The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTCivilization: Beyond Earth
Shifting gears from action to strategy, we have Civilization: Beyond Earth, the latest in the Civilization series of strategy games. Civilization is not quite as GPU-demanding as some of our action games, but at Ultra quality it can still pose a challenge for even high-end video cards. Meanwhile as the first Mantle-enabled strategy title Civilization gives us an interesting look into low-level API performance on larger scale games, along with a look at developer Firaxis’s interesting use of split frame rendering with Mantle to reduce latency rather than improving framerates.
Not unlike Crysis 3, this is another game where the R9 Nano is on guard against NVIDIA thanks to the sub-Fury performance. Overall performance is still plenty, cracking 90fps at 2560x1440, but none the less it trails the power-similar GTX 980. The upside for AMD here is that for the size-similar GTX 970 Mini, the R9 Nano is still easily in the lead.
As for minimums, not unlike Shadow of Mordor, the R9 Nano is in a tough spot. Even with the advantage of Mantle, it always delivers slightly lower minimums than the GTX 980.
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looncraz - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Indeed. At $200 cheaper I'd consider buying two of them, rather than none.The lack of a DL-DVI port, though, would probably limit me to just one.
Alexvrb - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
Agreed I think it's a great compact card but for their sake I hope they drop the price gradually as yields improve. Personally I will be waiting to see what happens with HBM2, I'm hoping that with the improvements in density they'll be able to push it into mid-range cards as well next time.Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I didn't see much about DX 12 and how it should counter all the energy efficiency stuff that is being pretty much obsessed about. The conclusion, for instance, talks so much about energy efficiency when in fact the real point of this card is not performance per watt but the form factor.I don't see anything about Ashes — not even a word about why it wasn't included.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
"I don't see anything about Ashes — not even a word about why it wasn't included."We don't include non-release software in our GPU evaluations. Ashes isn't a complete game, it's still an alpha.
AS118 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I feel like that's totally valid. Until multiple finalized DX12 benches come out, I don't feel that we can really understand how current cards will work with DX12.Oxford Guy - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
It still merits a mention, even if it's just to say that.AS118 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I agree. In fact, this review seems as honest as every other Nano one. They all say "it's niche" and "it's too expensive for the performance if you don't need the small size, and regardless of what Roy said, the sites that were given a card are quite critical of the Nano, and most recommend getting a bigger, faster, cheaper card instead if you don't need something tiny.They say "It's a great product, but only for people that really must have the strongest mini-card".
RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Wreckage = trolls like Rollo, but minus the facts.Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Whats the Roy Taylor incident? Im not aware.at80eighty - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
If there's anyone championing the cause of objectivity, it's you