AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE

Verdict

AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 GRE, first launched in China has finally made its way global. The slightly odd-named GPU sits in between the RX 7800 XT and 7900 XT, providing solid 4K and 1440p gaming performance, for those on a budget. Pound for pound it easily keeps up and even surpasses the RTX 4070 Super, while retaining a $50 cheaper price point across the board. If you’re tired of GeForce Experience, and don’t mind too much r.e. Ray Tracing performance, the 7900 GRE could be a fantastic pick.

Introduction

AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 GRE is a fantastically interesting graphics card. On the surface, it’s a weird hybridized GPU that sits in between the 7800 XT and the 7900 XT.

However, although closer in performance to the 7800, based on the Navi 32 GPU design, it actually has the Navi 31 superstructure at its heart, found in its 7900 siblings.

It came about initially as a result of trade embargoes and government pressure, and first launched as a China-only GPU back in 2023, after the XTX and XT were pulled from sale. Thanks to its spec and performance level it actually fit quite nicely into AMD’s product stack plugging a hole left between the 7800 XT and 7900 XT as well, thus here we are in 2024, with a global re-release as such, with a GPU that might well be one of the best graphics cards out there, particularly if you’re looking at 4K gaming on a budget.

Specs

The RX 7900 GRE, or Golden Rabbit Edition, packs in some serious graphical hardware at its core. It’s based on TSMC’s N5 and N6 lithographic processes, with the N5 (5nm) utilized for the GCDs (or graphic compute dies), on each Navi 31 GPU, and the N6 (7nm) utilised for any memory cache dies (MCD’s) required as well.

AMD utilises a modular GPU structure and design with its RDNA 3.0 architecture, that allows it to easily scale up or down its graphics cards, without necessarily redesigning the entire architecture, or relying on inactive cores from a pre-binned standpoint. It does this by using what it calls CUs, or Compute Units, with each unit effectively having a set number of shader cores, texture mapping units, ROPs, and ray tracing and AI hardware as well. 

The 7900 GRE then, sits comfortably between the 7900 XT and 7800 XT. It houses a total of 80 CUs, giving it 5120 shader cores (think Cuda cores but for AMD), 320 texture mapping units, 192 render output units, 80 ray accelerators, and 160 AI accelerators respectively. From a pure rasterisation standpoint, that’s around 33.33% increased hardware than the 7800 XT, or just around 5% less than that found in the 7900 XT. 

Memory setup is a little more unique as well, with the 7900 GRE mirroring the 7800 XT’s 16GB of GDDR6 on a 256-bit bus, whereas the 7900 XT, packs in 20GB on a 320-bit bus instead, giving it far more bandwidth and capacity to play with.

Where the performance deltas widen and change however, actually lies with the clock speeds, and TDPs. Namely, the GRE is significantly underclocked and lacks the TDP clout of the 7800 XT. In its base config, the 7800 XT tops out at a 2,430 MHz clock speed with a 263W TDP whereas the GRE lands at just 2,245 MHz and 260W. The 7900 XT equally hits 2,400 MHz on its boost, with a 315W TDP by comparison.

Test Setup

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks testing out AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 GRE in a whole suite of benchmarks and gaming trials to really get to grips with it, and see just how that clock ticks. Throughout that process, I’ve measured temperatures and power draw as well, to really give us a good understanding of just how this thing performs under load.

To let it fully off its leash, that’s required building quite the unique test-bed, ensuring that no bottlenecks can occur that would otherwise hinder its performance, particularly across the CPU and SSD. To do that, I’ve paired it with one of the top processors you can find right now (at least until Ryzen’s 9000 series launch later this year), the Intel Core i9 14900K, arguably one of the best gaming CPUs available today. I’ve then mixed that with a top-tier motherboard, and an epic chassis, with some serious cooling to back it all up. You can find the full spec list below.

CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K

RAM: 32GB (2x16GB) Corsair Dominator Titanium @ 7200

Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Dark Hero

CPU Cooler: Phanteks Glacier One 360D30 360mm AIO

Cooling: 3x Phanteks PH-F120M25 120mm fans

PSU: 1200W Corsair RMx Shift 80+ Gold PSU

SSD: 2TB Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 12000 M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD

Case: Geometric Future Model 4 Caliburn

When it came to choosing the tests for the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, I’ve used a mix of both synthetic and in-game benchmarks. It’s important to take advantage of those built-in benchmarks when you can as it gives you a consistent way of testing performance on these GPUs.

