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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D. Lister - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link
The Fermi architecture did indeed have those flaws, not to mention the thermal issues of the 4xx family and the strict power budget of the 5xx series that Nvidia stupidly enforced on its partners. The latter resulting in CTD in the factory overclocked models in some poor PC ports like Crysis 2, where the only solution was to downclock the GPU to its reference state. But despite such rare lapses, Nvidia has evolved steadily, and every generation has rectified the flaws of its predecessor, and improved in terms of features, power usage and temps.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
Don't forget the driver that bricked Fermi cards.D. Lister - Sunday, September 13, 2015 - link
@medi03Sorry, but that nonsense just doesn't cut it anymore. Not after so many years of the same fraudulent babble going on over and over.
If someone "uneducated" was told that product A and product B both performed the same, yet product A could be bought for less money, than most people would go for product A.
If that is not happening than obviously there is more to this than purely performance/dollar(*), and the market is a lot more educated in the year 2015 than your fanboy delusions would've led you to believe.
Honestly, you AMD fanatics are like the Westboro Baptist Church of technology. I wouldn't be surprised if you lot started picketing outside the Intel and Nvidia HQs with "God hates Intel/Nvidia" placards.
*-Sadly, thanks to that HBM gimmick, AMD doesn't even have the performance/dollar feature anymore. The Nano's MSRP equals the 20-30% stronger 980Ti's retail value, and because of its rarity, actually is more expensive than the 980Ti.
medi03 - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
I don't recall talking about "performance dollar", why do you have to lie like that? Is that your imagination?There were CLEAR, HANDS DOWN cases of inferiour products, be it nVidia's Fermi chips, or Intel's Prescott P4 fiasco outselling the competitor. That shows how much clue our "uneducated" public has. End of story.
Now take a deep breath and think if you really have some argument.
D. Lister - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
"I don't recall talking about "performance dollar", why do you have to lie like that? Is that your imagination?"Tsk, tsk, "reading" is obviously not your strong suite.
"There were CLEAR, HANDS DOWN cases of inferiour products, be it nVidia's Fermi chips, or Intel's Prescott P4 fiasco outselling the competitor. That shows how much clue our "uneducated" public has. End of story."
That's your argument? Really? Where can anyone actually even buy Prescotts or Fermis these days? Who is buying them? In those times AMD's market share was significantly higher than it is now and quite rightfully so, rendering your abysmal argument completely moot. And the story didn't end there you silly little man - after Fermi there was Kepler, and then Maxwell. After Prescott there were over a dozen processor families, each and every single one an improvement, not just in raw performance but also in performance/watt and performance/dollar.
Granted that AMD has had improvements as well, but thanks to the terrible decisions of the businessmen at the top (e.g. selling their foundries and getting ATI for a lot more than it was worth, not focusing on their primary markets and losing loyal fans to other companies, etc.), not to mention the terrible software support for often very decent hardware and regularly over-promising and under-delivering, they are where they are now. The facts are ultimately in the ledgers, and mindless corporate drones like yourself can make up absurd stories and conspiracy theories as much as you like - fact is that AMD is dying and as their funds keep shrinking, so does the overall quality of their products, especially compared to the competition.
"Now take a deep breath and think if you really have some argument."
All I can do is shake my head and smile sadly at how completely you miss the irony in your statement. It's okay, once AMD is inevitably ripped apart and its pieces consumed by the corporate sharks and the AMD and Radeon brands are reduced to forgotten footnotes in tech history, cretins like you will find something else to fill the void in your pathetic, pointless existence. Have a nice life, if you can, I'm done with you.
D. Lister - Monday, September 14, 2015 - link
Just to make it very clear (again) to any AMD fans that may feel my sentiments to be overtly harsh towards their favored company, I personally believe that whatever has happened to AMD in the last decade or so, is nothing short of a heart-breaking tragedy, where the business fat cats at the top repeatedly made poor short-term decisions and exploited the hard work of brilliant engineers and technicians, giving themselves and their marketing lackeys bigger paychecks while the R&D starved, resulting in AMD as a company never truly reaching its full potential. And we all, as consumers and enthusiasts are worse off for it.Oxford Guy - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
Too bad for that summary that it ignores the well-made products that AMD's customers have enjoyed and the industry has benefited from.D. Lister - Tuesday, September 15, 2015 - link
@Oxford GuyThat is a given, no? A company that is a complete failure from the start, with everybody under the sun hating their products, can't ever hope to eventually go public, let alone go toe-to-toe, even if for a little while, with an industry giant like Intel.
Unfortunately what AMD did right was rather consistently far outweighed by what they did wrong. For every satisfied customer, they had several that felt screwed over.
AMD is like a race car that has had very good parts, but a lazy pit crew and blind men at the wheel (I resisted the urge of saying "bad drivers", but I'm being too serious here to indulge with lazy puns). So you're reminding me that they pulled a few laps in good time, while I'm lamenting the race that they have nearly lost.
Oxford Guy - Saturday, September 19, 2015 - link
Nice fiction.D. Lister - Sunday, September 20, 2015 - link
lol, thanks. All facts can be reduced to mere fiction when faced with absolute, fanatical denial. But to be fair, yours is hardly the worse, there are still many people who doggedly believe that geocentricism is the truth and all else is lies and fiction.