Radeon R9 Nano Small Form Factor Competition Review @ [H]

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FrgMstr

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Radeon R9 Nano Small Form Factor Competition Review - Our second installment covering our AMD Radeon R9 Nano in a Small Form Factor chassis is finally done. We will upgrade the case to a Corsair Obsidian Series 250D Mini ITX PC Case and compare the R9 Nano to price competitive video cards that can be installed. We game at 1440p and 4K for the ultimate small form factor experience.
 
The Radeon R9 Nano does have a place in the market, albeit a very tiny one.
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Oh.... GROAN. lol
Very nice review, indeed. While I would have liked to see the mini 970 in the lineup as well to show how it handled the extra breathing room, I'm not sure it would have provided much in the way of usable information beyond curiosity satisfaction. I was still torn on the Nano going into this article, but as a Corsair 250D owner myself (my HTPC), this review answered all kinds of questions about the future of my rig.
 
Was there any real surprise, though? It is already well-known that the 980 Ti tends to be faster than the Fury X (especially when overclocked), and that the R9 Nano is pretty much a TDP-capped Fury X. Was this mainly testing the limits of the cooling for all involved cards? I mean, I can't really see any way that a Nano would have ever beaten the massive 980 Ti or even the Fury X. It's definitely a niche product. I guess you guys just wanted something fun to do because you still had the card?
 
Just doing our due diligence instead of talking out of our asses.
 
I keep hearing about driver maturity going in AMDs favour.. Clearly that is not the case. GTX 980 TI still proving its king at this point.

Nano price drop would be epic, as it would be an awesome card at $400 even.

Along those lines of "in AMDs Favour" - any word on when a DX12 performance is going to be / can be doen? I'd really like to hear if the rumors are true or not, and there's really only one DX12 game demo out at the moment.
 
Correct, niche within a niche. I feel AMD did a wonderful thing making this card. They didn't HAVE to release the Nano, they could have just turned these into a Fury X (which is overpriced by 50$ itself) and said to heck with the niche market. But they didn't, they put a ton of time and engineering resources into building something that wasn't available. Cudo's to them, and that's why the price is the same. It's the saaaame GPU! Look, if you are buying a hunting rifle, say an 18" and a 24", you want the 18" as a brush gun. The manufacturer is not going to drop the price because it's a "little" less accurate. No, it's the same rifle with the same process, same price. But they listened to the consumers and developed something that people wanted. The market asked for this card, and they went all out with it, some concessions had to be made on performance. At least that's how I view the Nano.

"AMD's marketing certainly stresses that this R9 Nano is built for 4K gaming however."

There are many, many, many more games in the wild than in this suite. If you downloaded 2000 steam games, the Nano would get 60FPS in 98+% of them I.
 
^ Umm... what? Every company simply makes a product to make money. They didn't make this card to selflessly serve the minority. They made it to try to appeal to a market where they would have no competition.

They might have messed up though. The crowd they're targeting is just way too small... then again we don't know how much R&D they put into this. Maybe it's a fairly small amount, so they just went ahead and targeted a market segment that they knew they could get ~70%+ share in, due to lack of competition. I don't know if the gamble will pay off.... Even if it does, it's not enough to turn AMD's fortunes around much.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
^ Umm... what? Every company simply makes a product to make money. They didn't make this card to selflessly serve the minority. They made it to try to appeal to a market where they would have no competition.

They might have messed up though. The crowd they're targeting is just way too small... then again we don't know how much R&D they put into this. Maybe it's a fairly small amount, so they just went ahead and targeted a market segment that they knew they could get ~70%+ share in, due to lack of competition. I don't know if the gamble will pay off.... Even if it does, it's not enough to turn AMD's fortunes around much.
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I like to think the efforts are going to pay off in future cards, and they considered this an initial product of what will be a long term effort at smaller cards. i.e., they may not see any ROI on the Fury X Nano, but they may over several models over the next few years.
 
