The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTCrysis 3
Still one of our most punishing benchmarks, Crysis 3 needs no introduction. With Crysis 3, Crytek has gone back to trying to kill computers and still holds the “most punishing shooter” title in our benchmark suite. Only in a handful of setups can we even run Crysis 3 at its highest (Very High) settings, and that’s still without AA. Crysis 1 was an excellent template for the kind of performance required to drive games for the next few years, and Crysis 3 looks to be much the same for 2015.
As with Battlefield 4, the R9 Nano solidly secures its place relative to the Fury lineup, delivering 90-95% of the performance of the R9 Fury X and R9 Fury respectively. This pushes the card’s performance below 60fps even at 3840x2160 low quality, but it’s more than enough for 2560x1440.
However once we do reach 2560, we find that the R9 Nano is now tied with the GTX 980 at just over 65fps. As we mentioned on the last page the GTX 980 is the biggest threat to the R9 Nano from an efficiency standpoint, and this is why. Limiting our scope to just mini cards however finds the R9 Nano comfortably ahead of the GTX 970 Mini.
Meanwhile Crysis 3 is a great example of why AMD is poking at themselves by comparing the R9 Nano to the GTX 290X. The card is little more than half the length of AMD’s former flagship and yet delivers 22% better performance while drawing much less power (more on that later). In doing so AMD is clearly picking a low point to make their gains look better, but at the same time it shows that yes, AMD can in fact improve over R9 290X on performance, power, and noise all at the same time.
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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.