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AMD Radeon R9 Nano

AMD Radeon R9 Nano in 2025: Compact Legend or Obsolete Solution?

Analysis of Architecture, Performance, and Relevance in Modern Conditions

Introduction

The AMD Radeon R9 Nano, released in 2015, became revolutionary due to its combination of compactness and high performance. However, a decade later, its relevance is questionable. In this article, we will explore what this card is capable of in 2025, who might find it useful, and whether it is worth considering in the era of ray tracing and neural networking technologies.

Architecture and Key Features

Fiji XT: A Miniature Revolution

The R9 Nano is built on the Fiji XT architecture with a 28 nm manufacturing process. It was the first series from AMD to utilize HBM (High Bandwidth Memory) — memory with a three-dimensional layout, which allowed the card's size to be reduced to 15 cm.

Unique Features:

- HBM Memory — Reduced power consumption and increased bandwidth.

- LiquidVR — Support for virtual reality technologies (relevant for basic VR headsets).

- FreeSync — Adaptive sync technology to eliminate screen tearing.

What’s Missing?

- Ray Tracing (RTX) — Lacks hardware support.

- DLSS/FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) — FSR 1.0 operates through drivers but lags behind FSR 3.0 and DLSS 3.5 in quality.

Memory: Potential and Limitations

First-Generation HBM

- Capacity: 4 GB.

- Bandwidth: 512 GB/s (higher than many modern GDDR6 cards!).

Issues in 2025:

- 4 GB — Critically low for gaming at 4K and some projects with HD textures (e.g., Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty requires a minimum of 6 GB).

- HBM — Expensive to produce; thus, HBM-equipped cards are rarely found in the budget segment.

Gaming Performance: The Realities of 2025

Testing in Popular Titles (Settings: Medium/High):

- 1080p:

- Apex Legends — 60-70 FPS.

- Fortnite (without RT) — 50-55 FPS.

- The Witcher 3: Remastered — 45-50 FPS.

- 1440p:

- Requires lowering settings to medium for stable 40-50 FPS.

- 4K:

- Only non-demanding games (CS2, Dota 2) — 60+ FPS.

Ray Tracing: Not supported. Mods based on FSR can simulate effects, but this reduces FPS by 20-30%.

Professional Tasks: Is it Worth Considering?

3D Modeling and Rendering:

- OpenCL — Supported, but performance lags behind modern cards. For example, rendering in Blender will take 3-4 times longer than on a Radeon RX 7600.

- Video Editing:

- Suitable for working on resolutions up to 1080p in DaVinci Resolve. 4K projects will experience lags.

Scientific Calculations:

- Limited support for libraries (e.g., TensorFlow via ROCm). It's better to choose cards with support for matrix cores (RDNA 3/4).

Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

Efficiency by 2015 Standards:

- TDP: 175 W.

- Cooling Recommendations:

- Case with good ventilation (at least 2 fans).

- Avoid SFF cases without airflow — overheating may occur up to 85°C.

Power Supply:

- Minimum of 500 W (with headroom for the processor and peripherals).

Comparison with Competitors

2015 Alternatives:

- NVIDIA GTX 970 — Lags in 4K but excels in energy efficiency.

- AMD R9 Fury X — More powerful but larger.

In 2025:

- NVIDIA RTX 3050 (6 GB) — Priced at $199, supports DLSS 3.5 and RT.

- AMD RX 6500 XT — $179, 4 GB GDDR6, offers better performance in DX12.

Conclusion: The R9 Nano is only relevant for enthusiasts who value compactness.

Practical Tips

System Build:

- Motherboard: Compatible with PCIe 3.0 x16 (the ceiling for HBM).

- Drivers: Official support has been discontinued, but the community releases patches (e.g., Amernime Zone).

- Monitor: Ideally, 1080p 60Hz with FreeSync.

Where to Look: Only on the secondary market (eBay, Avito) — average price $50-80.

Pros and Cons

👍 Advantages:

- Unique compact design.

- High memory bandwidth.

- Low power consumption for its class.

👎 Disadvantages:

- 4 GB of memory is a limitation for modern games.

- No support for ray tracing and FSR 3.0.

- Lack of new drivers.

Final Conclusion: Who is the R9 Nano For?

This graphics card is an artifact of the era worth considering in three scenarios:

1. Compact Builds: For mini PCs in a "retro gaming" style.

2. Budget Upgrade: If found under $60 and willing to play at 1080p on medium settings.

3. Collectors: As part of GPU industry history.

For all other scenarios, it is better to choose modern alternatives — even budget Radeon RX 6400 or Intel Arc A380 will offer more capabilities for the same price.

P.S. If you are nostalgic for games from the 2010s or want to build a PC in a console-sized case, the R9 Nano can still surprise. But in the era of AI rendering and 8K, it is more of an exhibit than a working tool.

Basic

Label Name

AMD

Platform

Desktop

Launch Date

August 2015

Model Name

Radeon R9 Nano

Generation

Pirate Islands

Bus Interface

PCIe 3.0 x16

Transistors

8,900 million

Compute Units

TMUs

Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.

256

Foundry

TSMC

Process Size

28 nm

Architecture

GCN 3.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size

4GB

Memory Type

HBM

Memory Bus

The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.

4096bit

Memory Clock

500MHz

Bandwidth

Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.

512.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate

Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.

64.00 GPixel/s

Texture Rate

Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.

256.0 GTexel/s

FP16 (half)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.

8.192 TFLOPS

FP64 (double)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

512.0 GFLOPS

FP32 (float)

An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.

8.028 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units

The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.

4096

L1 Cache

16 KB (per CU)

L2 Cache

2MB

TDP

175W

Vulkan Version

Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.

1.2

OpenCL Version

2.0

OpenGL

4.6

DirectX

12 (12_0)

Power Connectors

1x 8-pin

Shader Model

6.3

ROPs

The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.

Suggested PSU

450W

Benchmarks

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p

Score

29 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p

Score

59 fps

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p

Score

73 fps

FP32 (float)

Score

8.028 TFLOPS

3DMark Time Spy

Score

4543

Compared to Other GPU

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 2160p / fps

RTX A4000

49 +69%

GeForce GTX 1080 Ti

40 +37.9%

Radeon R9 Nano

GeForce GTX 1060 5 GB

16 -44.8%

Radeon RX 560

3 -89.7%

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1440p / fps

GeForce RTX 4070 Mobile

100 +69.5%

GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER

78 +32.2%

Radeon R9 Nano

Radeon RX 480

36 -39%

Radeon RX 560

12 -79.7%

Shadow of the Tomb Raider 1080p / fps

GeForce RTX 3070

141 +93.2%

Arc A770

107 +46.6%

GeForce RTX 2060

79 +8.2%

Radeon R9 Nano

GeForce GT 1030 DDR4

12 -83.6%

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS

GeForce GTX 1080 11Gbps

8.696 +8.3%

Tesla T4

8.304 +3.4%

Radeon R9 Nano

8.028

GeForce RTX 3050 Mobile Refresh 6 GB

7.486 -6.8%

Quadro RTX 4000

7.261 -9.6%

3DMark Time Spy

GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER Mobile

8211 +80.7%

GeForce RTX 2060 Mobile Refresh

6165 +35.7%

Radeon R9 Nano

4543

Radeon Pro W5500M

3419 -24.7%

GeForce MX450 30.5W 10Gbps

2082 -54.2%