AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE "Golden Rabbit Edition" Arrives in China
News from China – AMD is out with a new graphics card, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE or the "Golden Rabbit Edition." This RDNA 4-driven GPU is raising eyebrows, and reviewers have been testing it for its mettle. So what's this all about with the new card, and where it stands in the constantly changing world of gaming hardware.
What's Under the Hood
The RX 9070 GRE is not built from scratch. It uses the same NAVI 48 chip as its bigger siblings, the RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT, but with some tweaks to its specifications. You're looking at 3072 Stream Processors and 12GB of GDDR6 VRAM. The idea seems to be offering a decent in-between solution between the RX 9060 XT and the RX 9070 base.
Performance: Familiar Ground and Some Surprises
So how exactly does it. The reviews are quite an entertaining read. Pitted against AMD's own previous generation, the RX 9070 GRE is right on the level with the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. That's an RDNA 3 model which also originally appeared in China prior to a wider release. In either synthetic testing or actual games, the two are neck-and-neck pretty much.
There is a teensy little catch, though. The older RX 7900 GRE comes with an extra 4GB of VRAM, which could be the deal-breaker for some gamers, especially as games get more intense. That being said, remember the prices: the RX 7900 GRE was $549, while the new RX 9070 GRE should be under the $500 mark, given that the full RX 9070 is $549.
Now, things start to get slightly more interesting. In comparison to its plain out namesake, the full-fat RX 9070, this GRE variant is actually pretty much slower – by about 15%. That's a wider difference than some might have expected. Interestingly, compared to Nvidia's RTX 5070, the RX 9070 GRE is only behind by about 5%. This is a bit puzzling since the performance difference between the vanilla RX 9070 and the RTX 5070 is also in that same narrow 5% range. The specific games and applications used to test them likely have a lot to do with this. Some reviews, like those of Expreview, show cases where the RX 9070 GRE is on par with the RTX 5070, and in other cases, the Nvidia card can outperform by as much as 20%.
How About vs. the Competition's Mid-Tier
Competed against Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti, the RX 9070 GRE shows a solid lead, running about 27% faster (some tests clocking a 20-30% difference). That's a nice bump, but it's worth remembering these cards aren't head-to-head competitors in AMD's stack. AMD is set to release the RX 9060 XT sometime soon, probably at Computex. That card, which uses a new NAVI 44 chip, will be the one actually going to challenge the RTX 5060 Ti.
So, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE appears to be a strategically positioned card for the Chinese market, offering performance comparable to a strong last-gen option but at a potentially more attractive price point. Its place in the global market, if it ever gets one, remains to be seen.
