Word comes from AMD via a press release this morning that they are giving the Radeon R9 Nano a price cut. AMD’s diminutive flagship, which launched in September 2015 at $649, is now the first Fiji card to get an official price cut, with AMD lowering the MSRP to $499 effective immediately.

The third card based on AMD’s flagship Fiji GPU, the Radeon R9 Nano was in a sense a culmination of AMD’s design goals for Fiji. Seeking to take full advantage of the compact packaging afforded by the use of High Bandwidth Memory, AMD packed a fully enabled Fiji into a Mini-ITX sized video card designed especially for small form factor systems. The resulting card was neither a performance flagship card like the Fury X nor a clear second-tier card like the regular Fury, but rather a third card that occupied its own niche within the PC market. This coupled with its unique power binning requirements led to it being launched as a micro-sized alternative to the full Fury X at the same $649 MSRP.

This marks the first instance of a significant price cut for a Fiji card – since their respective launches we’ve seen all three cards drift lower by only $50 or so – and that the card receiving a price drop is AMD’s most recently launched Fiji card is a bit surprising. From a price/performance perspective the Nano was essentially priced as a luxury card, with AMD banking on being able to charge a premium for its improved power efficiency and small size. Today’s price drop essentially puts an end to that, especially since the two Fury cards are not receiving a price cut of their own. With that said, the Nano’s power requirements call for what is arguably the best Fiji chip bin, so that adds another wrinkle to the entire situation.

More interesting perhaps is where this puts the R9 Fury (vanilla), which can already be found for as low at $499. The R9 Fury is only a few percent faster than the R9 Nano and noticeably more power hungry as well, so if the R9 Fury remains at $499 then it's hard to imagine the R9 Nano not being disruptive to R9 Fury sales.

Finally, it’s also worth noting that this comes just days after NVIDIA’s most recent game bundle announcement. Although not specifically addressed by AMD, this may be their response to that bundle in order to shore up their lineup against the similarly-priced GTX 980. Especially since this now places AMD's most power efficient card against NVIDIA's most efficient card, offering about 5% better performance for 5% higher power consumption.

Winter 2016 GPU Pricing Comparison
AMD Price NVIDIA
  $629 GeForce GTX 980 Ti
Radeon R9 Fury X $599  
Radeon R9 Fury
Radeon R9 Nano
$499  
  $479 GeForce GTX 980
Radeon R9 390X $379  
Radeon R9 390 $299 GeForce GTX 970
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  • thesmokingman - Tuesday, January 12, 2016 - link

    Easy, they just don't give a damn. Put this into Amazons site for ex. B015121DMA.
  • thesmokingman - Tuesday, January 12, 2016 - link

    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    Price at time of post is $499. There are a few at 530. It really depends how you want to pick your price, go to amazon for 629, same as at release since they are glacial when it comes to adjusting for msrp.
  • KateH - Monday, January 11, 2016 - link

    And just like that, the Nano is worth buying. At 499$ MSRP, Microcenter will have them at around 450$ in a couple months- right around tax return time! Guess I might not wait for Pascal/Greenland to upgrade after all...
  • webdoctors - Monday, January 11, 2016 - link

    Looks like its dropped at newegg:
    http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...

    How low is the margin going to be on this now with HBM and small form factor cooling?

    I imagine this is to clear out the ~12 units they made...I doubt this is to create or ship serious volumes...
  • Asomething - Monday, January 11, 2016 - link

    The small form factor cooling and pcb would be lower cost than higher end cooling solutions since it's either 4-6 phase power, 1 fan, some heatpipes and a kinda small aluminium heatsink which is likely cheaper than a 6 phase power+120mm custom Aio or an 12 phase power, 3fan behemoth.
  • prtskg - Tuesday, January 12, 2016 - link

    I guess this means yields have improved. I read in english.etnews.com that yields were low for nano and AMD wasn't happy with TSMC about it and was looking at other foundries for their next gen products.
  • jasonelmore - Tuesday, January 12, 2016 - link

    can someone point me to where i can find a reference design GTX 980 for $479? i wish.. those are $560 (unless you like rebates) all those ACX or open blower design spill hot air into my case.

    Nvidia made a amazing stock cooler fro the 980 and 970 but nobody wants to use it.
  • Ninjawithagun - Tuesday, January 12, 2016 - link

    Uhhhhh, somebody had better tell Amazon and Newegg about this price cut. They seem oblivious to this supposed price cut by AMD. The R9 Nano is still selling for $600+ on both their websites...just saying!
  • Ninjawithagun - Tuesday, January 12, 2016 - link

    ...okay, Newegg updated their prices...but Amazon has still not adjusted their prices...
  • groundhogdaze - Tuesday, January 12, 2016 - link

    No HDMI 2.0 kills the deal.

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