Reports of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE delay have turned out to be untrue, as this graphics card does appear to be launching now as the third model of the RDNA 4 generation. And it’s official: AMD has posted the specifications on their website, and listings have appeared for pre-order in initial retail outlets. However, for the time being, the launch is limited to China making the card a region-exclusive product, at least temporarily.
The final specifications of the card match what was previously leaked: the Navi 48 chip (XL variant) has 48 CUs enabled out of 64, which means 3072 shaders, 48 RT cores (and so on). The memory bus has been cut to 192 bits, accompanied by a reduction of Infinity Cache to 48 MB. The number of ROPs has also been decreased from 128 to 96. Overall, the GPU has been scaled down to 75% of the active units found in the full version powering the Radeon RX 9070 XT.
The Radeon RX 9070 GRE runs at slightly higher clock speeds than the RX 9070, but still below those of the RX 9070 XT – with a listed gaming clock speed of 2220 MHz and a boost clock of 2790 MHz. Besides the narrower memory bus, the memory clock speed has also been lowered to an effective 18.0 GHz, yielding bandwidth of 432 GB/s. It’s unclear whether the cards actually use slower memory chips – if not, overclocking could theoretically close the gap to the 20.0 GHz effective speed seen in the RX 9070 and 9070 XT.
Related to the cut-down memory bus, the card features just 12 GB of GDDR6 memory. Alongside the reduced performance potential of the trimmed-down GPU, this opens the card to potential complications in demanding modern titles, similar to what’s seen with Nvidia’s 12GB GeForce RTX 5070. Some games that run fine on 16GB cards may exceed the 12GB capacity, causing performance stutters, FPS drops, or even crashes. To counter this, players may need to reduce texture quality or resolution. From this standpoint, the Radeon RX 9070 with its 16GB memory remains the more practical option – assuming the price difference isn’t too steep.
The Radeon RX 9070 GRE officially has the same TDP as the RX 9070: 220 W. Power is delivered via a pair of standard 8-pin connectors. However, factory-overclocked versions are likely to appear on the market, potentially featuring higher TDP. Such cards could even feature three power connectors if board partners reuse PCBs and coolers originally designed for XT models. The reference design, which si shown at the top of the article, likely won’t be available at retail.
12 % slower than the RX 9070
According to AMD, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is approximately 6% faster than the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, based on average performance in various games at 1440p with Ultra settings. For context, the RX 9070 was claimed to be 20% faster than the same model under similar conditions (though it’s unclear if the same game selection was used). This suggests the RX 9070 GRE delivers around 88% of the performance of the RX 9070.
AMD states that the RX 9070 GRE achieves a theoretical compute performance of 34.3 TFLOPS (in FP32 operations). This is about 5% lower than the RX 9070 (36.1 TFLOPS), and 30% below the RX 9070 XT (48.7 TFLOPS).
Although the report about the delay into Q4 turned out to be incorrect, it oddly seems to have some basis in truth and may have originated from an actual insider source. The RX 9070 GRE is officially set to launch on May 8, which was the original release date mentioned in the delay rumors. This raises questions – could it be that May 8 marks the Chinese release, while the Q4 reference pertains to a potential global rollout? Time will tell.
Only slightly cheaper than the RX 9070
Starting today, the card is available for pre-order in China (with shipments starting on May 8). Its official price is 4199 Chinese yuan (RMB). Compared to the official launch price of the RX 9070 (4499 RMB), that’s less than a 7% reduction – not a major difference. And it remains to be seen whether this price difference is merely a result of fluctuations in the USD exchange rate. If the global/dollar pricing were reduced by the same percentage, it would put the RX 9070 GRE at around 509 USD or 515 USD.
For now, the RX 9070 GRE does not seem particularly attractive (given its reduced performance and memory), so its absence in global markets is not much of a loss. However, its presence could have positive effect through increasing the overall GPU supply coming to the market from AMD’s partners, potentially easing the current shortages. In the long run, competitive pressures could drive prices for the RX 9070 GRE downward, and if the price gap between it and the standard RX 9070 widens, this cut-down version could become an appealing option. In such case, a global release would be welcome.
Sources: AMD, VideoCardz
English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš
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