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
LoneWolf15 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
And as someone who has been a long time TR reader and has met him multiple times, I am in complete disagreement with you. His testing is some of the most detailed and accurate that I know.I have little faith in your ability to determine someone's subliminal gifts.
Kutark - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Unfortunately a great many people are incapable of projecting their own biases onto someone else. Tomshardware and Anandtech have been accused of being pro one team or the other for years.I remember an article i read a few years back, i wish i could remember the guys name, but he was chief editor for one of the macintosh magazines, and he was talking about how he got so fed up with users because if he said literally anything negative about the product he would get his email inbox blown up with accusations of being a MS nutswinger, and fellating Bill Gates, and various other things. He gave an example of one of the ipods which he gave like a 90%+ review, and the ONLY negative things he said was that the casing was shiny, so it took fingerprints really well and was hard to keep looking clean, and that he wished the battery life was a little bit longer. He said he got the most vitriolic and ridiculous emails he'd ever seen.
The problem is people want confirmation that they made the right choice, and if they don't get that, then rather than admit that they made a mistake, they would rather attack the reviewer as being a fanboy or something equally hideous.
medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
In Fermi times Anand found it "appropriate" to compare cherry picked OCed nVidia card vs stock AMD."Subtle bias" my ass.
Ryan Smith - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
It's something we've apologized for, repeatedly. It was a poor idea and we readily admit as much.http://www.anandtech.com/show/3988/the-use-of-evga...
mapesdhs - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
I never saw the need to apologise; the price of the FTW meant it was the far better choice to buy back then (I bought two for SLI).fuicharles - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
I used to go to The Tech Reports to read the Top News contents everyday. Their Top News was always updated and shared lots of recent development.However, recently something fishy, Tech Reports doesn't share any news on the recent Gamesworks and Asyn Compute tragedy in their sites.
And try to pin point the Pump Whine problem even after AMD has already come up new revision of Fury Card which solve the problems.
I don't want to believe Scott Wasson is biased either, but isn't that as a journalist you should share the bad/good for both camp to let the readers judge themselves
milli - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
'most detailed and accurate' ≠ unbiasedDon't worry that you didn't notice the hidden bias. It took me a while to realize it. After reading TR for a couple years, around 2006 I started noticing the bias. It's not what he says that's biased but what he doesn't say/report that makes him biased. He's smart.
Well he's getting better at hiding his bias these last years. In the previous decade he would often pit OC'd nVidia cards with stock AMD cards in his 'reviews'.
Just like many knew that Anand was biased towards Apple with his ridiculously positive reviews until the final proof came when he went to actually work for them.
slickr - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
He has been shilling for Nvidia for good several years now, everything Nvidia does = great, amazing, unique, always winning in some ultra specific aspect even if realistically the card is garbage, when he talks about AMD = power consumption is 10W or 20W more than Nvidia, Nvidia clear winner, price and performance don't matter, only those 10W difference matters.No way for AMD to win, I would have not sent review copies to a whole more websites, there are at least 4-5 of top of my head that are Nvidia shill town and they not even doing it subtly.
althaz - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
nVidia have had a lead in performance for half a decade or more now - it's not tech reviewers fault that AMD are using more power to deliver worse performance at similar prices.chrnochime - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
And we're suppose to have faith in YOUR view of SW? LOL