AMD Radeon R9 Nano CrossFire

[W1zzard]

In this Review, we will test two Radeon R9 Nanos in a CrossFire setup, and we also include data for a R9 Nano paired with a Fury X, a combination that's possible on AMD because both cards use the same GPU.

Show full review

 

[xkche]

Thanks!
How about VRAM usage?, with "just" 4GB.

 

[NC37]

So after the fuss of not getting a review sample, TPU strikes back with a Crossfire review. Nice one

Performance scaling is nice even in the lower res. Glad TPU did those too so one could see.

 

[HammerON]

Nice review

 

[Finners]

Am I missing it or is the review missing noise and temperatures?

 

[GhostRyder]

Glad you took the time to do this @W1zzard.

Interesting concept at the end there with the MATX cube build idea. Had not considered the idea that CFX might be a real option for the Nano (More in terms of why would you not just pick up something else) but that argument makes good sense. I think CFX values for Fiji do show the potential of HBM better than in a single GPU config especially at the 4K levels.

Meh, its not to unreasonable to think about purchasing 2 Nano's for CFX I suppose.

 

[the54thvoid]

Am I missing it or is the review missing noise and temperatures?

<sarcasm>No, it's now an AMD sponsored site, so the chorus of crickets and fan noise get's hidden under the bed<\sarcasm>

I was just checking - ironically - I can't find a 980ti sli review... Can't compare the scaling - c'mon @W1zzard, for fairness we need a 980ti sli review. If there was one and I missed it, please accept my apologies. I wont be surprised if Fiji comes out better!

EDIT: glad i checked my post - my 'sarcasm' tag had the wrong forward slash and wasn't visible - sorted now....

 

[Darksword]

Wizz, can you do a R9 Fury CrossFire test next?

 

[Luka KLLP]

Glad you took the time to do this @W1zzard.

Interesting concept at the end there with the MATX cube build idea. Had not considered the idea that CFX might be a real option for the Nano (More in terms of why would you not just pick up something else) but that argument makes good sense. I think CFX values for Fiji do show the potential of HBM better than in a single GPU config especially at the 4K levels.

Meh, its not to unreasonable to think about purchasing 2 Nano's for CFX I suppose.

Yeah that build would absolute 4K gaming heaven

Then again, the Fury X2 will probably fit in an even smaller mITX case... It will be interesting to see how that card will compare to CrossFired Nano's!

 

[john_]

Great. Thanks for the review.

 

[Effting]

TechPowerUp, you guys seriously have to take out of your test suite Project CARS, Wolfenstein: The New Order and World of Warcraft. This 3 games really damage the real performance index of the AMD cards. Just take a look at all other games and notice that the performance the Nano, Fury and Fury X cards presents do not agree with the final performance summary, and that is just because of those three aforementioned games.

 

[Maban]

TechPowerUp, you guys seriously have to take out of your test suite Project CARS, Wolfenstein: The New Order and World of Warcraft. This 3 games really damage the real performance index of the AMD cards. Just take a look at all other games and see for yourself that the performance the Nano and the Fury and Fury X cards presents do not agree with the final performance summary, and that is just because of those three aforementioned games.

To take out a game for that would be it's own type of bias. World of Warcraft still has something like 7 million subscriptions. It's a popular contemporary game that people want to know the performance of.

 

[Effting]

To take out a game for that would be it's own type of bias. World of Warcraft still has something like 7 million subscriptions. It's a popular contemporary game that people want to know the performance of.

Sure, but that game already runs at 120+FPS on those cards. So there is no point other than to mess up the performance summary.

 

[Maban]

@W1zzard Why is the Perf/$ page normalized to 200%?

 

[Dieinafire]

Yeah that build would absolute 4K gaming heaven

Then again, the Fury X2 will probably fit in an even smaller mITX case... It will be interesting to see how that card will compare to CrossFired Nano's!

With no HDMI 2.0 it is 4k hell

 

[thebluebumblebee]

Am I missing it or is the review missing noise and temperatures?

Those are done with the individual card reviews.

 

[Zubasa]

Sure, but that game already runs at 120+FPS on those cards. So there is no point other than to mess up the performance summary.

There is certainly a point, Crossfire having negative scaling in WoW is a problem.
You are talking a about a game that has more players playing it, than all the rest of the games in the review combined.
Considering a pair of GTX 960 in SLI is almost twice as fast as a pair of Nanos @4k in WoW.

With no HDMI 2.0 it is 4k hell

What kind of crap 4k monitor has no Display Port?

