The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTGrand Theft Auto V
The latest edition of Rockstar’s venerable series of open world action games, Grand Theft Auto V was originally released to the last-gen consoles back in 2013. However thanks to a rather significant facelift for the current-gen consoles and PCs, along with the ability to greatly turn up rendering distances and add other features like MSAA and more realistic shadows, the end result is a game that is still among the most stressful of our benchmarks when all of its features are turned up. Furthermore, in a move rather uncharacteristic of most open world action games, Grand Theft Auto also includes a very comprehensive benchmark mode, giving us a great chance to look into the performance of an open world action game.
On a quick note about settings, as Grand Theft Auto V doesn't have pre-defined settings tiers, I want to quickly note what settings we're using. For "Very High" quality we have all of the primary graphics settings turned up to their highest setting, with the exception of grass, which is at its own very high setting. Meanwhile 4x MSAA is enabled for direct views and reflections. This setting also involves turning on some of the advanced redering features - the game's long shadows, high resolution shadows, and high definition flight streaming - but not increasing the view distance any further.
Otherwise for "High" quality we take the same basic settings but turn off all MSAA, which significantly reduces the GPU rendering and VRAM requirements.
Closing things out with one of our most strenuous games, we have a mixed bag for the R9 Nano. Performance relative to the R9 Fury X and R9 Fury is ending on a high note, with the R9 Nano trailing the other Fiji cards by around 10% and 4% respectively. The R9 Nano continues to impress in its ability to deliver performance so close to the R9 Fury, and games like GTA V are prime examples of this.
The catch for AMD here is that on an absolute basis, GTA really forces you to either compromise on quality or resolution if you want to hit 60fps. In this case we’d need to drop all the way to 1920x1080 for 60fps on the Nano, and this eats away at AMD’s intrinsic advantage over NVIDIA where AMD’s performance drops off more slowly with higher resolutions. As a result the power-similar GTX 980 is close in performance to the R9 Nano at 2560x1440 and takes a small lead at 1920x1080.
Otherwise AMD at least looks solid on a size-wise comparison. The R9 Nano holds a comfortable lead over the GTX 970 Mini, ranging from 12% at 1920x1080 up to 31% at 3840x2160 high quality.
99th percentile framerates however are simply not in AMD’s favor here. Despite the fact that the GTX 980 only has 4GB of VRAM as well, the R9 Nano simply can’t catch up to 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).