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It's the XFX Pro Gaming Graphics Radeon 970GRE. Nobody wants 8 gig graphics cards anymore. That might sound blunt, but that's where the market has landed. For a while, 8 gig was enough. Then it was mostly enough. Now, at the prices that we're having to endure, 8 gigs is increasingly hard to defend. Even with the insane pricing, modern games are using more memory. Higher texture packs are becoming normal. Ray tracing can push memory pressure and then we get like PR stunts that are like, "Oh, we can really do it with 8 gigs of memory." 1440p, the cracks start to show up fast. That's the
context for AMD's Radeon RX970 GRE. This is a 12 gig graphics card. The expected pricing is around 5.49. On paper, that puts it in a very interesting position. It's not the full RX970. It's not the RX970 XT, for sure, but it is also not trying to compete with the bottom of the stack. This is aimed squarely at somebody who wants a strong 1440p gaming graphics card without being dragged into the current pricing mess around higherend 16 gig models because it's weird. The pricing mess matters a lot because 16 gigs, okay, there's a 5060 Ti 8 gig that can be priced for around $3.99 at street. I mean sometimes more,
but eight gigs. So that's why it's so cheap. 5060 Ti 16 gig solves the problem, but it's $150 more typically at around $569. At that point, you have more memory, but the 5060Ti is kind of anemic in terms of GPU horsepower. And so, it doesn't make sense. And this is why you like the R the 5070 12 gig. It's like the 5070 would benefit from having 16 gigs instead of 12 gigs, but we don't have a 5070 that's 16 gigs exactly. So, uh, let's take a look at where the 970 GRE lines up with the 9070 nonXT and the 9070 cuz the 9070 nonXT is a thing that AMD I think would like us to forget about or people not to notice. But even still, this is a 9070 in name, but it's kind of far away from the 9070. It's 970 GRE.
The GRE is less than a 970. 12 gigs, 192 bus, 2.25 GHz to 2.79 GHz. 220 watt board power. Yeah, I mean looking at the specs here, well, it's much better than the 960 XT. How about that? But weirdly, the 960 was designed. Those are the GPU plentiful days. There's a 16 gig 960 XT that was done mainly to plate gamers, kind of like the 5060 Ti 16 gig, although perhaps not as egregiously. This winter of sky-high prices is why the 970 GRE is the most interesting and why I'm going to ramble about this. And you can take a look at the artificial benchmarks while I ramble about this in the overlay.
It's just not about having 12 gigs of VRAM. It's about having 12 gig 12 gigs of VRAM in a GPU that can actually play well and use it well at 1440p. Staying below the pricing of a full RX970 and, you know, a 970 XT. This gives AMD a product that can go after the awkward middle of the market. People who do not want an 8 gigabyte card, but who also don't want to overpay for something like a 5060 Ti with 16 gigs and they don't want to stretch all the way to, you know, 650, 700, $750 and beyond for a 970 XT. I mean, the 960 XT also exists, including a 16 gig version, and that's worth talking about, but the 960 XT is not really the same class of card. It could be fine depending on
games. It's a good 1080p card and the price can be really good depending on where you look and what time of day it is. But when you talk about, you know, um higherend 1440p gaming, the 9070 GRE feels like more of a natural fit for that job just based on my testing. At the same time, street prices and recommended prices can vary a lot. If you can get a faster card with 4 gigs more VRAM for just $100 more, should you? Yeah, I think so. $150 more? H probably. Maybe. The calculus gets a little harder there. So the question for this review is not how fast is the 9070 GRE. You can see that in the graphs on the screen. The better question is does the 9070 the RX970 GRE give buyers the right balance of VRAM GPU horsepower
consumption and price for 1440p gaming. I mean our XFX card here is a solidly three slot card. This is maximum overkill for cooling. It has a metal back plate. has dual 8 pin power, three display port 2.1, one HDMI 2.1B. This is a lot of GPU in a solidly three slot card. So based on what we've seen so far in the testing and everything else, taking into account the global macroeconomic situation, I'd say the answer is yes. Uh with the usual warning of course that the final value depends heavily on the actual retail pricing and whatever else is available. But at 549, the 970 GRE makes a lot of sense. AMD's drivers are better than ever. They're more stable than ever. Nvidia has had
