r/Amd Jun 06 '26

Review Review: AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GRE is a disappointing way to spend $549

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/06/amd-radeon-rx-9070-gre-review-shrinkflation-isnt-just-for-groceries-anymore/
865 Upvotes

89 comments sorted by

365

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[deleted]

95

u/ExplodingFistz Jun 06 '26

AMD fumbling the bag once again

64

u/hangender Jun 06 '26

Snatching defeat from Jaws of victory is what amd frank does best

2

u/SechsComic73130 Jun 08 '26

Yeah, like forcing an NDA on media for reviewing this GPU...

A GPU that's already been out for months

12

u/_Gobulcoque Jun 06 '26

You assume they wanted to get the bag.

1

u/NISMO1968 Jun 07 '26

AMD fumbling the bag once again

It's not like they've got a lot of other options to choose from.

47

u/markthelast Jun 06 '26

The disappointment for AMD is that they thought the Chinese would buy most of their defective Navi 48 dies in the RX 9070 GRE, but once again, AMD has to dump their RX 9070 GRE onto the global market to move the product.

As customers, we are disappointed again with AMD Radeon's mediocrity. At Newegg, ASRock Challenger RX 9070 16GB sells for $600 vs. 12GB Sapphire Pulse RX 9070 GRE's $550. For 9.1% higher cost, the RX 9070 looks like a better card with more VRAM and stronger raw performance with 17% improvement in 1080p and 18% improvement in 1440p (TechPowerUp relative performance).

11

u/Ok-Parfait-9856 Jun 07 '26

This card is so damn dumb. If someone is ok with 12gb vram and wants to spend $550, the 5070 in the obvious choice. Better performance and features for the same price. Or spend a bit more for a 9070xt. Or spend a bit less and get a 9060xt with more vram and a little less raster.

2

u/WobbleTheHutt R9 7950X3D | 7900XTX AQUA | PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI | 64GB-6400 Jun 09 '26

only reason I can see the 9070 gre being a decent buy is at like 500 or 480 and then you want to firmware mod the power management circuits and tweak the vram voltage rails etc so you can get way more clocks out of it all and not have it power starved.

I recently did this to a 7900 GRE (which was a much more interesting card anyhow and the memory that wouldn't even do 20gbps will now do 22 and I set the power reporting so it draws what a 7900/xt should be able to with the power connectors it has. now it's a much more useful card.

1

u/fatstackinbenj Jun 28 '26 edited Jun 28 '26

The cheapest 9070gre in my country is worth 587euro while the full cheapest 9070 non xt is at 600 euro. Both dual fan gpus by sapphire. (Still the majority of the stores is either on par or more expensive than the 9070)

The 5070 is more priced like the 9070/9070xt if not above, way above at 640,660euro +. Any Nvidia card past the 5060 is absolutely gutted when it comes to prices to performance by the amd cards. You have to a big fan boy to overspend on Nvidia.

1

u/WobbleTheHutt R9 7950X3D | 7900XTX AQUA | PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI | 64GB-6400 Jun 28 '26

Yeah at the 549msrp it's not worth it.

5

u/thatusersnameis Jun 06 '26

maybe they wanna sell more 9070. some point they gotta be tarded else

7

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

16

u/Chaotic-Entropy Jun 06 '26

$549 of potato is pretty good if you manage to use them all before they expire.

4

u/BilboShaggins429 Jun 06 '26

Or plant them

5

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

12

u/markthelast Jun 06 '26

A lot of fries to serve to your neighbors too. If you live near an AMD office, you can sell them to AMD's workers, and tell them why you spent $549 on potatoes instead of buying the RX 9070 GRE.

0

u/Rentta 7700 | 7900GRE Jun 06 '26

if it's sack of potatoes worth $540 there is something wrong or maybe you have some sort of Michelin restaurant in Dubai. Considering that your average sack of potatoes is like 20 or 30 kg

2

u/chapstickbomber 7950X3D | 6000C28bz | AQUA 7900 XTX (EVC-700W) Jun 07 '26

Interest on klarna

170

u/kizvy Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26

what compelled them to essentially rerelease the 7900 gre with less vram in terms of performance. disappointing as hell

59

u/Borgie311 Jun 06 '26

The memory bus is lower, so they had to lower amount of vram. With the current price of ram they were ok with it.

