The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTMiddle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Our next benchmark is Monolith’s popular open-world action game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. One of our current-gen console multiplatform titles, Shadow of Mordor is plenty punishing on its own, and at Ultra settings it absolutely devours VRAM, showcasing the knock-on effect that current-gen consoles have on VRAM requirements.
Both of AMD’s Fury cards have handled Shadow of Mordor well in the past, and R9 Nano is no exception. The R9 Nano ends up trailing the R9 Fury X and R9 Fury by around 13% and 7% respectively, not too far off from their respective overall averages. Otherwise compared to NVIDIA’s offerings the R9 Nano clearly trails the similarly priced GTX 980 Ti, but enjoys a very comfortable margin over the likes of the GTX 980 and GTX 970 Mini.
Minimum framerates on the other hand also inherit the other Fiji cards’ weaknesses. AMD actually doesn’t fare too poorly here, however the toll of being slower than the R9 Fury doesn’t do the R9 Nano any favors. Below 3840x2160 the R9 Nano feels the pinch of the GTX 980 and GTX 970 Mini, falling behind these cards.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
284 Comments
View All Comments
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
And as someone who has been a long time TR reader and has met him multiple times, I am in complete disagreement with you. His testing is some of the most detailed and accurate that I know.I have little faith in your ability to determine someone's subliminal gifts.
Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Unfortunately a great many people are incapable of projecting their own biases onto someone else. Tomshardware and Anandtech have been accused of being pro one team or the other for years.I remember an article i read a few years back, i wish i could remember the guys name, but he was chief editor for one of the macintosh magazines, and he was talking about how he got so fed up with users because if he said literally anything negative about the product he would get his email inbox blown up with accusations of being a MS nutswinger, and fellating Bill Gates, and various other things. He gave an example of one of the ipods which he gave like a 90%+ review, and the ONLY negative things he said was that the casing was shiny, so it took fingerprints really well and was hard to keep looking clean, and that he wished the battery life was a little bit longer. He said he got the most vitriolic and ridiculous emails he'd ever seen.
The problem is people want confirmation that they made the right choice, and if they don't get that, then rather than admit that they made a mistake, they would rather attack the reviewer as being a fanboy or something equally hideous.
medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
In Fermi times Anand found it "appropriate" to compare cherry picked OCed nVidia card vs stock AMD."Subtle bias" my ass.
Ryan Smith - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
It's something we've apologized for, repeatedly. It was a poor idea and we readily admit as much.http://www.anandtech.com/show/3988/the-use-of-evga...
mapesdhs - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
I never saw the need to apologise; the price of the FTW meant it was the far better choice to buy back then (I bought two for SLI).fuicharles - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
I used to go to The Tech Reports to read the Top News contents everyday. Their Top News was always updated and shared lots of recent development.However, recently something fishy, Tech Reports doesn't share any news on the recent Gamesworks and Asyn Compute tragedy in their sites.
And try to pin point the Pump Whine problem even after AMD has already come up new revision of Fury Card which solve the problems.
I don't want to believe Scott Wasson is biased either, but isn't that as a journalist you should share the bad/good for both camp to let the readers judge themselves
milli - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
'most detailed and accurate' ≠ unbiasedDon't worry that you didn't notice the hidden bias. It took me a while to realize it. After reading TR for a couple years, around 2006 I started noticing the bias. It's not what he says that's biased but what he doesn't say/report that makes him biased. He's smart.
Well he's getting better at hiding his bias these last years. In the previous decade he would often pit OC'd nVidia cards with stock AMD cards in his 'reviews'.
Just like many knew that Anand was biased towards Apple with his ridiculously positive reviews until the final proof came when he went to actually work for them.
slickr - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
He has been shilling for Nvidia for good several years now, everything Nvidia does = great, amazing, unique, always winning in some ultra specific aspect even if realistically the card is garbage, when he talks about AMD = power consumption is 10W or 20W more than Nvidia, Nvidia clear winner, price and performance don't matter, only those 10W difference matters.No way for AMD to win, I would have not sent review copies to a whole more websites, there are at least 4-5 of top of my head that are Nvidia shill town and they not even doing it subtly.
althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
nVidia have had a lead in performance for half a decade or more now - it's not tech reviewers fault that AMD are using more power to deliver worse performance at similar prices.chrnochime - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
And we're suppose to have faith in YOUR view of SW? LOL