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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gw74 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
there is no evidence or reason to believe the 3.5GB was anything but an honest mistake, and it was all handled admirably by Nvidia once discovered.You are not the arbiter of what is and is not dead to me, and your condescending attempt to explain its consequences to me is not required.
The point about AMD is that their actions reveal untrustworthiness. Buying a product from someone untrustworthy can have all sorts of negative consequences, whatever the apparent quality or value at the time of purchase.
Pipe down. Have a seat. Have a Diet Coke.
RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
"there is no evidence or reason to believe the 3.5GB was anything but an honest mistake, and it was all handled admirably by Nvidia once discovered."Yes, the engineers accidentally designed the card with 3.5GB of VRAM and gimped ROPs. Sure, it was just an accident. Not only that, after it was found out, NV didn't change the specifications for ROPs and VRAM on the boxes of newly produced GTX970 cards. GTX970 doesn't have full speed GDDR5 memory and doesn't have the full stack of ROP performance of GTX980 card. Therefore, it's not a true 4GB GDDR5 card because the last 0.5GB operate at only 28GB/sec which is basically useless.
"and it was all handled admirably by Nvidia once discovered."
NV did absolutely nothing. They showed 0 remorse. It was AIBs that accepted returns. NV didn't provide a return program for existing customers, didn't offer discount coupons for future NV GPUs, they didn't offer a game coupon, they literally did nothing. In fact, they tried to cover it under the rug with PR mouthpieces from sites like PCPerspective how 3.5GB of VRAM doesn't matter.
"The point about AMD is that their actions reveal untrustworthiness. Buying a product from someone untrustworthy can have all sorts of negative consequences, whatever the apparent quality or value at the time of purchase."
What so untrustworthy about AMD's Nano or AMD's graphics cards? The Nano beats GTX970 mini by at least 30%, just like AMD stated. AMD never aimed or claimed to have the Nano being a price/performance king.
gw74 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
This has nothing to do with engineering, the mistakes were in marketing. Nvidia self-evidently showed remorse by admitting and correcting the mistakes and facilitating refunds with retailers. Nvidia don't produce reference 970s, the drop-in card manufacturers do, so which boxes do you mean?For what is untrustworthy try reading my comments.
Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
You should read his rebuttal since clearly you didn't.gw74 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
who should read who's rebuttal?RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
@gm74,Even if you state that marketing is 100% at fault, which is hard to believe, NV is still responsible for how the product is marketed after the facts came out. It was AIBs that agreed to accept the cards back, not Nvidia. It would be akin to AT&T or Verizon accepting returns of flawed Blackberry phones but Blackberry not offering any refunds directly. NV never offered direct refunds, never issues any game vouchers or discounts as remorse. Stating online that the are sorry does nothing. It's empty PR.
The way professional companies deal with mistakes is completely different than how NV handles it. After the disastrous Bumpgate scandal, the way they treated GTX970 fiasco is shockingly poor.
Mazda after they made a mistake:
"Mazda is offering to buy back most of the 3,551 RX-8 rotary-engine sports cars sold since the July launch because engine power is as much as 5% less than advertised — an important difference to sports car enthusiasts.
Those who tell Mazda they will keep their cars get free scheduled maintenance for the four-year, 50,000-mile warranty period, plus $500."
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/autos/2003-09...
What did Nvidia do in particular for GTX970 owners? Nothing, 0, zilch, nada.
You state that NV isn't responsible for what goes on the marketing boxes of its AIBs? Are you serious. So after NV was caught lying about specifications, did it tell its AIBs to change the specs on their newly printed boxes? If not, they are still lying to consumers and they are OK with AIBs misrepresenting the data.
Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Im not going to get into the whole debate, but since we're clearly being pedantic here. It was a 4gb card. It absolutely has 4gb of vram. They never advertised it as "4gb (but with .5gb of slower ram!)", so if you want to get on them for that, go for it. But claiming its a 3.5 gb card when it *is* a 4gb card is just as ridiculous as any of the other assertions you're getting on him for making.Oxford Guy - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
You're not being pedantic. You're being wrong. A lie of omission is a form of lie. 28 GB/s VRAM performance, half that of a midrange card from 2007, is NOT a reasonable expectation for an enthusiast-level card or even any card with DDR5.gw74 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
it's not a lie of omission.anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link
Of course it's a misrepresentation. Nobody who reads '4GB' will assume that the last .5GB is so slow that it's essentially necessary to limit game textures to 3.5GB or the game will be suddenly stuttering and the card will be brought to its knees. Give me a break. That's like me marketing a gold bar as 1KG of 'pure gold', but in fact, it's only 750grams of 24K gold, and 250 grams of 10K gold. It's willfully and deliberately deceptive, and if you don't say so, you're complicit in their scam.