The AI-induced RAM and SSD shortage affects the entire industry, as anything that requires memory or, to some extent, storage has seen price increases regardless of brand size. AMD and its board partners also bear the brunt as GPU VRAM becomes more scarce in favor of Datacenter HBM memory. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE graphics is AMD’s band-aid solution to this shortage, by providing a lower-cost GPU for gamers. We have the Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE in our labs to see if the cut-down version of the Radeon RX 9070 GPU is appealing in today’s economy.
AMD RNDA 4 Architecture
AMD’s RDNA 4 architecture is engineered for the next generation of gaming, emphasizing high-end workloads with advancements in rasterization, compute efficiency, and a substantial leap in Raytracing performance compared to RDNA 3. Key innovations include 3rd-generation Ray Tracing with double-ray intersection rates, improved BVH compression, and accelerated ray traversal and shading. The introduction of Oriented Bounding Boxes (OBB) enhances efficiency by more tightly bounding geometry, reducing traversal steps, and improving performance by approximately 10%. RDNA 4 optimizes memory latency with out-of-order memory queues, allowing shaders to execute more efficiently. The architecture also features dynamic register allocation for shaders, increasing occupancy and overall shader core efficiency.
Beyond gaming, RDNA 4 provides comprehensive, high-performance ML support tailored for gaming and content-creation models. It incorporates enhanced Wave Matrix Multiply Accumulate (WMMA) operations, support for 8-bit floating point formats, and 4:2 Structured Sparsity, which can double peak performance. This translates to nearly a 2x per-CU performance uplift for image generation with SDXL 1.5 when using FP16. The architecture also boasts enhanced bandwidth efficiency across all workloads and multimedia improvements, including an updated encode/decode engine for low-latency streaming with up to 25% quality improvement in AVC, H.264, and H.265, and double AV1 throughput. Display features are also upgraded with enhanced FreeSync Power Optimization, Hardware Flip Queue Support, and Radeon Image Sharpening 2. The RDNA 4 is built on a TSMC 4nm process, featuring a monolithic design with 53.9 billion transistors.
FSR 4
AMD’s FSR 4 is the latest iteration of its DLSS counterpart, FidelityFX Super Resolution upscaling technology, incorporating ML-powered capabilities and designed specifically for the new RDNA 4 architecture. It aims to provide high-quality, low-latency upscaling by integrating features like frame generation and Anti-Lag. The technology uses custom game ML models trained on AMD Instinct accelerators to upscale game output to 4K, leveraging RDNA 4’s AI acceleration capabilities. FSR 4 is “Neural Rendering Ready” and built on an upgradable FSR 3.1 API. Demonstrations suggest significant performance uplifts, with some games experiencing multiple times higher average FPS at 4K. AMD plans to support over 30 games at launch, with more than 75 titles expected in 2025.
AMD HYPR-RX
AMD HYPR-RX is a software feature that optimizes gaming performance with a single click by integrating multiple AMD technologies for an enhanced experience across numerous titles. It combines AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution (FSR) for upscaling, AMD Radeon Anti-Lag for reducing input latency, and AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) for in-driver frame generation. Compatible with AMD Radeon RX 7000 Series GPUs and newer, as well as Ryzen 7040 Series APUs with integrated RDNA 3 graphics and later, HYPR-RX aims to deliver higher frame rates and smoother gameplay. Recent updates, particularly with AFMF 2.1, have shown substantial performance improvements, with some games demonstrating average frame rate uplifts of up to 3.0x compared to native 4K resolution.
Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE – A Closer Look
Sapphire has one of the busiest-looking GPU packaging designs, yet each of its product tiers is unique enough that you can tell which series it is at a glance. The PULSE GPUs are mostly purple, and unlike most GPU brands, there isn’t any render to showcase the GPUs
The Sapphire PULSE RX 9070 GRE features a dual-fan design, featuring two AeroCurve Fan Blades that cool the integrated cooling module. The shroud is mainly made up of plastics with red highlights that mimic “pulses.”
The rear of the card features a comparable multi-layered backplate with a relatively small PCB cutout that reveals about one and a half fans. This design, along with an exposed heatsink on the metal backplate, improves airflow and cooling performance, though the cutout is smaller than that of the RTX 5060 Ti Gaming OC 16G card.
The Sapphire PULSE RX 9070 GRE is a 2.5-slot measuring 280 x 120.25 x 51.5mm. It’s not thin by your usual standards, but it’s not among the thickest GPUs. Case compatibility should not be an issue unless you have an SFF build.
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE has a rated TGP of 220W, the same as the Radeon RX 9070. The Sapphire Pulse RX 9070 GRE requires two 8-pin PCI-E connectors and thankfully doesn’t use the notorious 12VHPWR connector.
Like the Sapphire PULSE RX 9060 XT, the PULSE RX 9070 GRE doesn’t follow the usual 3DP, 1 HDMI setup. Instead, it has two DisplayPort 2.1 ports and two HDMI 2.1 ports.
