AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE review: A cheaper GPU for a wildly expensive era

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

RATING : 8 / 10

If you haven't noticed yet, it's a beautiful bad clip to bargain hardware, PCs and thing that needs RAM. You tin convey nan AI companies for that. AMD has 1 imaginable hole for gamers, though: connection older gear. At Computex this year, nan institution revealed that it'll bring backmost its celebrated Ryzen 7 5800X3D chip, and besides make nan Radeon RX 9070 GRE card disposable globally aft launching successful China past year. With a suggested unit value of $549, it's presently much affordable than past year's RX 9070, which launched astatine nan aforesaid value but now sells for upwards of $600.

After testing nan Radeon RX 9070 GRE — which stands for "Golden Rabbit Edition" — I tin corroborate it performs intimately to nan RX 9070. These GRE versions are typically lower-specced GPUs that AMD sells successful China. If retailers tin really support its value adjacent to $549, it's 1 of nan fewer semi-affordable options for decent 1440p gaming (with a dash of ray tracing). But if that value still sounds excessively steep to you, it whitethorn beryllium worthy waiting until adjacent twelvemonth to spot really nan hardware marketplace fares.

There was thing typical astir nan ASRock RX 9070 GRE I tested — it's conscionable a elemental GPU cooled by 3 ample fans — truthful I'll conscionable get consecutive to nan specs. It features 12GB of VRAM that's slower than nan 16GB of representation successful nan 9070, and it besides has 8 less compute units and ray tracing accelerators. That's a awesome logic why AMD tin connection it for little than nan 9070. The institution tries to dress up for nan reduced hardware by bumping up nan 9070 GRE's boost speed, which tin deed up to 2.79GHz, compared to nan 9070's 2.52GHz.

GPU

3DMark TimeSpy Extreme

Geekbench 6 GPU

Cyberpunk (4K RT Overdrive DLSS)

Port Royal ray tracing

In 3DMark's Speedway test, which is presently nan company's astir demanding benchmark, nan GRE paper scored 4,334, importantly little than nan modular RX 9070's 5,799. The GRE GPU was much competitory successful older 3DMark tests, scoring astir 700 points little than nan 9070 successful Steel Nomad and conscionable 200 points little successful Timespy Extreme. That's a motion that older games will execute acold amended connected nan 9070 GRE, compared to newer titles.

That being said, nan 9070 GRE besides ran good successful Forza Horizon 6, averaging 180 fps successful 1440p pinch nan "RT High" mounting and AMD's FSR4 framework procreation turned on. Without framework generation, it reached astir 90 fps. I was besides amazed that nan 9070 GRE could grip a spot of 4K gaming: It averaged 80 fps successful Forza pinch nan aforesaid "RT High" preset. The crippled looked awesome successful some resolutions, pinch capable ray traced reflections and HDR highlights to make my QD-OLED show shine, and I didn't announcement immoderate capacity stuttering. (Forza did pass that my video representation was moving low, but I didn't brushwood immoderate issues.)

Devindra Hardawar for Engadget

Oddly enough, nan Radeon 9070 GRE performed amended successful nan Geekbench 6 compute test, compared to nan 9070. That could beryllium owed to driver refinements, aliases immoderate advantages from moving astatine a higher timepiece speed. For nan astir part, though, you tin conscionable deliberation of it arsenic a lesser 9070. That whitethorn make nan GRE version better-suited for mini cases: Under load, its halfway somesthesia reached conscionable 58C, and I could hardly perceive nan fans spinning. The paper besides cooled down quickly to 30C aft stopping an intensive crippled aliases benchmark.

Given nan times we're in, I can't easy urge that you tally retired and bargain nan Radeon RX 9070 GRE. But if you're successful hopeless request of an upgrade, and you can't hold until adjacent year, it's a coagulated prime for midrange 1440p gaming.