AMD’s Nano video card is just six inches long and arriving this August

By Jon Martindale July 17, 2015

rumor the fury nano beats r9 290x at half size and power consumption nano1 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Graphics cards have become giants in recent years. The boards themselves have lengthed, the heatsinks have thickened, and memory chips coat the PCB. AMD’s latest generation of GPUs bucked this trend, however, and they are about to get even smaller, thanks to the impending launch of the R9 Nano this August.

Although not much is known about the card just yet, we can confirm that AMD plans to make it just six inches long and it should have a maximum thermal design power (TDP) of just 175 watts. That should make it far cooler and quieter than the air-breathing version of the high-end Fury GPU.

However, it will also be less of a performer too. The question is, by how much?

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming

Related: AMD officially reveals new Radeon 300-series, R9 Fury at E3 2015

Presumably the card will still be aimed at enthusiasts, since it is part of the new Fiji lineup of GPUs. It is expected to take a sizeable hit to its clock speed however.

WCCFTech believes that it will still be worth the upgrade for AMD fans. By having such a small form factor it will be a great choice for those with mini-ITX cases or those worried about excess heat, and it’s performance is suggested to be significantly above the 290X, AMD’s flagship from the last generation.

That would make this a very interesting card, since it would be the first that was competitive with Nvidia’s TDP figures in a long time. While it seems unlikely to beat out the green rival on a watt/performance basis, it will likely represent more of an upgrade than the re-branded versions of the last generation that have fleshed out most of the 300 series.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Computing Coordinator

Jon Martindale is the Evergreen Coordinator for Computing, overseeing a team of writers addressing all the latest how to…

Computing

What AMD needs to do to beat Nvidia in 2024

The AMD Radeon RX 7900 XTX graphics card.

In this generation of GPUs, it's not AMD that has the best graphics cards -- it's still Nvidia. AMD's offerings have been strong, but Nvidia trumps it in pure performance, reaching for the stars with the wildly overpriced RTX 4090 while AMD keeps things slightly more reasonable with the RX 7900 XTX.

What can AMD do to turn things around and come out on top in 2024? Will it gain an edge over Nvidia? Signs are pointing to an interesting battle ahead, but for AMD to win, there are a few things that need to happen.
Is AMD as good as it can be in 2023?

Computing

AMD isn’t competing with Intel anymore — Threadripper just wins

The Threadripper 7980X CPU installed in a motherboard.

The era of high-end desktops (HEDT) disappeared a few years ago. Intel's long-abandoned X-series processors dried up, and AMD relegated its Threadripper CPUs to the enterprise market, leaving enthusiasts with cash to burn to settle for flagships instead of HEDT. That is, until now.

AMD's Threadripper 7000 CPUs are bringing HEDT back, making even the best processors look puny in comparison. After taking a generation off, AMD is reviving Threadripper for consumer desktops. That fact alone makes these CPUs important -- even you ignore the obscene performance numbers they put up. AMD has now carved out a performance class that it can call its own, straddling the line between flagship consumer chips and data center CPUs where Intel doesn't have any options.

Computing

Gigabyte may have just leaked AMD next big release

AMD Ryzen 5000G.

Gigabyte has just sparked some rumors about the next generation of AMD's top processors, perhaps accidentally leaking the release date that AMD itself hasn't talked about just yet. Then again, coming from Gigabyte, it can be considered a fairly credible source. In any case, AMD's next-gen APUs seem to be right around the corner, serving up graphics powers far beyond anything we've seen in an integrated GPU so far.

We're talking about AMD's 8000G APUs, which are a much-anticipated update to the company's lineup. So far, the best APU available to desktop users is the Ryzen 7 5700G, featuring RDNA 2 graphics. With the release of the Ryzen 8000G Phoenix, AMD will move to the RDNA 3 architecture, delivering up to 12 RDNA 3 compute units (CUs) in the rumored Ryzen 7 8700G. That's the same number of CUs as in the RX 6400.