The AMD Radeon R9 Nano Review: The Power of Size
by Ryan Smith on September 10, 2015 8:00 AM ESTMiddle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Our next benchmark is Monolith’s popular open-world action game, Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor. One of our current-gen console multiplatform titles, Shadow of Mordor is plenty punishing on its own, and at Ultra settings it absolutely devours VRAM, showcasing the knock-on effect that current-gen consoles have on VRAM requirements.
Both of AMD’s Fury cards have handled Shadow of Mordor well in the past, and R9 Nano is no exception. The R9 Nano ends up trailing the R9 Fury X and R9 Fury by around 13% and 7% respectively, not too far off from their respective overall averages. Otherwise compared to NVIDIA’s offerings the R9 Nano clearly trails the similarly priced GTX 980 Ti, but enjoys a very comfortable margin over the likes of the GTX 980 and GTX 970 Mini.
Minimum framerates on the other hand also inherit the other Fiji cards’ weaknesses. AMD actually doesn’t fare too poorly here, however the toll of being slower than the R9 Fury doesn’t do the R9 Nano any favors. Below 3840x2160 the R9 Nano feels the pinch of the GTX 980 and GTX 970 Mini, falling behind these cards.
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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.