AMD LAUNCHES RADEON RX 7900 GRE

$549 gets you 16GB for gaming

AMD’S RDNA 3 family of graphics cards still isn’t complete, as we have another midrange(ish) offering: the RTX 7900 GRE. It’s been available in China since last July— what AMD has done is give the rest of the world a chance to play with one. It’ll cost $50 more than the recently released 7800 XT at $549, and aims to offer solid 1440p and reasonable 4K gaming.

At its heart is a cut-down Navi31 GPU with 80 compute units. This places it neatly between the 7800 XT, which has 60, and the 7900 XT, which has 84. We get a healthy 16GB of memory on a 256-bit bus, mirroring the 7900 XT. The clock sits at 1,880Mhz with a top boost to 2,245MHz. What does GRE stand for? Golden Rabbit Edition. It’s the original Chinese name, as it was launched in the year of the rabbit. This makes no sense elsewhere, but AMD seems to think it works.

The obvious direct rival is Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 4070, which had just dropped to $549, although why anybody still wants one is a mystery, as another $50 gets you a Super with all those extra cores. However, both these cards have 12GB on a 192-bit bus, giving the Radeon an edge. Ray tracing and DLSS are another matter thanks to Nvidia’s strengths, but for pure rasterization, the GRE still packs a punch. Radeon’s mid-range is starting to look crowded, with three cards within $100, but we shouldn’t complain, as we’ve had to wait long enough for some choices. Nvidia’s RTX 4070 has proved popular, looking at its Steam numbers, and the 7900 GRE offers significantly better rasterization performance for your dollars. This looks like a winner—we’ll find out more in our

review soon.