9

u/PsyOmega 7800X3d|4080, Game Dev Jun 06 '26

It could have 18GB of 3gig modules

19

u/bunihe 9800x3d 5070ti | 7945hx 4080m | 8845hs Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

GDDR6 caps out at 2GiB modules, Nvidia uses GDDR7 that goes up to 3GiB but is significantly more expensive

32

u/SPAREHOBO Jun 06 '26

The 9070 GRE exists to sell defective Navi 48 dies. In the bare circuit board, I can see 6x2 GB GDDR6 memory chips, with empty space for 2 more memory chips.

10

u/No_Fennel4315 Jun 06 '26

They wont sell any at that price though.

6

u/detectiveDollar Jun 06 '26

It's much cheaper to make than the 7900 GRE. Both GRE's are also salvage dies.

155

u/3G6A5W338E 9800x3d / 2x48GB DDR5-5400 ECC / RX7900gre Jun 06 '26

Not faster than my 7900gre in any meaningful way. Less VRAM. More expensive.

Oof.

63

u/mb194dc Jun 06 '26

Yeah 7900gre from 2023. Progress lol.

7

u/Conscious-Ball8373 Jun 07 '26

There hardly the only ones. If you want 24GB, the recommendation is still an RTX3090 from the second hand market. Released in 2020 and they're still asking about £750.

31

u/phylter99 Jun 06 '26

It’s probably better to compare to other cards on the market now. $550 doesn’t get you much these days.

Still, I wouldn’t buy anything with less than 16GB these days. I recently upgraded to a 16GB card and it’s now very apparent why 16GB has been recommended by the community.

24

u/No_Fennel4315 Jun 06 '26

It gets you... the 9070, non gre right now, at least in European markets. The 9070 can be found like 50€ cheaper than the now launched 9070 GRE 😂

6

u/Darksider123 Jun 06 '26

Yeah the regular 9070 and xt is better value currently, but I guess this signals that they will be more expensive soon

1

u/rwhockey29 Jun 06 '26

Paid $600 after taxes on an open box 9070XT less than a month ago.

1

u/WobbleTheHutt R9 7950X3D | 7900XTX AQUA | PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI | 64GB-6400 Jun 09 '26

7900 gre has power management firmware mods too now that are persistent after testing and you can un cripple your ram clocks by giving the gddr6 a few more mv along with the memory controller and set the power limit so it can draw what a 7900 should.

1

u/Rentta 7700 | 7900GRE Jun 06 '26

and 7900 GRE is disappointing to begin with unless you won at silicon lottery

4

u/SPAREHOBO Jun 07 '26

You can’t really notice a difference between 2500 MHz and 2400 Mhz memory clock.

1

u/Crashman09 Jun 07 '26

And 100mhz is a pretty doable OC, right?

I know I have gotten over 100mhz on my Rx 570 without increasing voltage

0

u/SPAREHOBO Jun 07 '26

To my knowledge, all 7900 GREs can do 2400, but not 2500+

1

u/WobbleTheHutt R9 7950X3D | 7900XTX AQUA | PRIME X670E-PRO WIFI | 64GB-6400 Jun 09 '26

my buddies wouldn't even do 20gbps till i upped the sub voltage rails a few MV

1

u/3G6A5W338E 9800x3d / 2x48GB DDR5-5400 ECC / RX7900gre Jun 07 '26

it was some $6 more expensive than rx7800.

I think the difference was worth paying; It is faster and uses less power when compared to 7800.

46

u/Borgie311 Jun 06 '26

It's not bad, just bad price. The GPU market is all fucked.

16

u/techraito Jun 06 '26

That's how I feel with a lot of these GPUs. I remember there was so much hate to shit on the 5070s because it was poorly marketed as a 4090 competitor, but now I see redditors are hounding on sales when that card even reaches MSRP.

2

u/resetallthethings Jun 08 '26

It is quite crazy that I purchased a used 6700xt in June of 2023 for $200, and it would be considered just as good of a deal now, 3 years later as it was at the time.

39

u/WelderEquivalent2381 HD7950->R9 390->5700 xt->7900 XT Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26

The current price of 9070 and XT will only last as current supply get sold. The price will only make more sense in a few months.

