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 |
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extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Top gear ran every car they tested around the same track didn't they? Also you will find tins for the ring on plenty of stuff that isn't as fast as a 911 GT3 RS. Plus the 4k numbers ARE useful to see how the performance scales.extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
tins = times *Ryan Smith - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I don't believe the quality compromises are worth it, nor is playing at 30fps on a $650 card. However I know other people disagree with me, which is why I include the data.Daniel Egger - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
The data is exactly what I'd like to see but your comment as the reason why you provided the data in at all is quite off-putting, non-sensical and does not belong there:The graphs about that sentence show that it is only 3 FPS slower than the Fury and even faster than the GTX 980, so either the comment should be that neither card is recommended for Battlefield in Ultra Quality 4k (although I do not necessarily why, the shown figures are way above "30fps" ...) and/or save that remark for your final conclusions.
extide - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
In a few months, when AMD finally has enough supply of these things, and they can drop the prices, the while Fury line will be amazing!! They are NOT bad products, they just have bad prices, right now, and they will until the supply issues are resolved. If they can't keep em in stock at these prices, then why lower them? No way.But yeah, in 3-4 months or so, I bet we see some pretty big price drops on all of these babies. Good times a comin!
Refuge - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I agree that the price is what makes these gems look like crap.But I also don't believe a price drop big enough to make them look like the gems they are will be in our future.
wintermute000 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
That, and confirmed performance on real AAA DX12 titlesD. Lister - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
Really? What else can you see in the magic crystal ball? Would we ever colonize Mars? Is a cure for cancer coming anytime soon? Speak man!itproflorida - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
These benchmarks are bogus, my single 970 can do BF campaign @ 4k Ultra no AA, 45 -64 fps avg 57fps. SLI 62 -90fps campaign.nikaldro - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Multi-player, duh.