This site may earn affiliate commissions from the links on this page. Terms of use.

Nano-Feature1

AMD'south Radeon Nano was, in many means, the crown gem of the Radeon Fury family. While information technology didn't offer quite as much performance as the Fury X or Radeon Fury, it blew the power efficiency of both cards out of the h2o. It was an incredible card for small form factor PCs, and packed considerably more than firepower into the smallest loftier-end GPU we've ever seen.

The i downside? Cost. At $649, the Radeon Nano was priced against the Fury 10 and the GTX 980 Ti, despite not quite matching the performance of either solution. That made the GPU something of a niche offering — fabled if yous needed its tiny size, but hard to recommend as a general carte du jour. Today, that changes — AMD has slashed the Radeon Nano'southward cost by $150, or 23%.

Absolute power consumption.

Absolute ability consumption.

The price cuts bring the Radeon Nano downwardly to $500, and at that price, it's playing a different game. Unless AMD cuts the toll on the Radeon Fury, the Nano and the Fury are now cervix-and-neck — with the Nano using much less power, fitting into smaller form factors, and taking upwards a lot less of your example.

Power efficiency at default and 150% board power level.

Power efficiency at default and 150% board power level.

The Radeon Nano's dramatically reduced power envelope compared with its bigger brothers — load power is well-nigh 100W beneath the Fury X at both 4K and 1080p — could also help the card slip into systems where a more powerful GPU would require a bulkier ability supply. The GTX 980 withal has an overall edge in that department, but for AMD fans who take older PSUs, Nano can serve a plausible upgrade path.

At $500, the Radeon Nano is too on much better footing against the GTX 980 (it's slightly faster and slightly more expensive). It still costs quite a chip more than the small form factor versions of the GTX 970 on the market today, only the price premium has come down from 1.83x the price to 1.4x the price. That puts the two solutions in solid contention — the Radeon Nano is between 25-twoscore% faster than the GTX 970 Mini depending on your test and power settings.

We weren't able to get any word on whether or not AMD would cut the price of other Fury cards, but this moves the Nano from "niche" to "by and large recommended" if y'all're a Team Ruby-red fan. Of form, with new cards coming from both AMD and Nvidia inside a six month time frame, you wouldn't be crazy to wait and see what both companies bring to the table with Polaris and Pascal.