A third Radeon RX 7900 is just around the corner, but you're not likely to find it on sale at your local dealer... at least not on its own.
Just a few days after confirming the existence of the Ryzen 5 7500F processor, AMD has just made official another product that has been the subject of many rumors in recent weeks. This time, it's not a processor, but a graphics card, and the product in question is none other than a third version of the Radeon RX 7900. So, after simultaneously launching the Radeon RX 7900XT and Radeon RX 7900XTX last December to get the RDNA3 architecture off the ground, AMD has just started marketing the Radeon RX 7900GRE. "GRE? That's an unusual ending for a graphics card from the American company, and at the same time, it's not the only thing that's unusual about this card.
© Videocardz
But let's start by describing the technical specifications. Unsurprisingly, the Radeon RX 7900GRE uses the same GPU as the previous 7900s. It's the Navi 31, but in a scaled-down version to maintain a clear hierarchy between the three graphics cards. As the Videocardz website explains, this new GPU has to make do with 80 processing units, while the Radeon RX 7900XT and Radeon RX 7900XTX have 84 and 96 respectively. The number of stream processors also drops significantly to 5,120 from 5,376 and 6,144, while the operating frequency drops to 2.2 GHz from 2.4 GHz and 2.5 GHz. More importantly, however, it's the entire video memory section that has been truncated, with a switch to 16 GB GDDR6 at 18 Gbps on a 256-bit interface bus for a total bandwidth of 576 GB/s, compared with 800 GB/s and 960 GB/s for the Radeon RX 7900XT and Radeon RX 7900XTX.
Videocardz
These differences widen the gap between the three 7900 models, and are also reflected in their prices: AMD quotes $649 for the Radeon RX 7900GRE, i.e. $250 less than the Radeon RX 7900XT. This aggressive positioning does, however, come with some clear limitations. While the card will be sold at retail in China, the same cannot be said for the rest of the world. To get your hands on this new card outside the Middle Kingdom, you'll need to purchase a complete machine, as AMD has decided to limit its card to system integrators. A shame, really.
