Small Form Factor Video Card Showdown - R9 Nano vs 970 Mini
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2017-05-06
·
1,339 words · ~6 min read
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we have made a ton of videos featuring The R9 Nano from AMD there was the
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review that kicked it off that showed a badass little card that produced a
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massive amount of performance for its size without this card I wouldn't have
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been able to do my Fallout 4 bomb build and it was the ideal GPU for Linus' 7
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Gamers 1 CPU build but we have received criticism here from people saying that
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the Nano only really works in ideal thermal situations and that the 970 mini
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from the other team is the real small form Factor King due to that problem is
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there any weight to this argument let's
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see Intel brings ddr4 to the mainstream
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with their new core i76700 K and core i56600k processors check out the link in
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the video description to learn more first let's introduce the competitors
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starting with the AMD R9 Nano it features a Fiji core GPU with 4,096
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stream processors and 4 GB of hbm or
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high bandwidth memory running at 1 gbit per freaking second on a memory bus
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width of 4,096 bits the whole thing has
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a GPU boosts clock of 1,000 MHz and houses all of this within a 5 in x 4 and
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38 in body which has done super well in
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raw performance benchmarks in the past in the other Corner we have the ASUS 970
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mini running a total of 1664 cacor and 4
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gbt of gddr5 memory which is running at
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7,10 MHz on a 256bit memory interface
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the whole thing has a GPU boost clock of 1228 MHz and comfortably sits within a
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frame that is 7.7 in by 4.8 in which has
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also done super well in benchmarks in the past but more on the thermal and
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price to Performance side of things looking back at the review of the Nano
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we can see the differences clearly laid out in the benchmarking graphs the Nano
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handily beats the 970 mini in everything
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when looking at Raw performance when you break away from that and look at overall
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wattage or thermal output the story changes and the 970 beats the Nano quite
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easily as well and then finally they do
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end up tying but in the performance per watt category the cards also have quite
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the price Delta with in US funds the Nano coming at
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$479 while the mini sits at a much more
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digestible 299 and this shows in the dollars per
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frame Benchmark where the Nano was literally the most expensive per frame
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card we tested and the mini was literally the least expensive per frame
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card we tested quite the polarization all of that being said those benchmarks
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are a little bit dated and so far what we know is that if you want a faster and
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smaller card you can grab the Nano and pay up about an extra 180 bucks but if
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you can deal with the slightly bigger size don't mind a bit of performance
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loss and want to save some pennies on your power bill you canot spend the
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extra and go for the mini options are good and these two cards serve the small
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form factor market quite well in their own ways and nicely complement each
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other in a way that I personally think Fosters healthy competition instead of
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blind fanboying which is pretty cool but
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today we look at them again for one more
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testing scenario I had issues with the Nano's performance in my Fallout bomb
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and it took a lot for me to mostly fix
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it most cases have adequate air flow for your GPU but not all of them the ones
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that have very restricted GPU airflow that we have apparently left at Linus's
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house for uh undisclosed reasons so what
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we did to replace the cases that are apparently at Linus's house is we
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grabbed the node 202 a solid small form
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factor case from fractal if you want to see the review of that check up here and
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then in order to restrict the air flow more because this can actually take a
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full-size graphics card we grabbed a fractal modu vent from a Define R5 that
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we had lying around and then just taped it to the side we then tested Crisis 3
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Tomb Raider and Battlefront both with the cover on and with the cover off with
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both cards upon initial investigation of
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the raw average numbers the Nano does
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throttle when the obstruction is introduced but not by enough and it
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still kind of wins by significant amount in every single scenario but that
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definitely is not the whole story the average FPS doesn't lie but it's also
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not an accurate description of how it felt the mini didn't give a crap it got
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a little warmer but performed exactly the same in all three games with or
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without the obstruction the Nano throttled and throttled pretty hard
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making the games feel sluggish and weird due to inconsistent clock speeds as the
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card was fluctuating clock speeds throughout the test as it throttled and
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then no longer throttled and Etc okay so
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that's not great for the Nano but I don't necessarily think that this is
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actually a big deal before you scream at
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me allow me to explain we had to create this scenario this is a bad airflow
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scenario that being said there are cases that will have highly restricted air
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flow for your GPU but this just arms you with more information for the planning
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phase of your build if you have an extremely airflow restricted scenario
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either find a way to feed the Nano some more air or just take a step down to the
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mini which can still handle it and be a
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pretty badass card regardless tunnel bear is the easy to use VPN app for
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LTT did this information influence your opinion on these cards let me know on
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Twitter at lukor LFR if you like this video thumbs up if you dislike this
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video thumbs down if you thought this video was kind of like average but you
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you're like these guys seem all right I guess I could watch more of their videos
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click the Subscribe button don't forget to buy a cool t-shirt that isn't this
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one cuz this is from Bastion I I wore it cuz like I'm going to PAX East soon and
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I thought it kind of made sense don't worry about it you can click the link in the video description down below if you
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want to use our Amazon affiliate code to buy anything on Amazon that would be
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awesome or you can go to the Forum become a contributor there check out
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this video which is the original review of the Nano because I don't know it's a
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pretty sweet card