)...if they are still in business.
TheinsanegamerN - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Not to mention, by the time DX12 becomes mainstream, these GPUs will be irrelevant. Like the first DX11 gpus, the geforce 400s. Sure, they work with modern DX11 titles, but they are too slow to be used in said games. nano, fury x, and maxwell will have the same issue.anubis44 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
DX12 games are not 1-2 years off, they're imminent, since porting can be done pretty well directly to DX12 from consoles now. All that's required is Windows 10, and Steam is reporting Win10 already has a 17% adoption rate after only 1 month! At this rate, every gamer on Steam will be running Win10 by Christmas.