Benchmark Setup and Test Methodology
Gadget Pilipinas’ testing philosophy is to provide detail-oriented results as accurately as possible so that our readers can replicate our tests, given that these conditions are met. Different benchmarking apps and sequences are used depending on the component or device being tested.
| CPU | AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D |
| COOLER | ASUS ROG RYUJIN II 360mm V2 – Noctua NT-H2 Thermal Paste |
| MOTHERBOARD | Gigabyte X870E Aorus Master |
| MEMORY | GSkill Trident Z Neo 32GB(2x16GB) DDR5-6000 CL28 |
| GPUs | Nvidia RTX 5090 Founders Edition | Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE |
| STORAGE | Kingston Renegade 2TB NVME SSD |
| POWER SUPPLY | FSP VITA GM1000W Gold ATX 3.1 |
| OPERATING SYSTEM | Windows 11 Pro Build 24H2, VBS off |
| CASE | Open Benchtable V2 |
We use CapFrameX 1.8.5 BETA as our primary FPS capture and analysis tool for all our gaming benchmarks. The latest Windows 11 Pro build and WHQL-certified drivers are used for our benchmarks. Readings such as temperatures and power draws are recorded using HWINFO64, and other relevant software for cross-checking.
For more info, read our Review and Benchmark methodology article.
Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE – Synthetic and Productivity Benchmarks
ADOBE PREMIERE PRO VIDEO EDITING BENCHMARK
Procyon benchmark suite is developed by UL, the same team behind 3DMark and PCMark benchmarks. The UL Procycon video editing benchmark uses Adobe Premiere as part of a typical video editing workflow. The benchmark starts by importing two video project files with various edits, adjustments, and effects – the second project uses several GPU-accelerated effects. Each project is exported in 1080p with H.264 encoding, and again in 4K with HEVC (H.265) encoding. The reported score is based on the time taken to export all four videos. GPU acceleration is turned on for GPU benchmarks.
PCMark10
From the same developers of the popular game benchmarking tool 3DMark, PCMark 10 is a benchmarking app for measuring a whole PC’s performance. It covers a wide variety of tests to reflect common tasks performed in a modern workplace. We selected PCMark 10’s extended benchmark and reported both the overall score and the Digital Content Creation Score.
V-RAY 6
V-Ray Benchmark is a stand-alone version of V-Ray developed by Chaos Group. It is designed to test the CPU and GPU by rendering sample scenes within a fixed amount of time. V-Ray is a plug-in primarily used in 3D computer graphics software, mainly for industrial design, product design, architecture, film, and video game production. V-Ray is not limited to 64 threads as it supports multi- and mega-threading.
GeekBench 6.6
Geekbench is a multi-platform benchmark used to gauge CPU performance and compare it across Windows, Mac, and Mobile. Geekbench 6 is the latest version and doesn’t rely as much on memory as the previous Geekbench 4, making it a great tool for measuring both single-core and multi-core CPU performance. Geekbench also runs GPU benchmarks using the OpenCL and Vulkan API.
BLENDER 4.5.0
Blender is a widely used, free, open-source 3D creation suite. It supports the entire 3D pipeline, including modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, and even motion tracking. Blender has become a standard for CPU benchmarks, with the BMW27 and Classroom Scene being the most used. This prompted the company to release the Blender Open Data Benchmark in 2018, a benchmark-specific version that allows users to run a preset benchmark and share the results online, similar to 3DMark.
HANDBRAKE 1.8.2
Handbrake is a top-rated open-source video conversion software used by professionals, enthusiasts, and even reviewers as a reference point, mainly for its wide range of media codecs. The rise of streaming and blogging makes video content, both encoding and transcoding, important for these people, regardless of whether they’re seasoned professionals or just starting out. Handbrake also leverages AVX-512 and OpenCL to accelerate certain media codecs. Our Handbrake benchmark converts a 3:16 4K60 clip shot from an S24 Ultra to 1080p60 H264 mp4 for CPU or 1080p NVENC H265 for GPU.
3DMark Benchmark Suite
3DMark is the go-to benchmark for gamers because it allows users to share and compare results online. We test GPUs using both DX11 FireStrike and DX12 Timespy for the “classic” benchmarks. We also used 3DMark’s latest Steel Nomad and SpeedWay benchmarks as we slowly shift to these “more accurate” synthetic game benchmarks.
Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE – AI Benchmarks
Geekbench AI
Computer Vision – Procyon
Image Generation – Procyon
Text Generation – Procyon
Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE – Gaming Benchmarks
RETURNAL
Returnal is one of the most technologically advanced games since Cyberpunk 2077’s launch. Released in April 2021 on PS5 and in February 2023 on PC, it uses Unreal Engine 4 and supports technologies such as Ray Tracing, DLSS, VSR, and FSR.
COUNTERSTRIKE 2
CounterStrike 2 or CS2 is the successor to the now-retired CSGO and now uses the Source 2 Engine – the same engine used on DOTA 2. CS2 is a great FPS game for testing CPU performance. Our benchmark process uses the game’s replay function.
