The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE has had an extremely rough start in Europe, at least in Germany. Data from the German retailer Mindfactory, a key indicator for CPU, GPU, and motherboard sales, reveals a dismal performance for AMD’s latest release. On its debut day, one of the country’s largest electronics stores sold virtually zero Radeon RX 9070 GRE units. This is a significant blow for AMD’s new product.
The issue doesn’t appear to be a lack of availability. In fact, at the time of writing, the listed RX 9070 GRE models are readily available. Six different models are on offer, with prices ranging from 559 euros to 599 euros. This price point is considerably higher than the original Radeon RX 9070, which launched in the same German market starting at 542 euros.
The Radeon RX 9070 GRE’s Positioning is Awkward: Extremely Expensive for What it Offers
In summary, while the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is not inherently bad in terms of raw performance, its pricing places it in a rather awkward market position. This GPU sits between the RX 9060 XT and the RX 9070, but with a price-to-performance ratio that is difficult to justify. Benchmarks indicate that the RX 9070 GRE is, on average, 16% slower than the RX 9070 at 1440p and 17% slower at 4K. Compared to the RTX 5070, it falls between 5-6% behind. However, it does clearly outperform the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, with an average advantage of around 25-26% in rasterization. The exception is with Ray Tracing, where the NVIDIA GPU takes the lead, likely due to its extra memory (compared to 12 GB).
The problem is that beating the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB in non-Ray Tracing scenarios is not enough. The RTX 5060 Ti 16GB currently suffers from a poor price-to-performance ratio due to memory shortages, so using it as a benchmark to justify the RX 9070 GRE doesn’t automatically make the Radeon a good buy. The crucial comparison is against the standard RX 9070, and in that regard, the GRE fares very poorly.
If it had been priced around 469 euros, it would have been an easy recommendation. However, at 550 euros, it comes too close to the RX 9070, which offers 16 GB of VRAM, more cores, a wider bus, and superior performance. Furthermore, a more expensive RTX 5070 will always be more appealing to many, as consumers are often willing to pay a premium for what they perceive as a more complete or well-rounded product in terms of software and technology.
Brief Summary of this GPU’s Specifications
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE utilizes the same Navi 48 graphics chip found in the Radeon RX 9070 and RX 9070 XT. However, it is a cut-down version. The RX 9070 GRE features 48 Compute Units, translating to 3,072 Stream Processors. These cores are complemented by 48 ray tracing accelerators, 96 ROPs, and its weakest point: the memory. This GPU is equipped with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory running at 18 Gbps on a 192-bit bus, yielding a bandwidth of 432 GB/s.
In contrast, the standard Radeon RX 9070 offers 3,584 Stream Processors, 16 GB of memory, and a 256-bit interface to increase bandwidth to 640 GB/s. Strikingly, despite having more cores, a larger amount of memory, and greater bandwidth, the RX 9070 shares the same TBP of 220W as the RX 9070 GRE.