Modred189 said:
I like to think the efforts are going to pay off in future cards, and they considered this an initial product of what will be a long term effort at smaller cards. i.e., they may not see any ROI on the Fury X Nano, but they may over several models over the next few years.
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what I hate its the double moral of the community, since the Times of GTX 670 mini, people praised the card like: "damn look at that performance in that tiny card" everyone wanted an Asus GTX 670 mini that wasn't a cheap card starting with... then GTX 760 mini more of the same... then GTX 970 "wooow look at that GTX 780/780TI performance in that incredible small card that's the card I want for sure".. then Fury Nano. "uugh, a powerful but small card for a niche of niche of niche of niche marked that no one cares about and nobody want to buy it."

im still wondering what might have happened if nvidia launched a GTX 980TI Nano or mini or whatever... "oooh look at that almost fully GTX 980TI performance in such small size, I would pay any kind of premium money for that card right now":eek:
 
Araxie said:
what I hate its the double moral of the community, since the Times of GTX 670 mini, people praised the card like: "damn look at that performance in that tiny card" everyone wanted an Asus GTX 670 mini that wasn't a cheap card starting with... then GTX 760 mini more of the same... then GTX 970 "wooow look at that GTX 780/780TI performance in that incredible small card that's the card I want for sure".. then Fury Nano. "uugh, a powerful but small card for a niche of niche of niche of niche marked that no one cares about and nobody want to buy it."

im still wondering what might have happened if nvidia launched a GTX 980TI Nano or mini or whatever... "oooh look at that almost fully GTX 980TI performance in such small size, I would pay any kind of premium money for that card right now":eek:
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Fair, but I think the issue is the cost. Those were all mainstream cards in regards to cost and power requirements, and the price premium for the size was often negligible with MIRs etc. With the Nano, you're talking a flagship-priced card.
 
Modred189 said:
Fair, but I think the issue is the cost. Those were all mainstream cards in regards to cost and power requirements, and the price premium for the size was often negligible with MIRs etc. With the Nano, you're talking a flagship-priced card.
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What I really think is that this card is late into the market, case makers went ahead and they started to make tiny cases able to fit full fat GPUs which make this kind of card pointless as you say actual cost.. however this card still offer some value in the performance and power used..
 
Araxie said:
What I really think is that this card is late into the market, case makers went ahead and they started to make tiny cases able to fit full fat GPUs which make this kind of card pointless as you say actual cost.. however this card still offer some value in the performance and power used..
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Yea, the funny thing is that the innovation wasn't really the GPU, rather the systems around it. It's easy to simply limit the TDP of the GPU, but all the surrounding components on the board would need a lot of finagling.
 
Modred189 said:
Yea, the funny thing is that the innovation wasn't really the GPU, rather the systems around it. It's easy to simply limit the TDP of the GPU, but all the surrounding components on the board would need a lot of finagling.
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I wouldn't call it innovation more than just adaptation, as the technology and GPU are already present in the Fury X, I see much more complex the IAO water cooling setup in the Fury X than the Copper based Air cooled in the Nano.
 
I think the big story here is how well the Fury X performs relative to the 980Ti at 4K. That's pretty neat.

I guess neither are really playable, though =/
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
^ Umm... what? Every company simply makes a product to make money. They didn't make this card to selflessly serve the minority. They made it to try to appeal to a market where they would have no competition.

They might have messed up though. The crowd they're targeting is just way too small... then again we don't know how much R&D they put into this. Maybe it's a fairly small amount, so they just went ahead and targeted a market segment that they knew they could get ~70%+ share in, due to lack of competition. I don't know if the gamble will pay off.... Even if it does, it's not enough to turn AMD's fortunes around much.
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Of course it wasn't selflessly...they charged 649$ for it. Again, this is the FULL Fiji, why would you NOT charge full price for it. So, I think it was a good move to cater to the uSFF builders, it's not always about making the quickest buck, you have to build a base too. All I'm pointing out is, they didn't have to build this, people wanted them to so they did with the best they had.
 
Thanks for the review. It's much as most of us expected.

spintroniX said:
I think the big story here is how well the Fury X performs relative to the 980Ti at 4K. That's pretty neat.

I guess neither are really playable, though =/
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This is one of the major issues I have with AMD - the utter bullshit and lies they call marketing. They market the FuryX and Nano as 4k gaming cards, when in reality they're not at all even close to 4k gaming cards (there are no single cards available yet that are good 4k gaming cards). And then they don't even include HDMI 2.0 on them.

