AMD Radeon R9 Nano - The ultimate compact video card?
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,465 words · ~7 min read
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as single card graphics solutions become more and more powerful we're seeing many
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builders ditching the bulky full and mid-tower cases with multi-GPU setups in
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favor of smaller systems that still pack a powerful punch but with most top-tier
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graphics cards having sometimes ludicrous space requirements and
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generating lots and lots of heat fitting them into something like an itx chassis
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can be a challenge with that in mind AMD delivered upon this world the Radeon r9
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nano a small form factor graphics card that promises performance on par with
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full-size flagship Radeon cards but can
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team red deliver and give us a truly first-class gaming experience in such a
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tiny little package stay tuned to find out and like this video if you want us
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to do more theoretical graphics card comparison videos in the future
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very vague i know
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the mastercase 5 by cooler master gives you the freedom to truly make your
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mid-tower pc case your own with a variety of modular parts and accessories
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check out the link in the video description to learn more
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despite the official name of just Radeon r9 nano the nano is part of the r9 fury
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series of graphics cards from AMD which also includes the r9 fury the top end
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water cooled r9 fury x and despite the nano being much smaller and less bulky
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than the fury x it shares the same GPU with 4096 stream processors and 64
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compute units the only difference being that the nano has a peak clock speed out
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of the box of 1 000 megahertz which is 50 less than the fury x the nano also
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has the same memory configuration as the fury x with 4 gigabytes of high
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bandwidth memory aka hbm running at 500
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megahertz on a 512 Gigabyte per second memory bus however where the nano sets
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itself apart is its cooling and power delivery systems unlike some other
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reference design cards from AMD we've seen the nano has its heatsink fins
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oriented horizontally along the card instead of radially out of the card
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you'd see a radial design set up very often on Intel stock CPU coolers and
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they did this they moved to horizontal to minimize obstructions and make the
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cooler function more similarly into a blower style solution AMD is targeting a
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temperature of 75 degrees celsius while gaming with this card throttling at 85
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degrees celsius the nano is also a lot less power hungry
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peak board power is rated at 175 watts
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compared to the 275 watt draw of the fury and fury x
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the improved cooling and reduced power consumption combined with the
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space-saving benefits of hbm which is physically integrated into the GPU
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package means that AMD was able to make the nano pcb only six inches long so the
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card only extends as far as the end of your pci express slot on your
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motherboard do keep in mind though if you're interested in dropping the nano
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into your ultra small system that the power connector alone 8 pin PCIe input
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is oriented on the side of the card not on the top meaning you'll have to factor
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in some extra length there for your plug coming off of your power
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supply with that said let's have a closer look at the card itself starting
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on the front you'd see a matte black metal shroud that looks quite similar to
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what we saw on the fury x except of course that the nano is an air-cooled
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card so there's a single 90 millimeter fan on the front to cool everything down
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do note that if you pick up a reference nano the heatsink and fan are actually
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integrated into the shroud and therefore are not easily removable should you be
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interested in modding the card the heatsink itself features the
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aforementioned horizontal fins and no heat pipes which AMD decided to omit to
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keep the weight and bulkiness of the card to a minimum while still keeping
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the cooling good the back of the pcb is bare though it does have a matte black
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finish for a clean look moving on to the top we see a fairly understated design
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with the Radeon logo and only a small part of the heatsink peeking through the
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black shroud and then the side of the card is open to allow case fans to help
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move air across the heat sink and also includes that lone 8 pin PCIe power
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connector we mentioned earlier on the back we see one HDMI and three display
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outputs note that this doesn't have any dvi outs and we didn't see any adapters
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in the box so make sure you pick one up if you'll be using dvi with this card
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now on to performance we used a fairly standard test suite of tomb raider
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crisis 3 far cry 4 and the witcher 3 for our standard performance benchmarks then
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we just added on fire strike ultra which was a little aggressive but interesting
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regardless then we did our standard skybox testing in crisis 3 to test heavy
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load temperature and system wattage from the wall one very important factor to
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remember when looking at these numbers is the size of the nano yeah sure it's
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trading blows of the gtx 980 and it's being beaten by the fury both of which
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are cheaper but this thing is absolutely tiny in terms of size while the 980 and
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fury are both center of attention case monsters this shows in power draw as
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well the only card that beats the nano in terms of power draw that we tested is
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the now old 285 compact from sapphire
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which to be fair is in a much lower tier performance which shows very well when
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looking at the graph comparison of system wattage per frame
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even though the nano has a little bit more power draw than the 285 compact its
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system watch per frame is under half which is pretty great
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this leaves us with a card that when compared to a 390x strix edition
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performs better runs cooler and draws significantly less power from the wall
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all while being much smaller but at an increased price of 200
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which brings us to our last question price yes okay you got me it's not
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exactly a cheap card at 650 it's got a
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price tag to it it's dollars per frame is not really that grace or price per
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performance is not really that great but i honestly don't think that's the reason
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why someone would be interested in this card the card isn't trying to be the
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best price performance card on the market it's trying to be a badass in
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terms of power consumption and performance while containing itself in a
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small package and that honestly
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basically was my conclusion the nano is small the nano is fast and the nano
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draws an impressively low amount of wattage from the wall it does all of
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this while yes being a little expensive but not to an impossible degree and i
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could see a lot of small form factor builders looking in this direction soon
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especially with the number of case manufacturers coming out with smaller
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and smaller cases every year with some very interesting ones on the horizon
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with the braintree v.0 sdk which is one
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small snippet of code you're all set up in less than 10 minutes they even have
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support staff ready to walk you through the process over the phone if you need
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them their code supports Android iOS and
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javascript clients and they have sdks in seven programming languages they make it
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easy to offer multiple mobile payment types including paypal apple pay bitcoin
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venmo cards and more all with a single
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integration they have quick knowledgeable developer support if you
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have any questions and if you want to learn more and get your first 50 000 in
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transactions fee free go to braintreepayments.com
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Linus linked in the video description
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