For gaming, I’ve selected Horizon Zero Dawn, Borderlands 3, Total War: Warhammer 3, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Cyberpunk 2077 (with ray tracing enabled, and FSR disabled), and F1 2022. This is a nice mix of genres and styles, running on a variety of engines. We’ve recently dropped Red Dead Redemption 2, as we found its settings were too inconsistent across titles, with the game often reconfiguring it during benchmarks to get smoother frame-rates.

As for Synthetic tests, I’ve selected a number of 3D Mark runs, alongside Blender as well, to understand its rendering capacity, and I’m also running HWMonitor for temperature and clock-speeds, along with a wall plug power meter for wattage too.

Gaming Performance

• Comfortable 4K gaming on a budget
• Beats out the 7800 XT by around

Across the whole suite the 7900 GRE did particularly well at 4K and 1440p, scoring an average frame-rate across our six titles of 111.67 at 1440p, and 58 fps at 4K, just squeaking in close to that 60 fps sweet spot.

That said, it’s worth bearing in mind that we test Cyberpunk 2077 on the highest graphical preset with Ray Tracing enabled and any form of DLSS disabled by default, this really tends to push graphics cards quite hard, and pull down frame-rates as a result.

For instance at 4K, Total War: Warhammer managed 53 fps, Borderlands 3 76, and Horizon Zero Dawn landed at 81. Shadow of the Tomb Raider as well hit 84, and F1 2022 with ray tracing enabled hit a comfortable 38 fps as well.

This makes it an incredibly sound pick for those looking for a 4K GPU, that said drop the RX 7900 GRE down to 1440p, and those figures shoot up quite smoothly into the triple figures. If you’ve got a high-refresh gaming monitor at that resolution, you’re going to have a good time. Once again Borderlands 3 scored 148 fps, Warhammer hit 106 and F1 placed at 71 fps as well.

Compared to the RX 7800 XT, that’s around 10.5% more performance at 4K and 9.6% at 1440p as well. Likewise, the card itself only costs 10% more, so as before, it very much closes the gap, and acts as direct competition to the RTX 4070 Super that Nvidia launched earlier this year.

Comparing the two, average frame-rates across 4K and 1440p sit comfortably at around 1-2% difference between the two cards, with the major difference being that extra $50 you’re paying for the 4070 Super, although more on that momentarily.

Ray Tracing & DLSS

Unsurprisingly given RDNA 3’s ray tracing and AI hardware, the RX 7900 GRE performs solidly here too. I do a round of ray tracing specific tests, designed to see how these cards perform when utilising their manufacturer’s smart AI upscaling, in a number of configurations across three separate titles.

Cyberpunk, F1 2022, and Shadow of the Tomb Raider. In Cyberpunk particularly, at 4K with ray tracing and FSR 2.1 enabled, the GRE holds up well scoring 45 fps on average, a more than playable experience. Nvidia does however have the edge here, with its RTX 4070 Super clocking in an impressive 59 fps. 

Interestingly that disparity there doesn’t always translate across titles either, suggesting Nvidia may have an optimization edge in Cyberpunk. In F1 2022 under similar conditions the GRE outperformed the 4070 Super, scoring 76 to its 72, and in Shadow of the Tomb Raider’s ray tracing only test, the difference was 52 to 63 fps with the 4070 Super edging it out ever so slightly.

Power Consumption & Temperature

Thanks to that lower TDP, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE actually performs quite well, certainly compared to some of its predecessor 7th gen cards. In fact power draw throughout its benchmarking process never topped out beyond 596.9W total, compared to the 7800 XT’s 606.5W for total system draw, not too shabby at all. 

Similarly max temperatures also were lower, with the GPU topping out at 76.5 C, versus the 7800 XT’s 84.4 C. It’s not that far behind Nvidia either with the RTX 4070 Super sticking up to 589.3 W total power draw by comparison.

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