If they would just stop with the bullshit and out-and-out lies I might try and take them more seriously.
 
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Mugato said:
Of course it wasn't selflessly...they charged 649$ for it. Again, this is the FULL Fiji, why would you NOT charge full price for it. So, I think it was a good move to cater to the uSFF builders, it's not always about making the quickest buck, you have to build a base too. All I'm pointing out is, they didn't have to build this, people wanted them to so they did with the best they had.
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This is news to me. Who expressly asked/implored/pleaded to them to and where? o_0
I mean the way you're painting this scenario, it sounds like they're doing something that would put them at some kind of loss (fiscal or otherwise), in order to give a minority crowd something they wanted. This is kind of giving a saintly impression of them where I don't feel it's really deserved.

No one ever has to make a product at all. They do it because they think they will find a receptive audience that they can profit off of with it. This is true for all companies. Or well sometimes they're just idiots and they don't know what they're doing. Perhaps they don't have the funding to carry out proper studies (it's harder than it seems).

Anyway I don't see any reason to exalt AMD here.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
This is news to me. Who expressly asked/implored/pleaded to them to and where? o_0
I mean the way you're painting this scenario, it sounds like they're doing something that would put them at some kind of loss (fiscal or otherwise), in order to give a minority crowd something they wanted. This is kind of giving a saintly impression of them where I don't feel it's really deserved.

No one ever has to make a product at all. They do it because they think they will find a receptive audience that they can profit off of with it. This is true for all companies. Or well sometimes they're just idiots and they don't know what they're doing. Perhaps they don't have the funding to carry out proper studies (it's harder than it seems).

Anyway I don't see any reason to exalt AMD here.
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they just want to pick (or may be trying, really) an audience out of their typical zone, why? because they need money, they need to compete somewhere and try to exit from that 18.7% market share.. of course low availability and high cost will not achieve that goal.
 
Great review, if you don't mind a bigger case or not going for that very small form factor rig then the bigger cards can make more sense like the 980Ti.

The Fury X2 (what ever the name will be called if released) should also be able to fit in that case, meaning a rather huge punch with dual Fiji's - a real 4K throbbing game configuration for a mITX rig.

I also agree,majority of games, if they can do 4K would play well with the Nano especially older games that are still routinely played today. On the cutting edge though, the most recent and very graphically demanding games or badily coded - none of the cards play them well including the 980Ti. Fury X2 I would thing would be the best shot for a single card in a bigger SFF case that is if the game CFX well or good enough.

I just bought a nano for $549 after rebate from NewEgg, which is a more reasonable price. Custom case is planned that will have an overall lower footprint on whole system. If it works out or not is another thing. It will be fun regardless plus the Nano is a good performing card.

I am eager to see the OCing review coming up, I hope it will be using the Crimson drivers from AMD. Hearing some very good results (and not so good) with these.
 
Good review Kyle. These SFF machines are so damn cool. So much power in such a small footprint.

My first hand built PC was the size of a damn F450. At least 5 PCI/ISA cards, CDROM and CDRW, FDD, ZIP Drive, 3 fucking feet tall...
 
Yeah, really liking this Corsair 250D case. Considering switching from a full tower to one of these guys for my next build. Really don't have a need for such a large case anymore and this little(big) guy seems to be the perfect size.

Oh, and good review. I don't think it's going to get you invited to Roy's for dinner anytime soon, mind you, but I don't think you'll be losing sleep over that.
 
Great review, [H] - thanks for taking the time to continue the Nano adventure!



My assumptions were right:

If you are a niche within a niche customer, then AMD has you covered at both ends of the spectrum:
- Nano (damn good performance if you have a chassis with no room for a full size GPU option)
- Fury X (must have/require separate GPU WC'ing and have a chassis that can accommodate it)

..and you don't care about them having less performance and less/lacking features compared to competing products at the same price points. :rolleyes:

I'm so looking forward to Pascal and Arctic Islands...getting sick of these power sucking, heat spitting, feature lacking, specs with "*" clauses, asinine chassis requirement 28nm offerings (yes, that includes the 970 3.5+0.5GB bullshit and the high TDP/high heat 980 Ti, as well).
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
This is news to me. Who expressly asked/implored/pleaded to them to and where? o_0
I mean the way you're painting this scenario, it sounds like they're doing something that would put them at some kind of loss (fiscal or otherwise), in order to give a minority crowd something they wanted. This is kind of giving a saintly impression of them where I don't feel it's really deserved.

