AMD has announced the new R9 Radeon R9 Nano, a compact graphics card designed for mini-ITX motherboards and cases. But despite its diminutive size, the card packs the same internals as AMD's current flagship, the R9 Fury X.
The R9 Nano has the same Fiji GPU from the Fury X based on the GCN 1.2 architecture with 4096 stream processors, 256 texture units, and 64 ROPs with a 4096-bit memory bus width, thanks to AMD's new 4GB HBM RAM. Compared to the R9 Fury X, the R9 Nano is clocked slightly lower at 1000MHz instead of 1050MHz, but has a considerably lower TDP of 175W compared to Fury X's 275W. The reference card has three DisplayPorts and one HDMI and requires a single 8-pin power socket.
Due to the lower clock speed and lower TDP, it's unlikely the R9 Nano will be just as powerful as Fury X in actual gaming, but it should be close, which is still great considering the Fury X is a powerful card and the R9 Nano is positively tiny in comparison. The card uses an open air cooler that not only blows inside the case but due to the horizontal heat sink fins can spit air out the back of the card outside the case, which is important as mini-ITX cases tend to have much poorer ventilation.
The Radeon R9 Nano is priced at $649, which is the same as the R9 Fury X. The Nano is aimed at a different market and is one of its kind for now for being able to offer so much power in such a small form-factor, and possibly the only card of this size that can do 4K, although don't expect 60fps PC Master Race framerates. If you were planning on building a high-end gaming HTPC for your living room, then the R9 Nano doesn't have much competition for now.
