The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTDragon Age: Inquisition
Our RPG of choice for 2015 is Dragon Age: Inquisition, the latest game in the Dragon Age series of ARPGs. Offering an expansive world that can easily challenge even the best of our video cards, Dragon Age also offers us an alternative take on EA/DICE’s Frostbite 3 engine, which powers this game along with Battlefield 4.
Compared to the R9 Fury series, the R9 Nano delivers around 87-95% of the performance of AMD’s other flagship cards, once again similar to what we’ve seen in prior games and showing just how close the R9 Nano is to the R9 Fury is in performance so much of the time. Meanwhile in a size-wise comparison the R9 Nano always holds the lead as well, though the lead gets rather thin – around 7% - at 1920x1080.
The big hurdle for the R9 Nano is the power comparison, which once again sees the power-similar GTX 980 eeking out AMD’s latest Fiji card, especially at lower resolutions. Nothing here is all that surprising given what we saw with R9 Fury back in July, but it’s a reminder of how close things can be in some of these games.
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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.