Conclusion
There you have it, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE has moved from a China-only video card to now being released worldwide. As a quick summary, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE (Golden Rabbit Edition) will be sold from add-in-board partners (AIBs) in the US, and several are releasing new products to fill out this new series in their lineups. SAPPHIRE is among those, releasing three new Radeon RX 7900 GRE video cards in its PULSE, PURE, and NITRO+ lineups. 
At the very top-end, the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 7900 GRE 16GB Gaming OC Video Card will exist at $599, which we have reviewed today. Below that the PURE will be $569, and the PULSE at $549, from SAPPHIRE. They all have varying looks to them, as well as factory clock speeds. 
The NITRO+ we reviewed today is the fastest out of the bunch, with the highest factory overclock, leaving nothing on the table. Literally, our overclocking proves it, SAPPHIRE is extracting all the juice out of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE it can. You will pay for the improved cooling, features, and factory overclock, but if our comparisons are anything to go by, it is a competitive video card for the money, even at $599.
Performance
There are two takeaways on performance, first, the SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE 16GB NITRO+ seems to sit between the Radeon RX 7800 XT and Radeon RX 7900 XT on performance. Sure, there are some games that swing closer to the 7800 XT, but for the most part, we experienced performance that put it more in the middle, especially when features like Ray Tracing were used. A lot of this is due to the higher factory overclock on the NITRO+, that clock speed difference does make the 7900 GRE a better performance proposition and a bigger difference over the 7800 XT.  
The other takeaway is how competitive the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 7900 GRE is against the GeForce RTX 4070, which remember is $549 now. We experienced some fairly large percentage differences in games, with the 7900 GRE overtaking the RTX 4070 by a good amount. Only when Ray Tracing was used, where the advantages smaller, or none. We even saw the 7900 GRE beating the RTX 4070 SUPER in some games. In Alan Wake 2, for example, the 7900 GRE was 7% faster than the RTX 4070 SUPER. It was the same in Starfield, and even higher in Cyberpunk 2077. Again, until Ray Tracing was used. 
Interestingly, in Alan Wake 2, the 7900 GRE matched the RTX 4070 SUPER in Ray Tracing LOW-quality preset performance, but not in High Quality with Path Tracing. The 4070 SUPER was a lot faster in RT in Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 and was faster in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which uses ray tracing. Though, interestingly, the 7900 GRE was faster than the RTX 4070 in Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, which uses ray tracing.
Looking at FSR upscaling performance, more options become available to you for gaming. 1440p with Ray Tracing is playable in games, as long as you use the FSR upscaling option, even just turning on FSR Quality mode greatly improves performance with RT at 1440p. If you move down to FSR Balanced, performance is very good with RT. 
We also found 4K to be viable on the SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+ with FSR Upscaling. You will be able to play all the games tested here at 4K, with FSR Quality mode. Turning down to FSR Balanced provided even better performance. We found, however, that you don’t really want to be dropping below Balanced quality, with FSR, below that, the image quality will suffer noticeably. FSR Balanced can be a good option though at 4K.
We would be remiss if we didn’t talk about the Radeon RX 7900 XT’s performance. In all instances, the Radeon RX 7900 XT was the best experience out of all the video cards here. However, that is a more expensive video card, though prices have come down a lot from the initial launch. There have been some deals online putting it at $700, but mostly it’s around $750. That’s still a good $100-$150 difference between the possibly cheapest 7900 XT, and the SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+. Making the SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 7900 GRE Gaming OC actually a very good value for the midrange by comparison.
Final Points
Generally speaking, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE’s $549 price point sounds like a very ‘middling’ position, based on our performance testing. The $549 price point is a great place for a midrange card, and at this price point 16GB of VRAM makes a lot of sense. We say middling because that’s about where it performs, in between the 7800 XT and 7900 XT, perhaps closer to the 7800 XT for stock-clocked models. It makes sense, based on its specifications, memory subsystem, and power envelope. The waters do become more muddier as you approach the $600 level, however. 
The Radeon RX 7800 XT has dropped in pricing as well, and you can get them in the $530-$560 range today. It does place the Radeon RX 7900 GRE in the middle, again, but it is more awkward at $600, for the performance difference compared to the cheaper 7800 XT. It does seem to give AMD a good ‘card in the middle’, however. Maybe $529 should have been the price? Just a thought. You will have to weigh AMD features with NVIDIA features strongly at these price points, but we now have some fierce competition on both sides.
The SAPPHIRE NITRO+ RX 7900 GRE Gaming OC is $599 has a high factory overclock and SAPPHIRE is pushing it to its maximum potential. At this performance level, it is competitive with the GeForce RTX 4070 and GeForce RTX 4070 SUPER and has more VRAM with 16GB. We were impressed with how cool and quiet the SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+ ran and were impressed with how much performance SAPPHIRE is delivering from the 7900 GRE. With the NITRO+ you know you’ll be getting the maximum 7900 GRE performance out-of-the-box. If you are interested in a 7900 GRE, take a look at the SAPPHIRE RX 7900 GRE NITRO+.