 

[Darksword]

Sure, but that game already runs at 120+FPS on those cards. So there is no point other than to mess up the performance summary.

You can't just remove all the games that AMD does poorly in and call it an objective review. People want to know how well the card performs on specific games. If AMD cards underperform due to driver issues then that's something people want to know before spending $650.00.

If and when AMD fixes those issues the scores will reflect that.

 

[Steevo]

Excellent review, and almost a kick in the ass to see two tiny cards beating the crap out of the rest of everything on offer currently less one or two titles where crossfire support is lacking.


Kind of a eye opener looking at the performance of the pair compared to other cards, build a Micro ATX system with these in crossfire and the ability to game at 4K and good frame rates.......

 

[RealNeil]

Thanks for the review. It's a good read.
I think I'll hold off on these for a while and see what else comes down the pike.

 

[15th Warlock]

There is certainly a point, Crossfire having negative scaling in WoW is a problem.
You are talking a about a game that has more players playing it, than all the rest of the games in the review combined.
Considering a pair of GTX 960 in SLI is almost twice as fast as a pair of Nanos @4k in WoW.

What kind of crap 4k monitor has no Display Port?

I think he might be referring to limiting the HDMI output at 4K to 30Hz when using this card in an HTPC build connected to a 4K TV; very few TVs have DP, so that there limits the potential to build a killer mini-ITX rig powered by this card to place in a living room and play games at a decent frame rate.

As always, great review W1zzard, I actually considered using this card in crossfire at one point before the price was revealed, two of these cards deliver awesome performance!

 

[Kanan]

I think he might be referring to limiting the HDMI output at 4K to 30Hz when using this card in an HTPC build connected to a 4K TV; very few TVs have DP, so that there limits the potential to build a killer mini-ITX rig powered by this card to place in a living room and play games at a decent frame rate.

As always, great review W1zzard, I actually considered using this card in crossfire at one point before the price was revealed, two of these cards deliver awesome performance!

As said probably a zillion times by now: get a DP to HDMI 2.0 adapter. If you got 650 or 1300$$ for graphics cards you can afford that adapter, I think. Or get one of the "very few TVs that have DP 1.2" for 4K 60hz. Last time I checked "very few" meant more than "none", so thats not exactly a problem, too.

Edit: thanks for the Nano reviews, I really liked the good pictures.

 

[15th Warlock]

As said probably a zillion times by now: get a DP to HDMI 2.0 adapter. If you got 650 or 1300$$ for graphics cards you can afford that adapter, I think. Or get one of the "very few TVs that have DP 1.2" for 4K 60hz. Last time I checked "very few" meant more than "none", so thats not exactly a problem, too.

Edit: thanks for the Nano reviews, I really liked the good pictures.

Yeah, that's always an option, but that doesn't save the card from being criticized for not including this feature out of the box, it would've cost AMD literally a few cents to add this feature to this "premium card" considering it costs exactly the same as a full AIO water cooled Fury X.

And yes, this coming from a guy who has spent literally over $2.5K in video cards and a custom cooling loop for my main rig, but before you think I'm a hypocrite, let me say that I said the same thing about Nvidia when they tried saving a few cents on a $1K card by not adding a backplate to Titan X, so both companies are equally guilty of the same sin.

 

[Effting]

You can't just remove all the games that AMD does poorly in and call it an objective review. People want to know how well the card performs on specific games. If AMD cards underperform due to driver issues then that's something people want to know before spending $650.00.

If and when AMD fixes those issues the scores will reflect that.

That's another thing we should stop complaining about: it's not the GPU makers fault if a game does not run well on its GPU, its the game itself that was poorly built. The GPU and it's driver (or its arquiteture GCN) were already there for the game developers to make good use of it. Hardware companies should stop trying to make shitty games run well if it wasn't meant like that in the first place.

So if you can't just remove games that don't run well on AMD hardware, to balance things out, it would be fair to include games that run well on AMD hardware but not on Nvidia hardware.

 

[Kanan]

it would've cost AMD literally a few cents to add this feature to this "premium card"

A few cents? Architectural changes are more expensive than a few cents, get your informations right please. Is it not obvious to you, that they would have done it, would it have been a few cents?

So if you can't just remove games that don't run well on AMD hardware, to balance things out, it would be fair to include games that run well on AMD hardware but not on Nvidia hardware.

Afaik there are no games that run on NV hardware that bad as Cars on AMD. But there are games that run worse on NV hardware, for example Tomb Raider and that game is included. Also, all games that are used in the article should stay. There's no cherry picking in something like that, it wouldn't be "fair" - not to NV and not to the people interested in the card and the games.