AMD just brought the Radeon RX 9070 GRE ("Golden Rabbit Edition") to global retail — and the reception has been brutal. Hardware Unboxed's review is titled, bluntly, "AMD's New GPU Makes No Sense," and after watching the whole thing plus reading what Radeon owners are actually saying, it's hard to disagree. Here's the buyer's-eye summary so you can skip the disappointment.
Full review: "AMD's New GPU Makes No Sense | Radeon RX 9070 GRE vs. GeForce RTX 5070" — Hardware Unboxed
What the GRE actually is
It's not really new — it launched in China back in May 2025 and has now gone worldwide. It uses the same Navi 48 silicon as the RX 9070 and 9070 XT, but heavily cut down: 48 compute units (14% fewer than the 9070), Infinity Cache trimmed 25% to 48 MB, a narrower 192-bit bus, and crucially 12 GB of VRAM instead of 16 GB with memory bandwidth slashed roughly 33%. It's positioned against NVIDIA's RTX 5070 as a 1440p value card.
The problem: the price
AMD set the MSRP at $550 — the very same launch price as the full RX 9070. Since the 9070 now sells around $600, you're saving roughly 10% for a card Hardware Unboxed measured as about 15% slower with 25% less VRAM. As Steve put it, that's "a pretty garbage deal." When a cut-down card lands this close in price to the better card it's cut down from, the math simply doesn't work.
What viewers think
The comment section was not kind, and the sentiment is consistent enough to be useful:
"You know it's a bad deal when a 5070 seems like a good idea in comparison." — @elinoraptipois
Others read it as a strategic placeholder — "it only exists to dampen an inevitable MSRP increase for the 9070 and 9070 XT" (@PCBuilderCat) — while existing owners felt validated: "All I got from this is that my 9070 is a killer GPU" (@Efsaaneh). The one pragmatic note came from @brandonmonroe6751: "Maybe when the GRE falls below $500 on a Prime Day it'll be worth it." At MSRP, though, almost nobody recommended it.
What Radeon owners on Reddit are saying
r/radeon reached the same verdict independently. In "What do we think about the 9070 GRE?", the value argument collapsed in real time:
"The 9070 XT is already incredible value, so is the 9070. Why would anyone want this to save $50?" — u/ConcentrateLucky8630
"The 5070 is simply a far better choice compared to the 9070 GRE for a very similar price." — u/f1rstx
A companion thread, "9070 GRE should've been $450," captured the pricing gripe exactly. The lone genuine use-case surfaced from u/MonkeyHairless: if a GRE comes in the same compact dimensions as small-form-factor 5070s, it could enable "a truly small (5-liter) full-AMD 1440p PC." Niche, but real.
The bottom line
Skip the GRE at $550. For about 10% more, the full Radeon RX 9070 gives you more cores, more cache, and the full 16 GB of VRAM — and the RTX 5070 is the obvious cross-shop for similar money. The only scenario where the GRE makes sense is a sub-$500 street price or a specific small-form-factor build. Otherwise, this is a card to walk past.
