AMD Radeon R9 NANO review

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Product Photos

We will start with our photo-shoot first, then go in-depth into the specifications and architecture followed by the metrics in heat, noise and obviously benchmarks. Three pages worth of photos first then, from our own photo-shoot of course. 


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Here we have the AMD Radeon R9 NANO. We consider it to be a flagship model within its form factor. The Radeon R9 Nano has 4096MB of 4096-bit memory, is fitted with 4096 shader processors and is a lovely product for 4K gaming. Yes, even Ultra High Definition gaming at that massive resolution called UHD - 3840 x 2160 pixels is where this product can show some muscle. The GPU boost clock is set at 1000 MHz (max) and, as our article will show later on, there's even room for tweaking as we got this puppy running stable at 1070 MHz on the boost frequency, stable and consistent without any down-clocking.
 

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The design for the Radeon R9 Nano is, at first sight, impressive. Cute, tiny and light-weight are the words that come to mind. This dual-slot graphics card measures only 15cm in length, crazy stuff. AMD can achieve that due to the fact that memory ICs aren't SMT soldered on the PCB anymore, HBM is placed directly onto the GPU. So by GPU and memory design this allows AMD to make incredibly small form factor graphics cards. The packaging is dual-slot based with an alu housing / outer shell with rubber inserts on the front-side. The cooler is basically a full radiator with one fan blowing warm air away through the grill located on the left side of the card (photo above).

 

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If you have some serious cash to spend then hey, AMD even allows you to opt for the multi-GPU road with Crossfire as an option. You can pair say, two in one PC and have them do a decent workout. A Crossfire bridge is no longer needed. The data will be moved over the PCIE (preferably 3.0) bus.

As you can see, much like the Radeon R9 Fury X, this NANO has no DVI monitor connectors. That is a bit of a weird call to make. You could use an HDMI to DVI splitter, but dual-link would not be supported so you would be stuck at Full HD. DisplayPort 1.2 connectors are the future in the PC segment and you do get three of them. The one HDMI is HDMI 1.4a based. So again, this is not an HDMI 2.0 connector. That means you can't fully use it on an Ultra HD TV in your living room. HDMI 2.0 offers bandwidth support for 60hz @ Ultra HD, on 1.4a it'll drop back to a measly 30 Hz.

It remains to be the bigger miss on Fiji if you ask me; HDMI 2.0 is the best answer for products in the living room, while I agree that DP is the best solution for PC gaming. It's a bit of a thing for 4K gaming in the living room I'd say. So Ultra HD gaming at 60hz is only possible through Display Port. There will be active DP to HDMI 2.0 converters available in the long run, but these will certainly be expensive.

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