AMD’s Tiny Radeon R9 Nano Proves That 6 Inches Is Nothing To Be Ashamed Of

We learned most of what we needed to know about AMD’s pint-sized Radeon R9 Nano a couple of weeks ago, and today, AMD’s lifted the embargo so that the select few who were given a card could divulge what we’re all waiting for: performance.

As I covered a few weeks ago, AMD clocks the R9 Nano at 8.19 TFLOPs, which puts it close to the full-fledged Fury X, spec’d at 8.6 TFLOPs. As today’s reviews are showing, though, the R9 Nano’s most appropriate target is the air-cooled Fury. In some cases, the Nano virtually matches the Fury, while in others, it falls a bit short.

Results like these do raise a bit of suspicion about the Nano’s rated performance, as it’s technically ~13% faster, but not represented as such through the benchmarks I’ve seen. As is the way with things though, future Catalyst drivers could (and likely will) refine the Nano’s performance further.

At the end of the day, what really matters to AMD is that it’s delivered a ridiculously powerful graphics card in a 6-inch frame. No matter how you want to look at it, that’s damned impressive, and helps highlight what’s possible when 3D memory is brought into things.

AMD's Radeon R9 Nano

R9 Nano's bare PCB (front)

R9 Nano's bare PCB (back)

R9 Nano's air cooler (front)

R9 Nano's air cooler (back)

With the cat out of the bag, what’s the ultimate conclusion on AMD’s latest and smallest graphics card? Our friends at HotHardware have a few thoughts. The card’s biggest downsides, according to Marco, is that the Nano suffers a bit of inductor noise, doesn’t quite match a Fury on the performance front, and doesn’t support HDMI 2.0. Of course – there’s also the concern of cost. At $649, people are going to have to have a very specific need to choose this card over the much-faster and equally priced Fury X.

On the upside, the card was found to offer commendable performance for its size, is relatively cool and quiet, and again, feels like a full-sized card in a small card’s chassis. I admit it genuinely impresses me to look at a card of this stature and know just what kind of performance is pushes.

Overall, there’s not that much to be surprised by here, helped by the fact that this has proven to be an extremely popular product in the rumormill. It’s expensive, but it’s super-fast for its form-factor. It’s now up to you to decide if you must have one. If you do, you’ll at least be able to find the card in stock today (at least as of the time of writing.)