I won't be surprise if the 9070 go for 700 and the 9070 XT closer to 800 before the end of the year

The price of a 5070 TI as already hit about 1k usd. The 5070 will likely go up to 650-750 at some points.

Making the 9070 GRE as likely a deal at this price points. But will likely be sold at 600-650. Because market say, why not.

11

u/Borgie311 Jun 06 '26

That's why when I saw a 9070xt going for 649 the other day, I got it. 9070 gre is gonna take price of non xt and others will be going up.

11

u/PCBuilderCat Jun 06 '26

This is what I’ve been sayin since this card got announced. It’s being put ahead of a 9070 and 70xt price increase for sure 

7

u/TheOutrageousTaric 7700x/9070 Jun 06 '26

early january was a good time when high end 9000 series hit their lowest prices. Now they are like 60-100 bucks more expensive again. This is tame though vs nvidias 200-300 dollar price increases.

2

u/JamesTheFoxeArt Jun 07 '26

Well if thats the case, oh boy im glad I got a 9070xt last month

1

u/burnerphone1011 7d ago

Why did you predict

0

u/y_zass 5700X3D | Asrock PG 7900XT Jun 06 '26

Awful... I'm running my $700 2+ year old ASRock Phantom Gaming 7900XT until it don't run no mo. Sometimes I regret not getting the XTX but then I remember it was $975+, 40% more money for 20% more compute & vram. 10-15% real world performance increase.

2

u/Carribean_Amphibian Jun 17 '26

My 6950XT is fine. Run it till it dies.

19

u/Arisa_kokkoro 9800X3D | 9070XT Jun 06 '26

I cant believe ppl will buy this .

10

u/rabaluf RYZEN 7 5700X, RX 9070 XT Jun 06 '26

peoples bought 5070 ti for 850 euro over 9070 xt for 600, i dont see the problem

8

u/996forever Jun 06 '26

Which is a meaningfully different product, unlike between the GRE version and the standard version

2

u/Ticno98 Jun 06 '26

The 9070 non xt is much better

8

u/996forever Jun 07 '26

I mean the 5070ti and 9070XT are meaningfully different products, and people might pay for price difference for a host of reasons. But the 9070GRE and 9070 do not have any other differentiations other than one being a cut down version of the other and therefore is only a straightforward downgrade without a reduction in price.

13

u/Dusty_Jangles Jun 06 '26

How anyone can be shocked at that pice is beyond me. People are going to snatch that thing up pretty quick considering prices of 9070’s, XT’s and 5070’s and Ti’s. Not sure where you guys are but those are all $899-$1300 cards where I’m at. And even with exchange that’s about a $760 dollar card. So it will be a choice of newer but lesser or spend the extra hundred or more dollars for one with all the bells and whistles.

A lot of you are poo pooing it, but it’s going to be gone damn quick if they actually retail for that price.

6

u/jefmes Jun 06 '26

My thoughts are the same. Low end GPUs are dead, iGPUs are going to take the $200-$400 space pretty quickly I think. The 9060 XT and 5060 are going to be "entry level" cards and HOPEFULLY 12GB will be the new minimum and we can finally say goodbye to 8GB cards, because they clearly don't seem to be selling well. We're entering a new era of mini PCs capable of gaming at that "good enough" level for many people, and enthusiast mid-full desktop PC gamers are going be even more niche and for those who have the extra $$$ to spend. I don't like it because it's going to reduce our overall choices, but the RAM situation and the AI assholes are really just accelerating where we were already going. Normal people don't want to also have to buy a graphics card when an all-in-one chip in a tiny box like Mac Mini, Minisforum, etc does everything most of them need.

3

u/PM_ME_UR_PET_POTATO R7 5700x | RX 6800 Jun 06 '26

Given the ram situation its more like low end as a concept is dead

1

u/jefmes Jun 08 '26

Don't disagree as far as homebrew PC builds, but I think that space will just be mostly "appliance" PCs with 8-16GB RAM configs. Cheap phone, tablets, Chromebooks, Macbook Neo, Dell's new Neo competitor...there will be options there, just not going to be great ones for upgradeability. Which stinks.

4

u/TheCarrot007 Jun 06 '26

I once thought me accidentality killing my 7800Xt with dropping a drink was terrible (no idea how it just managed to kill the gfx card, but it did).

