AMD Radeon R9 Nano, compact Fiji card test
As promised today is that arrives early Radeon R9 Nano, a variation of the R9 Fury X with which AMD hopes to stand out from the competition by offering for the first time a graphics card up to ultra compact range for mini -PC. The new Radeon she found her niche?
The possibilities of HBM
Although she did not regain the brand, it is a Radeon R9 Nano, not a Radeon R9 Fury Nano, the newcomer takes place in what AMD calls the family R9 Fury. This graphics card family represents a new ultra high-end segment for Radeon, a little to the image of what was done with Nvidia GeForce Titan range. As you have probably already figured out, the GeForce and Radeon these exclusive target the niche players who can afford not to focus on the price / performance ratio and are willing to put their hands in the portfolio to get the best of time, either in terms of raw performance, embedded technologies … and why not as part of a mini PC as AMD made the bet.
the first feature of the Radeon R9 Nano and its small size. It measures only 15 cm long, while most high-end graphics card outputs in recent years reached 27 cm or 30 cm. Without trying to offer the best performance in absolute terms, AMD has opted to offer the fastest graphics card in a specific format.
That’s recall the transition to HBM memory soldered directly into the packaging of Fiji GPU, allowing AMD to significantly reduce the size of the PCB since it is no longer necessary to place the GDDR5 memory. Remains still need to properly cool this whole which may take place regardless of the PCB.
The Radeon R9 Fury X is also built around a small PCB (19 cm) but in order to offer the best capability of the GPU Fiji in terms of performance. Enough to make a rather greedy graphics card that AMD has imposed on the use of a highly efficient cooling system. AMD has opted for watercooling with its advantages and disadvantages as Sapphire, for example, opted for a huge cooler to its derivative R9 Fury.
To propose a Radeon R9 Nano so small at both the PCB that the cooler, AMD of making a significant compromise drastically limit the maximum allowable consumption. An operation which is to limit the performance by curbing the “turbo” of the GPU, allowing to explode energy efficiency. AMD talks about a substantial increase over the R9 Fury X and a double performance against a R9 290x previous generation. What can finally rub the GeForce GTX 900 GPU equipped with Maxwell?