AMD touts Radeon R9 Nano as smallest and most power-efficient 4K graphics card

Advanced Micro Devices is unveiling its AMD Radeon R9 Nano graphics card today, touting it as the smallest and most power-efficient solution for 4K graphics on a PC.

AMD said it will enable PC makers to reinvent the small-form-factor PC with its third “Fiji”-based graphics processing unit (GPU). The chip features high-bandwidth memory, a high-speed memory unique to AMD, and compatibility with Microsoft’s DirectX 12 graphics applications programming interface (API). AMD’s new Nano will join two other existing variants of its R9 graphics cards, dubbed AMD Radeon R9 Fury X and AMD R9 Fury.

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The AMD Radeon R9 Nano is six inches long and fits in the Mini ITX form factor, which enables quiet and compact desktop computers. The Fiji chip delivers resolutions up to 4K, smoother gameplay, and “unparalleled VR experiences,” AMD said.

The air-cooled card has 30 percent more performance and 30 percent lower power consumption than the previous generation AMD Radeon R9 290X card. It has two times the performance per watt consumed compared to the older card.

“With the Radeon R9 Nano graphics card, AMD is enabling 4K class gaming in your living room in an exceptionally quiet, ultra-small design built to excel in today’s games and on the latest APIs like DirectX 12 and Vulkan. There simply is nothing else like it,” said Matt Skynner, corporate vice president and general manager of the product, computing, and graphics business unit at AMD, in a statement.

The AMD Radeon R9 line of graphics cards offers a spectrum of products ranging in price from $200 to $650. The Nano card is built with a 28-nanometer manufacturing process. It has 4,096 stream processors and consumes about 175 watts. It has a computing performance of 8.19 teraflops. The Nano card will sell for $650, and it will be available online the week of September 7.