AMD has emailed HEXUS to announce a significant price cut on its small form factor friendly R9 Nano graphics card. The card, released only last September, is being reduced from an MSRP of $649 to $499. The approximate 23 per cent price cut is effective immediately, says AMD.
As a reminder of the Nano's appeal AMD's Matt Skynner, said; "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 DirectX12 and Vulkan. There simply is nothing else like it". It was said to offer 30 per cent more performance and 30 per cent lower power than the previous generation flagship AMD Radeon R9 290X card.
HEXUS reviewed the AMD R9 Nano, before its general release date in September 2015. The card had been eagerly awaited by PC enthusiasts and it brought a power efficient, HBM packing, compact 6-inch design to the graphics card market.
The R9 Nano features a full size Fiji XT die with a standard peak 1GHz clock speed and a 175W TDP. However chassis requiring such a small card were/are rather thin on the ground. This fact, and the launch price of $649, despite being noticeably slower in testing than the also-small, similarly priced AMD Radeon Fury X, were definite chinks in its armour. Now it's suggested price is on a par with the similarly performing Radeon Fury (non-X).
Perhaps the largely unnecessary compactness of the R9 Nano hasn't set the market alight, but now AMD claims the card is going to have its biggest impact yet, as following its price cut it will be more accessible than ever. Now AMD's mini-ITX friendly graphics card could find its way into the more of the originally predicted compact gaming, modder, enthusiast and systems integrator machines.
We'd like to know your thoughts on the price cut, and if it will make you re-evaluate the AMD R9 Nano?
