The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTThe Competition
One of the issues in testing an unusual card like the R9 Nano is figuring out what to test it against. By and large most of the video cards we receive are, well, large, which is suitable for evaluating high performance cards, but presents a bit more of a problem when looking for something to compare the R9 Nano to.
Anticipating this problem, AMD offered to send us a competitive NVIDIA card as well, ASUS’s GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini. As a matter of policy we typically don’t accept rival cards from a vendor in this fashion in order to avoid testing pre-arranged (and contrived) scenarios. However in this case we had already been looking into NVIDIA Mini-ITX cards for this review and had previously settled on trying to get one of the GTX 970 minis, so we opted to break from standard policy and accept the card. As a result we want to be transparent about accepting an NVIDIA card from AMD.
Left: AMD Radeon R9 Nano. Right: ASUS GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini
The Test
Meanwhile after some early experimentation on how to best evaluate the R9 Nano, we have opted to break from tradition a little bit here as well and test the card in two rigs. For our published numbers and for the purposes of apples-to-apples comparisons we are using our standard AnandTech GPU Testbed, a full-tower ATX system.
However in order to also test the R9 Nano in cozier conditions more fitting of its small size, we have also run a limited selection of cards within a second testbed as a control. Unfortunately we don’t have any true Mini-ITX systems around that are suitable for testing the R9 Nano, but for the next best thing we have turned to our frame capture workstation. Based on a Silverstone Sugo SG09 microATX case, this rig is built around a Core i7-3770 and typically houses our frame capture hardware for frame time analysis. For our testing we have pulled this out and set it up with some of our video cards in order to ensure that these cards operate similarly in cramped conditions.
The AnandTech microATX Video Capture Workstation w/R9 Nano
By and large the microATX case simply confirmed our results on our regular testbed after accounting for CPU differences, satisfying that testing in our larger regular testbed wasn’t unfairly impacting any of our major cards. However we’ll revisit the microATX case for our look at power, temperature, and noise.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: | AMD Radeon R9 Fury X ASUS STRIX R9 Fury AMD Radeon R9 Nano Club3D R9 390X 8GB royalQueen OC (Underclocked to 1050MHz) AMD Radeon R9 290X AMD Radeon R9 285 AMD Radeon HD 7970 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 Ti NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 ASUS GeForce GTX 970 DirectCU Mini NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 |
| Video Drivers: | NVIDIA Release 355.82 AMD Catalyst Cat 15.201.1102 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
284 Comments
View All Comments
jay401 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
The only thing wrong with the Nano and the rest of the Fury lineup is the price. They should all have debuted $50 cheaper than they did.theNiZer - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
My thoughts exactly :)HisDivineOrder - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Nice to see that Anandtech didn't mind getting their card with whatever promises they had to make to get it. I'm reminded of the AMD Red section that this site once had and I begin to wonder if that payment scheme ever really ended or just went "underground?"garbagedisposal - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Jesus Christ, you are one especially rabid and unpleasant person. Please don't comment on this website.Oxford Guy - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
If you think this site is pro-AMD you clearly don't read the reviews, like the review of Broadwell that included like 8 slow APUs and not a single FX chip at a reasonable clockspeed (like 4.5 GHz), even though FX, not APUs, offers the best desktop performance from AMD.Creig - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Looks like we have a new generation of Wounded [H] Children on our hands.Will Robinson - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Seeing that Tech Report's Graphics forum used to be sponsored by Nvidia....I guess it went to the same place hmm?eanazag - Tuesday, September 22, 2015 - link
I want one, but not at that price. They need a version of the nano at $300-50 that smacks the 970 mini from cheek to cheek. Though with the whole Fiji series I am disappointed it maxes out at 4 GB of VRAM.Anyhow, I would be interested in the best performance a vendor could offer in a single slot cooler. Not the usual duds that come with a single slot cooler. Ooorrrrr okay performance with a water cooler, when I say okay performance I'm thinking what usually comes in at the $180+-$225 price range.
colonelclaw - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
As someone who is currently heavily invested in Nvidia tech, I would just like to say well done to AMD, this a great (little) product!980 nano please :)
nathanddrews - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Probably not a 980 Nano, but a 1080 Nano is more likely. This is the future of GPUs. Next year we get FinFET and HBM2 from NVIDIA and ATI. It's only a matter of time before both AMD and NVIDIA have full lineups of SFF GPUs. Why pay more for all that PCB space if you don't need it?