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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Will Robinson - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Yup,I agree.Dammed with faint praise is the best you'll see for AMD cards there.
Their comments section is an NV fanboy fest led by Chuckula/Chizow and approved by TR.
silverblue - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Semiaccurate would've most likely gone the same way had Charlie not locked it all down to subscribers. The only downside is the lack of a daily drashek fix.I think wccftech is another of chizow's haunts, but don't quote me on that.
Gasaraki88 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Oh come on. AMD didn't give a card to Kyle from HardOCP also. So you're saying all the review sites out there are bias against AMD?jardows2 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
After reading several recent H's reviews of AMD products, where their testing shows the AMD card slightly slower than the nVidia product, then the conclusion stating the AMD product is a piece of trash and not worth anyone's money, without any of their own testing data backing up such a harsh conclusion, I don't blame AMD for not sending them a card.Alexvrb - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Yeah I kind of saw that one coming. I still read H sometimes, but you really have to draw your own conclusions and keep the salt handy. With TR, it's not only what they report, it's what they refuse to report. It's far from the worse, but there's a pattern.AT is my favorite overall, anyway.
InquisitorDavid - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
I don't know what your level of 'recent' is, but the R9 380 and R9 390x both got decent reviews. The 390x got a silver award, basically being touted as a cheaper, more power-hungry 980 with more VRAM (truth), and the R9 380 was given a Gold award because it performed better than a 960 at the same price range.The Fury got no awards for being on-par with the stock 980, while costing more. They saw the 390x having better value (thus the silver award), despite the increased power draw.
If anything, AMD has been getting a lot of crap because they've been losing for a while now. Less efficiency, rebrands, and all. OC'ing the 390x gets it to the same level as a 980 reference, and will consume about 200w more. It's cheaper, however, and we all know that's what AMD has been doing for a while now - value for money. It's the only battlefield they can claim any sort of real victory on. With the Fury and Nano, that gets completely thrown out the window.
The Fury X was hamstrung by the release of the 980ti (which was clearly a blocking maneuver by NV). Without the 980ti, it would've been the king of value. The "overclocker's dream" statement was still a bald-faced lie.
althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
If prices are equal and the AMD card is slightly slower, then the AMD card *IS* worthless. Who would pay the same money to get slightly worse performance and use more power? Only idiots.althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
Anybody that hasn't been pro-nVidia for the past few years has been doing it wrong. AMD have been using more power to offer less performance (at similar prices) - they have been behind for *ages* now. They still are, but at least it looks like HBM will bring the performance needed (next generation probably, it's obviously not there yet).anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link
I like TechReport, and find their coverage of tech very detailed, but yes, I have to agree with you that they've essentially been portraying AMD as just not quite as good as nVidia, yet all the while minimizing or ignoring the Green Goblin's dubious business practices ($200 G-Sync tax) and misrepresentation of their products (the 3.5GB GTX970 that somehow didn't completely torpedo that card's recommendation).Frenetic Pony - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I've looked at Tech Report, fuck Tech Report. None of their tests seem to reflect anyone elses, I tried a few of the graphs and they're literally a statistical outlier (at least for my quick tests).