It’ll fill a performance niche, but the final price will be the real measure of its potential.
AMD’s Radeon RX 9070 GRE may no longer be a China-exclusive graphics card.
As VideoCardz reports, English box art for a Sapphire Pulse version of the card has appeared online, and a Walmart listing for a pre-built gaming system includes a 9070 GRE as an option. With performance that sits between the 9060 XT and 9070 (non-XT), this card could flesh out AMD’s midrange GPU lineup, but pricing could be the ultimate decision-maker on its popularity.
AMD introduced GRE versions of its GPUs with the RX 7000 series. Initially, it stood for Golden Rabbit Edition to celebrate the year of the rabbit, but it now stands for Great Radeon Edition. It tends to be used for cut-down versions of its graphics cards that use binning to broaden AMD’s GPU offerings. The 7900 GRE was a popular late release of the RDNA 3 generation.
The 9070 GRE has been a China-exclusive, but we’ve now seen several examples of its availability extending overseas. AMD hasn’t made any announcements, but this follows the typical release pattern for these cards: start in China and then move to Western markets later.
The 9070 GRE is based on the AMD Navi 48 GPU used in the 9070 XT and 9070. but cut down to 3.072 Stream Processors (the XT has 4.096. and the non-XT has 3.584). It also has 12GB of VRAM, rather than the 16GB of the higher-end cards, and a restricted 192-bit bus, again cut down from the 256-bit of the other 9070 GPUs. The memory is also slower, at 18Gbps, but the TDP is 220W, the same as the RX 9070.
All of this results in a card that should sit somewhere between the RX 9060 XT and the RX 9070 (non-XT), according to ComputerBase’s performance results. With those cards currently listed at $450 and $650. respectively, it could fit nicely into the product stack if AMD can get the 9070 GRE to around $550 by the time it reaches Western shores. Indeed, perhaps with the reduced VRAM on the GRE model, it could even bring the price down to $500. which would represent a big price drop compared with the 5060 Ti with its 16GB of VRAM.
