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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Michael Bay - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Do they pay you, at least?palindrome - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
AMD can't afford me.DigitalFreak - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Maybe not, but I hear they pass your mother around at parties.at80eighty - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
ughD. Lister - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
@DigitalFreakThat was needlessly rude.
lmcd - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
I can't wait for a comment system where I can report you, DigitalFreak.Besides, palindrome's comments have all been reasonable, even if a tad biased.
medi03 - Friday, September 11, 2015 - link
"R9 Nano demonstrates slightly better performance than GTX 980 –around 5% at 2560x1440"TheCurve - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Thanks for the quality review, Ryan. Easy to read, yet descriptive when it counts. And whoever did the editing did well, I didn't notice any typos or other weirdness. For what it's worth, I thought you were very impartial. You praised the Nano when it deserved it and criticized it when it came up short. I'm not sure what else these rude commenters want. I have a feeling they didn't really read the review in its entirety -- probably just skimmed.lmcd - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
Seconded since I'm too lazy to type a paragraph.RandSec - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
"Energy efficiency compared to NVIDIA’s GM204 lineup (GTX 980/970) is not much better, which for AMD represents a significant improvement, but also means they don’t have any kind of clear advantage over NVIDIA."Although commonly accepted, this comment reveals a lack of understanding of two different design directions. In the past that was seen as reasonable because benchmarks. But benchmarks are inherently architecturally biased, in this case for DX11. That has resulted in users buying Nvidia while not understanding the tradeoffs and potential consequences.
AMD and Nvidia made different design decisions. Nvidia apparently designed for DX11, which used almost no GPU compute, and so removed much of the compute from their chips, making them smaller and "more efficient." On DX11.
In contrast, AMD seems to have designed for GPU compute, thus making their chips necessarily larger and less "efficient" on DX11. But now we see that DX12 allows and even requires more GPU compute, which the AMD GCN chips can handle.
OF COURSE Nvidia will be "more efficient" if they do not put as much stuff on their chips. But that does not make them better, it instead makes them "brittle" in the sense of not being able to easily respond to change. In the end, Nvidia may benefit from users buying another board. But that is not only a clever consequence of Nvidia design and marketing, but also the reviewing press, who allowed this weakness to pass unnoticed and uncommented for years on end. As it turns out, it is easy to make an "efficient" device, when it does not have the parts needed for the future.