DOTA 2
Dota 2 is a good reputation among F2P titles, especially MOBAs and RTS as it lands on the demanding side of the spectrum. Its gameplay and quality-of-life updates are far more frequent than those of most F2P titles, thanks to its vast popularity. Our benchmark sequence is based on a replay of Liquid vs. Gaimin Gladiators in the The International Grand Finals Game 3 from the team fight that happened from 16:24 to 17:24.
SPIDER-MAN: MILES MORALES
Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony, was one of the most popular PC port titles in 2022. It’s one of the few modern game titles that support upscaling technologies, FSR, DLSS, and XeSS, making it a great title to use for benchmarks.
F1 23
F1 23 is the official video game of the 2023 Formula One and Formula 2 championships, developed by Codemasters. F1 2023 is the sixteenth installment in the franchise and uses the Ego Engine 4.0. F1 233 is a good representation of racing games thanks to its realistic graphics and fairly demanding spec requirements, as well as support for Ray Tracing and the latest upscaling technologies such as DLSS, XeSS, and FSR.
ASSASSIN’S CREED: MIRAGE
Assassin’s Creed Mirage is the latest Assassin’s Creed game from Ubisoft making it the thirteenth major installment in the franchise. It uses the AnvilNext 2.0 game engine and is the very first AC game to support the latest upscaling technology such as XeSS, FSR, and DLSS.
Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 is arguably the most hyped game of 2020. Developed by CD Projekt Red, the dystopian open-world, action-adventure RPG sports is one of the most demanding titles to date. Cyberpunk 2077 also supports three Ray Tracing settings and DLSS, making it a great tool for measuring Ray Tracing performance on both AMD and Nvidia graphics cards.
HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST
Horizon Forbidden West is a 2022 action role-playing game developed by Guerrilla Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The Horizon Zero Dawn game sequel launched on PC last March 2024 built on the Decima Game Engine, the same one used on Death Stranding. Horizon Forbidden West features Ray Tracing and Upscaling technologies not present in the prequel game.
BLACK MYTH WUKONG
Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most popular game titles launched in 2024, thanks to its stunning graphics powered by Unreal Engine 5. Developed by Game Science, Black Myth: Wukong is one of the most demanding titles recently released, featuring complete Ray Tracing and Upscaling technology, making it a great benchmark for new hardware.
GHOST OF TSUSHIMA
Ghost of Tsushima is an action-adventure game developed by Sucker Punch Productions and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It was initially released for the PlayStation 4 in July 2020 and later for PlayStation 5 and Windows. Ghost of Tsushima runs on a modified and optimized version of Sucker Punch’s in-house engine, originally built for the PlayStation platforms.
HOGWARTS LEGACY
Hogwarts Legacy is a popular game that appeals to Harry Potter fans and gamers alike with its rich world and engaging gameplay. Developed by Avalanche Software and built on the Unreal Engine 4, Hogwarts Legacy delivers detailed environments and character models with support for the latest rendering and upscaling technologies.
FAR CRY 6
FarCry 6 is an FPS game published by Ubisoft that uses the Dunia engine. It heavily relies on and takes advantage of DirectX 12 to render a realistic environment that is taxing to both the CPU and GPU. It’s also the first game in the franchise to support Ray Tracing.
Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE – Temps and Power Draw
Despite having the same cooler as the Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB, the PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE still has some thermal headroom to handle the Navi 48, as we only recorded a peak temp of 61°C. The reduced core count and fewer memory result in less heat generated, hence the 61°C peak temperature.
Conclusion
The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE is AMD’s band-aid solution to the ongoing RAM and SSD shortage, offering a gimped version of its RX 9070 GPU. The reduction from 16GB to 12GB of VRAM does impact its productivity and higher-resolution capabilities, but it’s still large enough as an entry point for 1440p gaming, and even maxes out 1080p with high-res textures or Ray Tracing with FSR. Its 12GB VRAM is just enough for your go-to max-setting 1080p gameplay GPU; That said, those who require more VRAM may be tempted to opt for a Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB Variant instead.
Priced at Php 40,900, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE sits in an awkward position between the RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, RTX 5070, and RX 9060 XT 16GB in terms of current market prices. The AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE becomes a jack-of-all-trades, delivering more-than-average performance at 1080p and 1440p, as well as productivity, but those looking for more specific use cases or who require the full 16GB of VRAM are better off saving up for the non-GRE variants.
Overall, the AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE should’ve been a better card if it weren’t for the current AI-induced shortage. It fills a gap for those who supposedly don’t want to pay the absurd premium of 16GB GPUs but don’t want to be gimped by their VRAM. So, if you want a capable GPU without paying a huge premium for a 16GB card but don’t want the restrictions that come with current 8GB GPUs, then AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE is a GPU you should consider, particularly the Sapphire PULSE Radeon RX 9070 GRE.
Grant is a Financial Management graduate from UST. His passion for gadgets and tech crossed him over in the industry where he could apply his knowledge as an enthusiast and in-depth analytic skills as a Finance Major. His passion allows him to earn at the same time help Gadget Pilipinas' readers in making smart, value-based decisions and purchases with his reviews and guides.