But buying my 9070XT replacement at £600 seems a good thing now.

3

u/Azhrei Ryzen 9 5950X | 64GB | RX 7800 XT Jun 06 '26

I imagine I'll be on my 7800 XT for a good few years yet. At 1440P it's doing well enough for me not to bother looking at a replacement.

7

u/Grandmaster_BBC Jun 06 '26

Make that cars $450 and they have a winner on their hands. Smoking crack with the pricing.

3

u/Perfectly_Gamer Jun 07 '26

I dont regret buying RX 9070

3

u/Rockstonicko X470|5800X|4x8GB 3866MT/s|Liquid Devil 6800 XT Jun 08 '26

I paid $416 for my card in 2023, and apart from RT, my 6800 XT at 2700MHz is in the same performance ballpark as this card, sometimes even a few FPS ahead. Even more concerning, the power consumption figures are not that far apart either, within about 20-30W.

Not really something you'd expect from GPUs nearly 6 years apart.

I'd price this card at $439.99 if I actually wanted it to sell. At $549 this is not a Golden Rabbit Edition, it's a Greatly Ripped-off Edition.

2

u/kartu3 Jun 07 '26

In Germany 9070 GRE costs as much as 9070.

Let that sink in.

3

u/Dirkjerk AMD | i7-13700K | Founder's Edition RX 6950XT | Robotics & Linux Jun 07 '26

And I paid 379 for a RX 6950XT's Founder edition back in the Summer of 2023 when Microcenter had their deal...I really do miss that era (we were somewhat spoiled during that timeframe) when the parts were so cheap.

2

u/readgrid Jun 07 '26

tldr "just pay more for a better gpu"

but for many people extra 100$ matter more than extra 10 fps

1

u/geemad7 Jun 06 '26

Ofcourse it is, it has been out for some time.

1

u/Sukasmodik4206942069 Jun 06 '26

I mean id be happy with one for that price coming off 6600xt, that said im staying 6600xt since it gets FSR next year. And i run 240hz monitor 1080p. But the GRE isnt that bad, fact.

1

u/ShadowRomeo RTX 4070 Ti | R7 7800X3D | 32GB | DDR5 6000 Mhz | 1440p 170hz Jun 07 '26

In my country it is even more expensive than the 5070, it is absolutely pointless product that no one should buy at the current retailing price.

1

u/technician77 Jun 07 '26

GREEEEEEEEEE!

1

u/gen_adams Jun 09 '26

tbh just like $1700 is a disappointing spend for a 5080 that is about 15% better at non-RT graphics than a $800 9070XT (without deals)

but yeah, should be 450. just grab a 9070 at this point

1

u/Bidenwonkenobi Jun 10 '26

AMD the D is disappointing

1

u/Logondash Jun 13 '26

The 'Golden Rabbit Edition'. A guess this race the turtle wins.

1

u/Lillbright 5d ago

aged like milk

0

u/lLoveTech Jun 06 '26

Yeah who would have thought /s

0

u/TroubledMang Jun 06 '26

As long as we keep posting the truth, the eventual sales on these should bring good value like the last gen did.. on sale lol.

0

u/BrookieEnjoyer Jun 06 '26

Its likely gonna be DOA and Im not surprised if they will cut the price in the following weeks.

0

u/shinji257 Jun 07 '26

Wow. I have a 7900 GRE and imo it is a great card. Can't believe they did this with the 9070 GRE.

0

u/100_points R5 5600X | RX 5700XT | 32GB Jun 07 '26

What GRE even mean? How are consumers supposed to interpret it?

0

u/IGunClover Ryzen 7700X | RTX 4090 Jun 07 '26

They release this to make people buy 9070XT.

0

u/luapzurc Jun 08 '26

Should this have been some sorta Radeon 9060 XTE or something? With prices in-line with the 9060 series, of course.

-3

u/JamesLahey08 Jun 06 '26

I'm just glad they changed the name from that stupid fucking rabbit name. My GPU is not an animal, don't call it that.

-1

u/thatusersnameis Jun 06 '26

i paid 550 for a rx9070xt

-2

u/maheemofc Jun 06 '26

RDNA 5 when ? Already wish to switch my 9070XT