The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTBattlefield 4
Kicking off our benchmark suite is Battlefield 4, DICE’s 2013 multiplayer military shooter. After a rocky start, Battlefield 4 has since become a challenging game in its own right and a showcase title for low-level graphics APIs. As these benchmarks are from single player mode, based on our experiences our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, which means a card needs to be able to average at least 60fps if it’s to be able to hold up in multiplayer.
Like the other Fiji cards, AMD is promoting the R9 Nano in part on its 4K capabilities. And while we disagree that this card is suitable for 4K gaming based on its sub-Fury performance, we’re including 4K results anyhow to serve as a point of comparison.
In any case Battlefield 4 is often a good indicator of general card performance, and for the R9 Nano this is no exception. What we find is that the R9 Nano trails the other Fury cards in all cases. However to our initial surprise, the R9 Nano sticks rather close to the R9 Fury. The petite powerhouse trails the R9 Fury by only 1-6%, which for the record is a smaller gap than we were expecting.
While the R9 Nano packs a full Fiji GPU, AMD has to pull back on clockspeeds to hit their power targets; in the case of Battlefield 4 this is an average clockspeed of just 879MHz at 2560x1440. Given this we had been expecting the R9 Nano to deliver around 85-90% of the performance of the R9 Fury (and about 80% of the R9 Fury X), based on the assumption that average clockspeeds would be closer to 800MHz. So the fact that the R9 Nano starts off as close to the R9 Fury as it does – even if it’s still trailing it – is a pleasant surprise.
Otherwise with performance still clearly occupying a position as a “3rd tier” Fiji card, I’m not sure if anything about these results should be surprising. On a price/performance basis AMD is not intending to be competitive with other $650 cards, so the R9 Fury X and GTX 980 Ti are of course on the top of the heap. What you get instead is a card that delivers around 90% of R9 Fury X’s performance in BF4 with much less power consumption.
Moving on, compared to the lower power and smaller cards, the R9 Nano is as expected a clean sweep. Demonstrating the virtues of a wide and lower clocked processor’s ability to deliver strong performance without requiring extreme power, everything from the R9 285 to the GTX 980 trails the R9 Nano here. Compared to the GTX 970 Mini in particular, the R9 Nano is 12-26% faster depending on the resolution.
The one potential problem here for the R9 Nano is the GTX 980. Though not a Mini-ITX card, the GTX 980’s power consumption is going to be fairly close to the R9 Nano’s, definitely more so than GTX 970’s. From a power efficiency standpoint it’s the GTX 980 that poses the greatest challenge to the R9 Nano, and while it’s ahead of the GTX 980 in this case at 2560x1440 and higher, it’s a sign that AMD should be worried about what could happen if an NVIDIA partner produced a Mini-ITX GTX 980.
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D. Lister - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
It is interesting how the ratio of AMD fans on every tech website is about 50/50 with Nvidia fans, yet AMD's market share has dropped below 20%. What's up with that? Either a lot of you AMD guys aren't putting your money where your mouth is, or it's like the same 3 fanboys posting their stuff everywhere with multiple accounts. :pMathos - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Not really a fanboy of either side. I'm usually a fan of whatever will give me the best performance at the price point I can afford. Though currently I'm running an AMD HD7850 2GB, because thats what was best at below 200$ at the time I bought it.itproflorida - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
coincidence I am replying to your post, but of course your not a fan but you will buy another amd card, good for you.Mathos - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Look I've probably been building and upgrading computer systems, longer than you've been alive there buddy, I've own more video cards than you'll probably ever know. Many of which predate both nVidia and ATI. I'm buying the R9 Fury, because at 550$, it's faster than similarly priced GTX 980's in the games that I have and play. Don't get me wrong, if I could afford more, I'd buy a 980ti. Unlike you, I apparently read bench marks and multiple reviews on such things. Plus I'm not one of these dumb people who buy x brand because they have the fastest top end card.... even though another brand has something faster at the price point I'm looking at.And speculation you say? Even though I've already been using said features with my 7850? Mostly just the frame rate limit settings to save power at the moment. Also.... have you not seen the performance difference with the DX 12vs11 benchmarks on other sites?
D. Lister - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
@MathosI think there is a misunderstanding here - my statement was based on a general observation, not pointed at anyone in particular. You could attach a hamster wheel to your gpu slot and I wouldn't mind as long as you feed the hamster, not to mention it would work nearly just as well for Project Cars or Witcher 3 for less money. Sorry, couldn't resist. :D
Mathos - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
Oh no, wasn't replying to you, was responding to that Florida person on that harsh reply. As far as your's yeah I figured that. It was kind of ironic, that a fan boy came out to attack my choice on the other post though. I'll have to check out the project cars and witcher 3 bench's. Don't play many racing games, other than Grid and Dirt. I still haven't finished Witcher 1, not worried much about Witcher 3 for a while.Beany2013 - Sunday, October 4, 2015 - link
Anyone who publicly describes themselves as a 'pro', and subsequently can't even manage basic grammar and punctuation needn't be listened to. Simple as that.medi03 - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
That's because most of the uneducated public with little clue buys nVidia.HollyDOL - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
Funny enough, I started to buy nVidia after I become educated in 3D graphics. At that time ATI provided such a terrible developer experience I doubt I'd be able to forgive&forget yet in next few years.medi03 - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link
nVidia outsold AMD even in Fermi times, with slower, more expensive, more power hungry chips.So, nope, sorry to bust your bubble.