No one ever has to make a product at all. They do it because they think they will find a receptive audience that they can profit off of with it. This is true for all companies. Or well sometimes they're just idiots and they don't know what they're doing. Perhaps they don't have the funding to carry out proper studies (it's harder than it seems).

Anyway I don't see any reason to exalt AMD here.
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How am I painting this as a selfless loss by AMD? I've noted twice now they charged full price, they are not losing out on anything. They are a business after all, of course it's ultimately about the shareholders. They know their profit margins, and it makes business sense to charge full price if you could be building a Fury X instead (to the bean counters). No saintly impression expressed, I just think it was cool the engineering and thought that went into this, they noticed there was a gap and could fill it. People have been asking for a powerhouse for ultra small form factors, and it's also common sense the community would want it.

Again, it was priced to high out of the gate, as was the Fury X, they should have come out at 549.99-579.99, I don't think people would have complained as much. - there are always complainers - I mean they had to have known it was ~10% slower than a 980Ti and was at it's top end TDP, it should have been priced lower. But, AMD IS pretty close to Nvidia, without having the R&D capital. Biggest thing I see for them are some of the shady in house benchmarks, Dev/reviewer relationships and marketing to the masses. They have always been labeled as a 'budget' card, even if it competes with or exceeds NV. AMD is just trying to change that image. Will take a while, the Radeon group split along with these new drivers are a decent start.
 
Great review as always! I've noticed both the 980Ti and Fury X have had a performance boost since launch. This is great to see. Another thing I noticed is that on the BF4 benchmark it showed HBAO+ as the Ambient Occlusion being used but I'm pretty sure BF4 uses regular HBAO and not HBAO+. I fired up the game last night to double check. Am I missing something or was this a simple mistake?
 
I was particularly interested in the 4K benchmarks. Can you please elaborate on why you chose which settings to downgrade? You seem to prefer AA to texture quality: is that because you're running out of VRAM? When I use my 780 Ti, I prefer to drop AA rather than texture quality if I can, but then my 28" 4K monitor has a higher than standard DPI, so the loss of AA is not so noticeable.

I didn't spot it in the review but which 4K monitor do you use? I expect image quality results to be very different on a 40" 4K monitor to a 28" 4K monitor to a 24" 4K monitor.
 
There's only one source for it so far, but the entire Radeon line has apparently gotten a price cut that doesn't look like a Black Friday hijink (I could be wrong).

Also note these are only one brand so far (PowerColor), but here we go...

Fury X - $589 w/o rebate
Fury Nano - $569 w/o rebate

If those prices trickle out to other brands and stick, the value equation might change.

Granted, NVIDIA isn't going to take this lying down so I'd expect a counter-cut on GeForce units that might put the price-dollar ratio right back where it was, though fewer dollars would be needed in either case :D
 
Sovereign said:
There's only one source for it so far, but the entire Radeon line has apparently gotten a price cut that doesn't look like a Black Friday hijink (I could be wrong).

Also note these are only one brand so far (PowerColor), but here we go...

Fury X - $589 w/o rebate
Fury Nano - $569 w/o rebate

If those prices trickle out to other brands and stick, the value equation might change.

Granted, NVIDIA isn't going to take this lying down so I'd expect a counter-cut on GeForce units that might put the price-dollar ratio right back where it was, though fewer dollars would be needed in either case :D
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yeah.. nvidia already made Price Cut for entire GTX 900 Series
 
neither company has made an official announcement,.

its probably on the retailers side.

Good cuts accross the board however
 
that's because is not an official price cut, those are only for holidays, price cuts include include all AIB (for Nvidia Only) models of course some with a different price premium, but the MSI 980TI at 559 AR its I think the more appealing of the other choices..

For the AMD as Sovereign said, it appear to be only powercolor, because the cheaper next to the PowerColor is the Sapphire which its still 629$.. and MSI for 680$.
 
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