their own stumbling blocks with drivers and updates and everything else. I think gaming might be a secondary concern for Nvidia at this point. This is a better 1440p option without you being forced into inflated pricing for the 970 or the 970 XT if that's what local market conditions are. At 549 is not cheap in the old sense, but it is in a market that is kind of positioned against other awkward options. I mean, the 5060 Ti 8 gig, it's less expensive, but 8 gigs, I'm going to keep going back to that 5060 Ti 16 gig has the capacity that people want, but it doesn't really have the gaming performance because where is my 5070 16 gig that's the same price? I mean, come on. So, our 970 GRE overall
coming in 25% faster than a 5060Ti 16 gig. A 16 gig card can be slow, too. I mean, 12 gig card is like it's a much better gaming product than a 16 gig card. the RTX 5060Ti 16 gig, you're not going to do anything with the VRAM. Okay, I can maybe understand some AI tasks, like having the more VRAM is nice, but the extra VRAM, like 12 gigs on a 5060Ti would make more sense costwise. So, I don't know. The RX970 GRE feels like a more honest 1440p product because 12 gig frame buffer is more futureproof. And okay, it's not as future proof as 16 gigs. We should be clear about that. But there will be games and settings where 16 gigs is overkill and 12 gigs kind of works here and we have ray tracing and heavy mods
and like you can use ray tracing with this. There are accelerators for that. 12 gigs is a major step over 8 gigs. There's no question about that. So yeah, this makes sense for a more middle-of the road card here in this part of the market for 1440p gaming. This is also where AMD's own products that gets interesting. I mean, the 960 XT 16 gig exists and addresses the VRAM complaint, but it doesn't really solve the high-end 1440p problem. If your target is lighter gaming, esports, more modest settings, then the 960 XT may be fine, especially if you can find a deal on it in the local market. But once you push into 1440p gaming, the 960 XT starts to feel constrained. And the 970 GRU by comparison has enough GPU horsepower
that you can get a much better experience at 1440p on high and ultra type settings. So the value argument becomes pretty straightforward. Roughly 549 at 970 GRE. Uh sort of undercuts the current pricing of the RX970 and the RX970 XT. Generally, I have seen some really thumping good deals on the 9070 nonXT, but availability is a little diceier. It just depends. Again, it's that how much price delta is there really? Could you get a good deal on a 9070? As it stands, this is one of the more balanced options for high-end 1440p gaming, but you know, the whole market is compromised choices. The GRE looks like one of the few cards that kind of lands in a sensible place right now.
Now, it's got enough VRAM and enough performance and power utilization. It doesn't really need a three slot cooler. I think I'd love to see two slot versions of these cards. XFX if you're listening. But, you know, I don't know. Just building anything in this market can be hard to justify. The other part of the story is that AMD is not leaning on the raw performance of the car. The company's also leaning harder into FSR4 frame generation and improved upscaling as part of the overall experience. That means that AMD has to lean into more driver quality control and more driver testing and more integration testing. And they certainly are. So the question here is not can it run 1440p. It can.
The more interesting question is whether it's going to push 1440p for higher refresh displays, especially 200 hertz and higher classes of monitors. We've been doing all these testing on these OLED monitors. this with OLED and frame generation and upscaling is a very capable 1440p card. I did some 4K gaming and 4K gaming at reasonable settings, not ultra, not maxed out, was reasonably okay because really I'm scaling 1440p native something to 4K and that was pretty great on these monitors. But there's also a whole new bevy of uh 14 1440p monitors that are also OLED or that are high refresh or high performance. not even necessarily it's the more expensive panel technologies and that would be a good choice for
those as well. So, as long as you're realistic about settings, you can do 4K gaming on this card. It's not where I would position the card, but especially if your goal is ultra settings in every game. Like, you're going to want to spend the extra $150 plus if that's the kind of thing that you're targeting. But even if you've got, you know, like 120 Hz IPS display on 1440p, you'll probably appreciate this. The simple takeaway is 25% better raw performance than a 16 gig 5060 Ti generally across the board for less money. Tomorrow there'll be more two and a half slots. I want to list level one. It's been a quick look at the uh RX970 GRE cuz it's launching today and I'm actually in Taiwan right now.
Woo Taiwan. All right, signing out and I'll see you there.
