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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extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Top gear ran every car they tested around the same track didn't they? Also you will find tins for the ring on plenty of stuff that isn't as fast as a 911 GT3 RS. Plus the 4k numbers ARE useful to see how the performance scales.extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
tins = times *Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I don't believe the quality compromises are worth it, nor is playing at 30fps on a $650 card. However I know other people disagree with me, which is why I include the data.Daniel Egger - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
The data is exactly what I'd like to see but your comment as the reason why you provided the data in at all is quite off-putting, non-sensical and does not belong there:The graphs about that sentence show that it is only 3 FPS slower than the Fury and even faster than the GTX 980, so either the comment should be that neither card is recommended for Battlefield in Ultra Quality 4k (although I do not necessarily why, the shown figures are way above "30fps" ...) and/or save that remark for your final conclusions.
extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
In a few months, when AMD finally has enough supply of these things, and they can drop the prices, the while Fury line will be amazing!! They are NOT bad products, they just have bad prices, right now, and they will until the supply issues are resolved. If they can't keep em in stock at these prices, then why lower them? No way.But yeah, in 3-4 months or so, I bet we see some pretty big price drops on all of these babies. Good times a comin!
Refuge - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I agree that the price is what makes these gems look like crap.But I also don't believe a price drop big enough to make them look like the gems they are will be in our future.
wintermute000 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
That, and confirmed performance on real AAA DX12 titlesD. Lister - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
Really? What else can you see in the magic crystal ball? Would we ever colonize Mars? Is a cure for cancer coming anytime soon? Speak man!itproflorida - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
These benchmarks are bogus, my single 970 can do BF campaign @ 4k Ultra no AA, 45 -64 fps avg 57fps. SLI 62 -90fps campaign.nikaldro - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Multi-player, duh.