PowerColor's Radeon RX Vega Nano Is A Pint-Sized Graphics Powerhouse

A shortened version of AMD's Radeon RX Vega becomes more real by the day. Not that the Radeon RX Vega Nano was ever fake—AMD's senior director of global marketing PR, Chris Hook, briefly teased the card at SIGGRAPH 2017—it just has not been released, or even officially announced. It does show up from time to time, however, making its most recent appearance at AMD's Ryzen 2000 series launch event in Munich.

The pint-sized card pales in size compared to a full-length Radeon RX Vega and presumably would make a great addition to a home theater PC (HTPC) or any other small form factor (SFF) system that needs to pack a graphical punch. As with what has shown up before, PowerColor is the add-in board (AIB) partner that is behind the Radeon RX Vega Nano, though it looks different than the prototype model that was shown off last year.

For one thing, the single cooling fan is positioned towards the left of the card, closer to the input ports rather than situated in the center. It also has a longer heatsink assembly that extends past the right edge of the printed circuit board (PCB), and there is no LED Radeon logo on the corner of the card.


The original prototype shown off at SIGGRAPH last year had just a single 6-pin PCI Express power connector, whereas a recent leak showing just the PCB had two of them. So does PowerColor's card, which lends credibility to the leaked shot of the PCB that showed up earlier this month. If we put all the pieces together, it looks as though AMD designed a Nano version last year then tweaked the design, with Sapphire already producing PCBs for PowerColor and perhaps other AIBs as well.

As with previous reports, this is said to be a Radeon RX Vega Nano 56, meaning there are 56 Compute Units (CUs) underneath the hood rather than 64. What's still not known, however, is whether PowerColor will actually release this card, and if so, exactly when and for how much.

Thumbnail and Top Image Source: PC Games Hardware