AMD introduces compact R9 Nano video card

AMD has formally introduced its latest video card, the Radeon R9 Nano. Almost all details about the compact card had already been leaked by various media, but the price of the small fifteen centimeter card was still unknown.

The R9 Nano is the third card with AMD’s largest GPU to date: the Fiji-asic. Like the Fury and Fury X, the R9 Nano has the latest 28nm GPU on board. In addition, the Nano uses AMD’s latest memory technology: hbm. In addition, the gddr5 memory is not further down the pcb of the video card, but on an interposer next to the gpu itself. This results in shorter lines and more memory bandwidth, and it also makes very compact designs possible.

The Nano has a fully activated Fiji asic on board: as with the Fury X, all 4096 stream processors are activated. The card is slightly more economical than the Fury X: there is only one 8-pin power plug for a tdp of 175W. That is considerably less than the 275W of the Fury X: the clock speed of the gpu is therefore slightly lower and can go up to 1000MHz, but that will often be slightly lower to stay within the power budget. According to AMD, the card will generally tap at around 900MHz. The 4GB large HBM memory taps at 500Mhz (effectively 1000Gbps) over a 4096-bit bus and has a bandwidth of up to 512GB/s.

The Nano card is built specifically for mitx cases: mitx boards are 6.7″ long and the card is 6 inches. The temperature of the gpu could be kept at 75 degrees thanks to a heat pipe on the vrms and a vapor chamber on the asic. Celsius should be kept, with peaks to 85 degrees: only then would be throttled.The cooler should produce about 42dB(A) of noise and largely dissipate the heat outside the housing.On the back are three displayport and an HDMI port. to find a connection.

The Radeon R9 Nano has a suggested retail price of $650. Reviews of the card may not be published until September 10: that is also the date on which store stocks can be expected.