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Behold! The AMD Radeon Nano is here!

Yesterday quickly read Anandtech review of R9 Nano, which is already available (you can find it at Newegg, ranging from $649 to $669). This card seems to offer only good things: the perfomance of its elder sibling Fury X (shares the same specs, with a bit slower clock speed), low power requirement (only 175W), the new HBM memory, and small size. Because size does matters.

The price competes with Nvidia's GTX 980 Ti, which can be found (again, on Newegg) for $679-$689, although in perfomance terms, the green card keeps the lead in almost all tests, by 10 or more FPS. More or less, depends on the game. IMHO, the extra $10 (not the extra $20, that Zotac is way too expensive) are compensated by the perfomance gains, plus other factors like Nvidia cards having a nice VDPAU support under Linux. But do not underestimate the Nano, its perfomance, specially in 4K resolutions, are more than enough to hace a decent playing experience. Im just saying that if you can get 10-15 extra frames for $10 and cooling/space/power is not a concern, the 980 Ti is a better choice.

Would I buy this card? Well, yes, if I had the money, because my old R7 250 is asking for a replacement. But if you have a better card, like a 270 or superior, my advice is to wait for the next iteration and a more mature DirectX 12 support. If you are an Nvidia fan... well, I see no reason for you to switch sides now. Eventually you will also have HBM and small factor oriented cards.

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