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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anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link
"you forgot to include evidence of them lying, or a reason for why they would lie."Are you for real? Evidence of misrepresentation is that the box says '4GB', and you can only practically use 3.5GB of the 4GB in a game, or the performance will tank. How much more evidence do you require?
As for a reason why they would do this? You've got to be joking. $$! That's why. The memory controller they used to make a '4GB' card was cheaper than one that would have run all the memory at full speed. That would likely have pushed the price of the card well above $400, and outside of the targeted dupe market of $350-$400. The cheaper, gimped memory controller also meant that nVidia made more profit per card. They just hoped nobody would catch their use of a gimped memory controller before they'd ripped off tens of thousands of slavishly loyal nVidiots who all mindlessly rushed out to computer stores to plunk down their money. And it worked. Tens of thousands have plunked down their money, and nVidia has posted better than ever earnings. What a surprise.
anubis44 - Thursday, October 8, 2015 - link
HA HA HA! An 'honest' mistake? Give me a break! Are you saying nVidia just didn't realize that the cheap memory controller they saddled the GTX970 had a flaw? Yeah, right. They just didn't know that the last .5GB of memory would be gimped by running it at 1/7 the speed of the other 3.5GB. And of course, the decision to use that cheaper memory controller didn't have ANYTHING to do with padding their already fat profit margins at the expense of their customers. Meanwhile, they have the audacity to print '4GB Ram' on all the boxes. As if nVidia just didn't realize that tens of thousands of nVidiots wouldn't go out and buy the cards for a few months before an independent reviewer finally caught them in the act. nVidia is as guilty as a cat in a goldfish bowl, and if you're going to pretend that this whole fiasco was 'handled admirably' by nVidia, then you must really be a fan of Jen Hsun. Seriously, at least have the self-respect to call a spade a spade and admit that nVidia tried to pull a fast one just to line their pockets and got caught.SolMiester - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Oh please, its already been stated that you have to load up beyond normal use before the .5Gb ram comes into play and for the majority or users at 1080, its doesnt effect them.RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
@SolMeiser, 1080P is fine but some gamers who purchased GTX970 did so for their 2560x1440/1600 monitors, in addition to others who bought GTX970 SLI. Also, even if in the majority of games the 3.5GB RAM isn't an issue, it's how NV responded to the situation is what's telling.Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
So, what do you have to say about all the dubious shit AMD said during the pre fiji release? They claimed several times it was the fastest card in the world, when it wasn't, and they KNEW it wasn't.I'm tired of people being inconsistent, if you're going to point out questionable behavior in one company then you have to do it for the other.
silverblue - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
They could've run benchmarks well before the launch, and then fallen behind once NVIDIA had brought out new drivers, or they could've straight out lied. What I'd like to see is AMD's 4K Gaming Performance Benchmarks bar chart scrutinised for every game to see how far out of reality the results were with the setups that were used, then we can be 100% sure (after all, Fiji is more competitive at 4K than lower resolutions).fuicharles - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
Not giving a review copies to certain reviewer is worse or the one who create gameworks is worse ?Horza - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Thank you for being the impartial voice of reason Wreckage. I've always enjoyed your measured and balanced approach to assessing the merits of the two big dGPU players. Your attack on Anandtech's credibility holds so much more weight coming from a person with a track record of non-partisan, unbiased viewpoints such as yourself. Thank you again.ingwe - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
If you read the final words, I think this is a very fair review. To me it says: "This is better than usual form AMD, but it isn't enough and it is too expensive." Seems accurate and unbiased.bill.rookard - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Actually, I do find it 'enough', it -is- a very good, supremely capable card that comes in at 2/3 of the size with 90% of the performance. Heck, it's faster than the GTX 980. My problem? It is too expensive. I know that prime Fiji chips are in short supply at the moment, but it needs to be about $200 cheaper.If they can get their supply running smoothly and get their yields of the full-fat Fiji up, drop the price to about GTX 980 levels they'd never be able to keep them in stock.