Join The Club
With Computex 2026 in full swing, we've already been hit by many stark reminders that the memory crisis is upon us. None more so than AMD announcing the RX 9070 GRE, a less powerful (previously China-exclusive) version of the RX 9070 for the 9070's original MSRP (the 9070 moves up to $619 after launch)
The 9070 GRE has 12 GB of VRAM, 48 compute units, a boost frequency of 2790 MHz, and is recommended for 1440p play. AMD says you can expect 100 fps in Arc Raiders, 144 FPS in Forza Horizon with Ray Tracing, and 86 fps in Horizon Forbidden West at 1440p on Ultra.
The RX 9070, on the other hand, is recommended for 4K and down by AMD. According to its own metrics, you can expect 64 fps in Arc Raiders, 112 fps in Forza Horizon with ray tracing and 63 fps on Horizon Forbidden West at 4K on Ultra.
In our testing of the RX 9070 OC, we found 4K play to be viable in the likes of Warhammer 3 (around 60 fps) and Metro Exodus Enhanced (70 fps), but less so in the likes of Cyberpunk 2077 without a helping hand from FSR.
The GRE comes with 96 ROPs, as opposed to the 128 in the 9070 and 3072 Stream processors (versus 3584). The GRE has 48 ray accelerators and 96 AI accelerators (versus 56 and 112). Both have a 220W power draw and recommend a 650W PSU at a minimum.
The GRE cards are nothing new for AMD. They were traditionally less powerful cards sent to the Chinese market, but have since become popular in their own right for their price-to-performance ratio. The 9070 GRE is different to the norm, though, as it shows the extent of the memory crisis. You are getting less GPU for the same amount of dollars (technically, that is. MSRP has sort of gone out of the window over the last few years).
If you want a 9070 GRE for yourself, they're available from June 2 at an MSRP of $549. AMD does point out that, when compared to the RTX 5060 Ti, the GRE performs better in Arc Raiders, Overwatch 2, Battlefield 6, Marvel Rivals, Cyberpunk 2077, and more.
The RTX 5060 Ti originally had an MSRP of $429, but the 16 GB model fetches around the mid $500s, according to our price watch. Whether or not the GRE will be a good deal for gamers will largely depend on the actual price at market, and that will be anyone's guess.
Still, if AMD can offer more options to the market and use up its supply of hardware more efficiently, launching GRE cards worldwide certainly doesn't seem like an awful idea. If we've all got to deal with the memory crisis, companies will need to be smart with their products if they want people to actually use them.
1. Best overall: AMD Radeon RX 9070
2. Best value: AMD Radeon RX 9060 XT 16 GB
3. Best budget: Nvidia RTX 5050
4. Best mid-range: AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT
5. Best high-end: Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090
