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
itproflorida - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
"As these benchmarks are from single player mode" haha,Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I think *overall* AMD has a win with this as they've found a market (albeit small) that they can fill with a product without competition.This does lead me to wonder, what can Nvidia do? We know maxwell 2 is a little more power efficient than fiji... could they do a similar binning and back a GM200 chip down a 100mhz or so at a 175w tdp and produce similar results in a similar sized package? I know the HBM makes it a bit easier for the small form factor, but i don't think people will cry over half an inch longer board for an nvidia card in the same market.
Peichen - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
GTX980 is already a 175W card. Reference GTX980 have the same power plug requirement as the Nano.slapdashbr - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
nVidia isn't pushing (as far as I know) any of it's AIB partners to do this, but: gigabyte could just make a gtx 980 on the same PCB as that 970 mini. The 980 only uses what, 165W? 180 maybe? it's roughly on par with the nano to be honest, and with the fairly low power draw I really don't see why you can't have a 980 on a shorter card. Honestly an ITX-size 980 was what I wanted as soon as they were announced, for god's sake, the r9-380 can draw more juice than a 980 and those are available in ITX form factor.Kutark - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Fair point. I still wonder though if they did a GM200, basically a 980ti thats backed down on clock rates to meet a lower TDP, what it would look like.medi03 - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
There is more to it: that HBM memory thing allows for more compact designs.extide - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
Well yeah, but there are already ITX sized cards out there with GDDR5 (GTX 970, R9 380, etc) so it's obviously possible. PCB might be a little bit bigger but it can still be ITX sized.Kutark - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
Not *that* much more compact. From what i understand we're talking about half an inch or so shorter because of the HBM.Jm09 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I wish amd would of released a nano and a nano-x with this choice being the nano x as its a binned full Fiji chip. I think an r9 nano competing in the $400 range would of been a huge hit, and raise brand perception which amd needs a ton of right now.Peichen - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Nano is the full chip. It just runs at a lower clock than Fiji X and Fiji, the actual trimmed card.