The AMD Radeon R9 Nano was one of the interesting look cards at the AMD PCGaming Show back at E3 2015. The card, which is based on a Fiji GPU is supposed to hit retail market this summer but AMD didn't share a lot of information about the card itself aside from showing the card itself and saying that it will be faster than the Hawaii based graphics cards and deliver up to 2 times the performance per watt compared to the R9 290X.
AMD Radeon R9 Nano Features Full Fiji GPU With Lower Clock Speeds
The AMD Radeon R9 Nano is a really small card but the report coming in from Anandtech indicates that the card would be based on the full Fiji GPU. Now we did say that we didn't receive any confirmed indication from AMD on the specifications but given the size and thermal limit of this card, it was based on our estimates that this card could feature a disabled Fiji GPU like the one which will be fused on the Radeon R9 Fury (Non-X) that launches on 14th July 2015. Back when we reported regarding this card, we said that it could be significantly skimmed down and believe me it is. There's no way AMD is getting that 175W out of Fiji by pouring in the full fat XT core. Furthermore, the card is cooled off by a single fan cooler which is not comparable to the high-end AIO water cooler featured on the Radeon R9 Fury X.
This card is actually based on the same 8.9 Billion transistor boasting Fiji GPU which is featured on the Radeon R9 Fury X and has 4 GB HBM VRAM dedicated for gaming that runs along a 1024-bit wide bus interface clocked at 500 MHz (1 Gbps effective) that pumps out 512 GB/s bandwidth. AMD confirmed to us that the Radeon R9 Nano is about 85-90% of Radeon R9 Fury X (in terms of performance). The single fan air cooler confirms that the card is actually clocked lower to make room for smaller PCB and a compact cooler design. Display outputs include three Display Ports and a single HDMI display connector. The card is powered by a single 8-Pin power connector on the side of the PCB.
Going from 275W to 175W is a major cut in TDP and if AMD manages to obtain these figures on the Radeon R9 Nano, then it could confirm that this card might not feature the same performance of the Radeon R9 Fury X as it was never meant to be that fast but the small form factor design could be used to power HTPCs and gaming boxes such as Steam Machines which could make use of all the power in a small package. The Radeon R9 Nano will have extremely low clock speeds compared to the 1050 MHz on the Radeon R9 Fury X but that is expected. The small PCB will do away with some of the high-end components featured on the R9 Fury X which will mean that overclocking will be limited to non-existent. We can see a price of around $449-$499 US for this small card.
There’s reason to believe so, the AMD Radeon R9 390X which features the Hawaii XT (Grenada XT) core is said to be slower than the Radeon R9 Nano. The Radeon R9 390X is priced at $429 US at the moment so it will be a bad decision to release the card at a lower price than 390X. The $449 Us and $499 US spots actually sound a lot better since it offers better performance than R9 390X and even comes close to the Radeon R9 Fury X, then it will be an interesting offering in the consumer market. Do note that this is just speculation and the card may even end up priced lower than my guesses here.
AMD Radeon Fiji GPU Cards Specifications:
WCCFTech | AMD Radeon R9 Fury X2 | AMD Radeon R9 Fury X | AMD Radeon R9 Nano | AMD Radeon R9 Fury | AMD Radeon R9 290X |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
GPU | Fiji XT x 2 | Fiji XT | Fiji XT | Fiji Pro | Hawaii XT |
Stream Processors | 8192 | 4096 | 4096 | 3584 | 2816 |
GCN Compute Units | 128 | 64 | 64 | 56 | 44 |
Render Output Units | 128 | 64 | 64 | 64 | 64 |
Texture Mapping Units | 512 | 256 | 256 | 224 | 176 |
GPU Frequency | TBA | Up to 1050Mhz | Up to 1000 MHz | Up to 1000 MHz | 1000Mhz |
Memory | 8GB HBM (4 GB Per Chip) | 4GB HBM | 4GB HBM | 4GB HBM | 4GB GDDR5 |
Memory Interface | 4096-bit x 2 | 4096bit | 4096bit | 4096bit | 512bit |
Memory Frequency | 500Mhz | 500Mhz | 500 MHz | 500Mhz | 1250Mhz |
Effective Memory Speed | 1Gbps | 1Gbps | 1Gbps | 1Gbps | 5Gbps |
Memory Bandwidth | 1024 GB/s | 512GB/s | 512GB/s | 512GB/s | 320GB/s |
Cooling | Liquid | Liquid, 120mm Radiator | Air, Single Fan. Custom AIB Solutions Later | Air, Custom AIB Solutions | Air, Single Blower Fan |
Performance (SPFP) | 17.2 TFLOPS | 8.6 TFLOPS | 8.19 TFLOPS | 7.2 TFLOPS | 5.6 TFLOPS |
TDP | TBA | 275W | 175W | 275W | 250W |
Power Connectors | Dual 8-Pin | Dual 8-Pin | 8-Pin | Dual 8-Pin | 6+8 Pin |
GFLOPS/Watt | TBA | 31.3 | 47.1 | 26.2 | 19.3 |
New Prices | TBA | $649 | $499 | $549 | $299 (Retail) |
Launch Date | Early 2016 | 24th June 2015 | 7th September 2015 | 10th July 2015 | 24th October 2013 |