Radeon RX 9070 GRE, AMD Takes It Worldwide | Gigabyte Gaming OC Review

With the launch of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE, AMD has expanded the RDNA 4 family with a solution that sits in a strategic price range between NVIDIA's RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB and RTX 5070. The GRE acronym refers to a name previously used for regional variants, but this time the card is marketed globally starting at $549 / €579, with availability ensured by a wide ecosystem of AIB partners: Acer, ASUS, ASRock, Gigabyte, PowerColor, Sapphire, and XFX.

The declared objective of AMD is to deliver competitive 1440p performance at a lower price than direct competitors, focusing on both the computational density of the RDNA 4 architecture and the suite of FSR technologies to increase framerates in supported titles.

What's Inside the 9070 GRE GPU

The RX 9070 GRE is built on the same Navi 48 die used by the standard RX 9070, manufactured with the TSMC N4P process. The chip features 53.9 billion transistors on a surface area of 357 mm².

The card offers 48 RDNA 4 Compute Units, totaling 3,072 shader processors. Compared to the RX 9070 (56 CU), this is a 14% reduction in compute units, offset by very high operational frequencies: the Game Clock is rated at 2,220 MHz, while the Boost Clock reaches up to 2,790 MHz. The single-precision throughput hits 34.3 TFLOPS. It also includes 48 third-generation Ray Accelerators (1 per Compute Unit) and 96 second-generation AI Accelerators (2 per Compute Unit).

Like other RDNA 4 offerings, there is an optimized Media Engine to enhance encoding and decoding quality across all major codecs: H.264, HEVC (H.265), and AV1. The card supports decoding of VP9 up to 8K@48fps, H.264 up to 4K@330fps, HEVC up to 8K@48fps, and AV1 up to 8K@60fps; for encoding, it handles H.264 up to 4K@180fps, HEVC up to 8K@48fps, and AV1 up to 8K@60fps.

Compared to the reference specifications, our Gigabyte Radeon RX 9070 GRE Gaming OC differs with higher clock frequencies: Game Clock at 2340 MHz and Boost Clock at 2920 MHz. These represent increases of 6.4% and 4.6% compared to reference frequencies. As you will see in the relevant section, this slightly influences performance, but also power consumption. The Gigabyte card is equipped with a triple-fan WindForce cooler that can operate in two modes, selectable via a switch on the card: Performance or Silent.

Radeon RX 9070 GRE (Reference)

Architecture: RDNA 4
Process Technology: TSMC N4P
Transistors: 53.9 billion
Die Size: 357 mm²
Compute Units: 48
Stream Processors: 3,072
Ray Accelerators: 48
AI Accelerators: 96
Peak AI TOPS (INT4, Sparse): 1,097 TOPS
Game GPU Clock: 2,220 MHz
Boost GPU Clock: up to 2,790 MHz
FP32 Power: 34.3 TFLOPS
FP16 Power: 68.6 TFLOPS
AMD Infinity Cache: 48 MB (3rd gen)
Memory: 12 GB GDDR6
Memory Speed: 18 Gbps
Memory Bus: 192-bit
Effective Bandwidth: 432 GB/s
Peak Texture Fill-Rate: 535.7 GT/s
ROPs: 96
Peak Pixel Fill-Rate: 267.8 GP/s
PCIe Interface: PCIe 5.0 x16
Display: DisplayPort 2.1a (UHBR13.5), HDMI 2.1b
TBP: 220 W
Recommended PSU: 650 W
Power Connectors: Standard 8-pin

Rasterization Performance

We tested the Radeon RX 9070 GRE on a test bench with Ryzen 7 9850X3D and 32 GB DDR5-6400 MHz memory, on an X870E platform with Windows 11 Pro. In addition to AMD's other RDNA 4 solutions, we compared this model with GeForce RTX 5000 cards in the segment.

In rasterization tests, meaning without activating ray or path tracing, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is 24-28% faster than the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB depending on resolution. The gap with the RTX 5070 is unfavorably wider: on average, the AMD card stops at about -5-7% compared to the higher-end NVIDIA solution. The Radeon RX 9070 is 16% faster than the GRE at 1440p, and the XT pulls ahead by just over 30%. AMD's new arrival surpasses the 9060 XT by 30% at 1440p.

Activating Ray Tracing

We conducted some tests with ray tracing active, without any upscaling or Frame Generation technologies. The suite is evidently well-optimized for AMD GPUs, with the Radeon RX 9070 GRE outperforming the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti by 22-29% depending on resolution - and surpassing the 9060 XT by 22/32%. The GeForce RTX 5070 remains ahead of the 9070 GRE by 4-10% depending on resolution.

It is worth noting that NVIDIA's ecosystem supporting heavy-load situations like ray tracing and path tracing still surpasses that of AMD, particularly due to the ability of RTX 5000 GPUs to enable MFG up to 6X and Dynamic Multi Frame Generation. AMD still has ground to make up in this respect.

Frequencies, Power Consumption, and Temperatures

Gigabyte's offering, featuring a triple-fan WindForce cooling system and factory overclock, reached a peak frequency around 2820 MHz during our gaming tests, with an average throughout the test session around 2600 MHz. These values are consistent with the factory OC and the usual behavior of boost algorithms, reflecting positively in terms of temperatures.

In fact, the GPU reached a figure - recorded with GPU-Z - of 56 °C. This is an excellent value, registered in Performance mode, likely increasing by a degree in Silent mode. It is noteworthy that GPU-Z shows a peak of 84 °C for the hotspot, a value 28 °C above that observed for the GPU, and something we had previously noted for other RDNA 4 offerings from AMD. The VRAM temperature, however, does not exceed 68 °C.

Regarding consumption, while AMD cites a reference TBP of 220 Watts for the Radeon RX 9070 GRE, this Gigabyte model peaks at about 250 Watts, with an average of 210 Watts throughout the session. Thus, the Gigabyte card does not present operational issues and is capable of delivering the maximum performance of the design, particularly given the factory overclock.

Conclusions

The Radeon RX 9070 GRE positions itself as a card with a well-defined performance profile: superior to the RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB in most titles and generally - depending on shop offers and availability - about 20 euros cheaper than the NVIDIA competitor. However, the RX 9070 has 16 GB and a price that is not very different, at least not sufficiently to bridge the performance gap, and we have also seen an RTX 5070 at its price level.

Consequently, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE does not seem to shine on the pricing front, which could improve over time - although considering the current consumer market situation, we don’t hold out much hope.

The feeling is that this is a card that could have been avoided, in the sense that its arrival outside of China appears more as a stopgap measure towards the upcoming generation which is still uncertain, rather than a real blow to NVIDIA's ribs.

Thus, the 9070 GRE does not significantly shift the balance, and probably serves AMD for inventory management purposes: chips not suitable for the 9070/XT can find their place in this new model.