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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looncraz - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Indeed. At $200 cheaper I'd consider buying two of them, rather than none.The lack of a DL-DVI port, though, would probably limit me to just one.
Alexvrb - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
Agreed I think it's a great compact card but for their sake I hope they drop the price gradually as yields improve. Personally I will be waiting to see what happens with HBM2, I'm hoping that with the improvements in density they'll be able to push it into mid-range cards as well next time.Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I didn't see much about DX 12 and how it should counter all the energy efficiency stuff that is being pretty much obsessed about. The conclusion, for instance, talks so much about energy efficiency when in fact the real point of this card is not performance per watt but the form factor.I don't see anything about Ashes — not even a word about why it wasn't included.
Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
"I don't see anything about Ashes — not even a word about why it wasn't included."We don't include non-release software in our GPU evaluations. Ashes isn't a complete game, it's still an alpha.
AS118 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I feel like that's totally valid. Until multiple finalized DX12 benches come out, I don't feel that we can really understand how current cards will work with DX12.Oxford Guy - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
It still merits a mention, even if it's just to say that.AS118 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I agree. In fact, this review seems as honest as every other Nano one. They all say "it's niche" and "it's too expensive for the performance if you don't need the small size, and regardless of what Roy said, the sites that were given a card are quite critical of the Nano, and most recommend getting a bigger, faster, cheaper card instead if you don't need something tiny.They say "It's a great product, but only for people that really must have the strongest mini-card".
RussianSensation - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Wreckage = trolls like Rollo, but minus the facts.Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Whats the Roy Taylor incident? Im not aware.at80eighty - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
If there's anyone championing the cause of objectivity, it's you