Sapphire Nitro+ RX 7900 GRE review

Today we say hello to the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE. GRE stands for Golden Rabbit Edition. As you might have guessed given its name, it references the Year of the Rabbit in Chinese culture. The card was originally a China exclusive model, launching in mid 2023, but it has been available in OEM systems in the wider market for a few months, though it has not been available in the channel as a standalone purchase.

That changes from the 27th of February, as the RX 7900 GRE will be available worldwide to purchase as a standalone graphics card. It plugs the sizable price and performance gap that exists between the Radeon RX 7800 XT and the RX 7900 XT. That puts it right in the crosshairs of the RTX 4070 and RTX 4070 Super. The latter recently launched at $599 while base RX 7900 GRE models will launch at $549, the same level as the RTX 4070 was dropped to.

In terms of the core spec, the RX 7900 GRE is essentially a trimmed down RX 7900 XT. It features the same Navi 31 chiplet GPU but with a bit less of, well, everything. AMD will be hoping that the GRE's reasonable price, competitive performance, and surely its 16GB of VRAM will attract buyers.

The original Made by AMD (MBA) GRE model will not be available in the retail channel, so you'll only be able to buy third-party versions. I have the Sapphire Nitro+ RX 7900 GRE on hand for review and it's an absolute beast of a card, with all the trimmings you'd expect from a premium tier model, and at $599, it's markup of $50 is very reasonable.

But is the RX 7900 GRE too late to the party? Let's not forget we've actually ticked over to the Year of the Dragon, which at least makes the name seem a bit anachronistic. 

The Sapphire Nitro+ RX 7900 GRE is a card well worth considering if silence is paramount to you. It's hardly audible under sustained loads and my test system's AIO cooling fans were much more noticeable during typical gameplay.

I can't speak for other RX 7900 GRE models, but given the relatively thrifty 260W TDP of this