Introduction
The AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE is not a new video card, but we wouldn’t be surprised if you have not heard about it. Up until now, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE has been a China-only available video card, but that all changes as of February 27th, 2024. AMD will be making the Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) GPU officially available worldwide, which means you will finally be able to purchase it in the US from all the well-known add-in-board partner manufacturers. In fact, this is an AIB-driven launch, meaning there is no made-by-AMD model, you will only find it available from popular AIBs. 
Today, SAPPHIRE is entering with its new lineup of Radeon RX 7900 GRE-based video cards with the PULSE, the PURE, and the NITRO+ lines. We have SAPPHIRE’s top-of-the-line model, highest-end enthusiast SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 7900 GRE 16GB Gaming OC video card for review today, retailing for $599 for this juiced up, highly factory overclocked model. SAPPHIRE will also have a PURE model available for $569 and a PULSE model available for $549. But let’s back up a bit first, and talk about just what the Radeon RX 7900 GRE is first, and how it compares to the rest of the AMD lineup in our Radeon RX 7900 GRE review.
AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE
As the name implies, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE is a cut-down version of the Radeon RX 7900 XT, or the Navi 31 die aimed at 1440p gameplay. This means that it sits below the 7900 XT in the stack, between the 7800 XT and the 7900 XT. It was first launched in China, and labeled GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) which references 2023, when it was introduced, which was the year of the rabbit. 
Now that it is going worldwide, AMD is keeping the name, but bringing the price down to an official $549 price tag in the US, making it sit in an interesting place with Radeon RX 7800 XT’s (which have dropped in price) and the 7900 XT (which has also dropped in price) these days.
You can see the primary spec differences above, the 7900 GRE has 80 Compute Units and Ray Accelerators, which is not much cut down from the 7900 XT. This reduces the Stream Processors by only 5%. However, there is a much larger clock frequency difference, which reduces frequencies by 6% for the game clock and boost clock. By far, the two largest changes that will affect performance the most is a reduction in the AMD Infinity Cache size down to 64MB, which is a 20% reduction over the 7900 XT. 
The other major change is the memory bus width at 256-bit, compared to 320-bit on the 7900 XT. This changes the memory capacity to 16GB, and the memory frequency is also decreased to 18Gbps. The final major difference is that of total board power, where the 7900 GRE now sits at 260W, which is 17% less than the 7900 XT.
The memory subsystem and power envelope actually share a lot with the Radeon RX 7800 XT. The 7800 XT also has a 256-bit memory bus width, and 16GB of memory, but oddly enough the 7800 XT has higher clocked memory at 19.5Gbps, meaning the 7800 XT actually has higher memory bandwidth at 624GB/s compared to the RX 7900 GRE at 576GB/s. 
Both the 7800 XT and 7900 GRE have 64MB of Infinity Cache, so technically the 7800 XT does have more memory bandwidth overall. The TDP of the RX 7800 XT is 263W, so both the 7900 GRE and 7800 XT sit in the same power envelope. It will be interesting to see how the 7900 GRE compares to the 7800 XT, clock speed differences will make a bigger impact for the 7900 GRE.
The way AMD is looking at it is this, with the Radeon RX 7900 GRE at $549 it competes directly in price with the NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070, which remains in the NVIDIA product stack at this new lower price. AMD’s advantage at this price point is now more VRAM with 16GB instead of 12GB on the RTX 4070, as well as a wider memory bus width, and DisplayPort 2.1. Power Draw, however, goes to the RTX 4070 which is more efficient. 
The Radeon RX 7900 GRE also competes with the GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER because there will be factory overclocked models of the 7900 GRE at or near the $599 price tag as well (like the one we are reviewing today), going up against the RTX 4070 SUPER on pricing. Yet again, however, the 7900 GRE models will have more VRAM and a wider bus width, but the RTX 4070 SUPER has better power efficiency.