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.
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Kutark - Wednesday, September 30, 2015 - link
I can only wish LAN parties were still a thing. Some of my fondest memories was playing aliens vs predator, or CoD2/Quake/UT/etc.FMinus - Friday, October 2, 2015 - link
I'll be honest here, performance vs. price wise this is kind of meh, but the form factor is absolutely amazing. I just wish most cards would be trimmed down to that form factor, it is clearly doable as demonstrated here, maybe not right now, but the future is open. While they're at it, they might start looking at how to make those cards single slot again, that would be my wet dream.vhawkxi - Tuesday, May 17, 2016 - link
A great compact card - Installed it on my Intel 4GHz i7-6700K CPU based machine and for what I do with it, it is super. I am not a first-person-shooter fan - for RPG type of games (Myst, Riven) and music production with Avid programs it is more than adequate. Worth the $700 CAD I paid for it.Rehmanpa - Monday, August 8, 2016 - link
Mind I ask how you guys got your 980 ti to render on Sony vegas pro? I can't get mine to render and I wad hoping you could share how you guys got yours to work. Thanks.