The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTGRID Autosport
For the racing game in our benchmark suite we have Codemasters’ GRID Autosport. Codemasters continues to set the bar for graphical fidelity in racing games, delivering realistic looking environments layered with additional graphical effects. Based on their in-house EGO engine, GRID Autosport includes a DirectCompute based advanced lighting system in its highest quality settings, which incurs a significant performance penalty on lower-end cards but does a good job of emulating more realistic lighting within the game world.
At 3840x2160 we see the R9 Nano only barely fall behind the R9 Fury, trailing it by less than a percent. Unfortunately R9 Nano can’t quite make 60fps here, which for AMD is limited to the R9 Fury X.
The problem for AMD here is that in lieu of hitting 60fps at 4K, the next best option is to drop down to 2560x1440, at which point AMD’s CPU limitations come into full force, allowing the GTX 980 to leapfrog the entire Fiji family. Ultimately this isn’t anything we haven’t seen before, but it’s a greater problem for a luxury card like the R9 Nano.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
284 Comments
View All Comments
ImSpartacus - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Good to see that Anandtech got a Nano.Wreckage - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I'm sure they agreed to give a "fair" review. I think everyone should wait for independent reviews after the whole Roy Taylor incident.HOOfan 1 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I bet AMD knew the numbers would be exactly the same at all the big name sites. It is the conclusions they were worried about.close - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Wreckage, you would say that of course after being "motivated" by no less then two 980 graphic cards as gifts just in the last 6 weeks. What kind of credibility do you expect after this?theduckofdeath - Saturday, September 12, 2015 - link
New review on a hardware review site, comment section full of bitching.Yeah, this is the tech news of 2015. Whining and trolling instead of discussing tech.
LoganPowell - Friday, November 27, 2015 - link
It's too bad that the AMD Radeon r9 Nano does so bad among consumer based rankings (see http://www.consumerrunner.com/top-10-best-hard-dri... for example...)theNiZer - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Spot on mate! (sry for double posting)gw74 - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
The R9 Nano was about to make me interested in AMD cards finally. On finding out about what they've been up to denying review copies to certain outlets, I am now not interested any more and they are dead to me as a brand.silverblue - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
Roy apologised to Scott Wasson and said that he didn't consider The Tech Report as an unfair site, however the reason for their exclusion still hasn't been made known. I suspect he got confused between TechPowerUp and TheTechReport. :)Still, excluding anybody, intentional or otherwise, does your reputation a world of hurt, and starts to provoke questions about those who were included. What a tangled web we weave.
milli - Thursday, September 10, 2015 - link
I don't want to burst your bubble but Scott Wasson has been very pro nVidia for the past ten years. He's just very good at doing it very subliminally, so most won't even notice. As a long time TR reader, it has been pretty obvious to me.