AMD is expected to launch their Fiji based, compact-ITX form factor, Radeon R9 Nano graphics card next week on 27th August. The report comes from Zolkorn (an industry veteran based in the Thai market) who received details from industry based sources that AMD will be unveiling their 16cm graphics card on 27th August that is just a week away.
AMD Radeon R9 NANO
AMD Radeon R9 Nano Might Launch on 27th August – 175W Fiji and HBM Powered Graphics Card
The AMD Radeon R9 Nano is one of the most anticipated card of the Radeon 300 series lineup that was showed by AMD at their E3 event. We didn’t get a ton of information about the card but the details AMD showed in their slides are quite juicy. The AMD Radeon R9 Nano is a tiny card, that’s what AMD said it themselves. It might be tiny but for a card this small, it has some shocking performance and efficiency numbers. 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. This card boasts 2.0 times the performance per watt compared to Hawaii and that is just crazy and yes, it is actually faster than Hawaii too, not some numbers AMD is giving out for marketing.
The AMD Radeon R9 Nano is faster than Hawaii and we mean the full fat Hawaii chip featured on the Radeon R9 290X. The proves that AMD has done some crazy work designing this little beast of a card which is just an amazing engineering feat by the team at Red. The other thing is that, the card has a 175W thermal design power and the same goes for typical power usage. AMD has given this card a single 8-Pin power connector to feed power to it. It has 2 times the performance density and is 2 times the performance per watt compared to R9 290X and here is where things get interesting.
AMD Radeon R9 Nano Features 85-90% Performance of Radeon R9 Fury X
AMD Radeon R9 Nano_1
Now AMD has already launched their Fiji XT based Radeon R9 Fury X and Fiji Pro based Radeon R9 Fury. Those cards are rated with a 275W TDP while the Radeon R9 Nano, also a Fiji based card is 175W. The reason it is so efficient has to do with two things and those include a significantly cut down Fiji GPU along with lower clock speeds. Even with those in place, the card is still faster than the 290 and 390 series that are based on Hawaii GPU. In fact, AMD confirmed to us that the Radeon R9 Nano is about 85-90% of Radeon R9 Fury X (in terms of performance). We still don’t know as to how much extent is the card disabled since the card has a launch slated for later in summer, this year, but I can guess that the card may be priced around the $449-$499 US range. But it was revealed by several sites that the Nano will come with the full Fiji core so we believe AMD is using some magic spice to make this card operate at 175W.
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.
The last bit about the card is the thermal solution itself. The single fan air cooler confirms that the card can actually be clocked lower to make room for smaller PCB and cooler designs. The R9 Fury X uses liquid cooling while the R9 Fury is said to feature a triple fan air cooler. Display outputs include three Display Ports and a single HDMI display connector. Launching on 27th August, it will be interesting to see how the Radeon R9 Nano stacks up inside AMD’s lineup as it may become they most powerful HTPC solution ever created.
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