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

The memory is probably the downgrade you’ll feel the most if you’re trying to live with this GPU for a few years. For older and less demanding games, 12GB cards like this and the RTX 5070 are decent options for entry-level 4K if you turn a few settings down and are willing to lean on DLSS or FSR upscaling in a pinch. But for more demanding games (and future games) you may find that 12GB framebuffer limiting you to 1440p or even 1080p occasionally. It’s certainly true that 12GB isn’t a problem the way that 8GB of GPU memory can be, but offering 16GB of memory was one of the more compelling reasons to pick one of the other 9070 cards over the RTX 5070. We compared the RX 9070 GRE to a range of AMD and Nvidia cards at 1440p and 4K resolutions. For AMD, we used the two other members of the RX 9070 family, the 16GB RX 9060 XT, a couple of midrange RX 7000-series cards, and the older RX 6800. For Nvidia, we compared with the GeForce RTX 5070, 5070 Ti, and 5060 from the current generation, as well as the RTX 4070 and 4070 Super and the older RTX 3070. We’ve also included Intel’s Arc B580; it’s not really in the same performance category, but it’s Intel’s fastest dedicated GPU. For an additional $50 to $100, that card gets you 16GB of RAM instead of 12GB, a whole lot more memory bandwidth, and a few more GPU cores. The RX 9070 often matches or beats the GeForce RTX 5070; the RX 9070 GRE does not. The RX 9070 has the RAM it needs to be a credible entry-level 4K GPU; the RX 9070 can struggle with this resolution due to its smaller RAM bank. And the RX 9070 does all this in nearly the exact same power envelope as the RX 9070 GRE. Of course, the text of this review will stay fixed in time, while GPU pricing will not. If RX 9070 and RTX 5070 pricing increases from its current $600 to $650 range, and/or the RX 9070 GRE’s pricing decreases way below $549 for some reason, and if you’re targeting 1440p rather than 4K, the RX 9070 GRE is still quite a bit faster than the 16GB version of the RX 9060 XT. But with things priced as they currently are, this one feels like it’s trying to fill a gap that doesn’t need to be filled.