AMD's China-Only Radeon RX 7900 GRE 16GB Debuts: Navi 31 with Cut-Down Memory

Sapphire
(Image credit: @wxnod/Twitter)

AMD's partners are beginning to roll-out the company's Radeon RX 7900 GRE graphics cards that will be available exclusively in China and will offer a cheaper alternative to the Radeon RX 7900 XT. @wxnod has just published pictures of Sapphire's Radeon RX 7900 GRE, whereas ScrubWiki revealed its specifications, which are quite surprising.

 As it turns out, China-exclusive Radeon RX 7900 GRE is based on the Navi 31 GPU with 5376 stream processors enabled and running at 1.50 GHz – 2.40 GHz, which is the same configuration as that of the Radeon RX 7900 XT. There is one important difference though. The Radeon RX 7900 GRE disables one more memory controller die (MCD) and therefore comes with 16GB of GDDR6 memory along with a 256-bit memory interface. 

As a result, AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE can boast the same 32 FP32 TFLOPS – 51.6 FP32 TFLOPS (base – boost) compute horsepower as the Radeon RX 7900 XT, yet it only has 64MB of Infinity Cache (with bandwidth reduced to 2.56 GB/s) as well as 16GB of memory (with bandwidth reduced to 640 MB/s).

It remains to be seen how AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE performs in real-world applications, but it is logical to presume that its performance will be similar to that of the Radeon RX 7900 XT in cases where compute horsepower matters and will be noticeably lower in cases where memory bandwidth is required. In general, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE should be significantly behind the Radeon RX 7900 XT in high resolutions and/or in cases where sophisticated antialiasing algorithms are enabled.

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AMD and Nvidia Ada GPU Specifications
Graphics CardRX 7900 XTXRX 7900 XTRX 7900 GRE
ArchitectureNavi 31Navi 31Navi 31
CUs / SMs968484
GPU Shaders614453765376
Ray Tracing Units968484
Boost Clock (MHz)250024002400
VRAM Speed (Gbps)202020
VRAM (GB)242020
VRAM Bus Width384320256
L2 Cache968064
ROPs192192192
TMUs384336336 (?)
TFLOPS FP3261.451.651.6
TFLOPS FP16 (FP8/INT8)123 (123)103 (103)103 (103)
Bandwidth (GBps)960800640
TBP (watts)355315circa 300
Launch DateDec-22Dec-22July-23
Launch Price$999 $899 ?

When it comes to Sapphire's Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 GRE, this graphics board features two eight-pin auxiliary PCIe power connectors and is rated for around 300W thermal graphics power (TGP). To cool down the rather hot Navi 31 GRE GPU, Sapphire uses a rather large 2.5-wide triple-fan cooling system, which is considerably thinner than the company uses on its Nitro+ Radeon RX 7900 XT.

Perhaps the most intriguing part about AMD's Radeon RX 7900 GRE is its price. It should naturally be cheaper compared to the Radeon RX 7900 XT, but for now we can only wonder how much cheaper it is.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • thisisaname
    AMD sure likes to release China only products.
    Reply
  • Djekna80
    thisisaname said:
    AMD sure likes to release China only products.
    4 time bigger market than USA, i don`t see problem if it is limited edition it will sale
    Reply
  • Elusive Ruse
    Djekna80 said:
    4 time bigger market than USA, i don`t see problem if it is limited edition it will sale
    Press "X"...
    Reply
  • Djekna80
    Why, money does not care about nationality, I work in marketing, if someone is going to pay me more for PC components I sale, well choice is easy, someone talking different, is maybe making great speech, but also lying .
    a have press to XX dare to se you press X third time hahahah
    Reply
  • salgado18
    Djekna80 said:
    4 time bigger market than USA, i don`t see problem if it is limited edition it will sale
    Yes, but why only for chinese market? Is it not good enough or bad enough for the rest of the world? Because these China-only products end up in our countries, and mix up with worldwide products. Take the RX 580 2048sp, which is sort of an RX 570 but only for chinese market. Is the RX 580 I'm buying the full card or the 2048sp version? Too confusing, these things shouldn't be so segmented in a globalized market.
    Reply
  • Elusive Ruse
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a4/Flag_of_the_United_States.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_United_States.svg.png United States
    18,526,973
    69%
    2023
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b7/Flag_of_Europe.svg/23px-Flag_of_Europe.svg.png European Union
    8,762,887
    51%
    2021
    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fa/Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg/23px-Flag_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China.svg.png China
    6,804,921
    38%
    2021
    Reply
  • Elusive Ruse
    Djekna80 said:
    Why, money does not care about nationality, I work in marketing, if someone is going to pay me more for PC components I sale, well choice is easy, someone talking different, is maybe making great speech, but also lying .
    a have press to XX dare to se you press X third time hahahah
    :ROFLMAO:
    Reply
  • thisisaname
    Djekna80 said:
    4 time bigger market than USA, i don`t see problem if it is limited edition it will sale
    In what way is China's market four times bigger that the USA?
    Reply
  • cryoburner
    There is one important difference though. The Radeon RX 7900 GRE disables one more memory controller die (MCD) and therefore comes with 16GB of GDDR6 memory along with a 256-bit memory interface.
    It's probably not accurate to say that it "disables" a memory controller die, since they are separate chips. It's more likely that they just didn't add a fifth chiplet, only including four, just as the 7900 XT contains one less chiplet than the 7900 XTX, with a nonfunctional spacer in its place.

    salgado18 said:
    Yes, but why only for chinese market? Is it not good enough or bad enough for the rest of the world?

    Maybe they just feel that a less-expensive 7900 with most of the performance of the 7900 XT might not fit well in their product stack in other markets. The 7800 XT should be coming out in a little over a month, and that card will supposedly be based off the same chips as the 7900 cards, just with more of the graphics cores in the central chip disabled. It is said to have the same amount of memory and cache as this card though, so it's likely using 4 MCD chips as well.

    salgado18 said:
    Because these China-only products end up in our countries, and mix up with worldwide products. Take the RX 580 2048sp, which is sort of an RX 570 but only for chinese market. Is the RX 580 I'm buying the full card or the 2048sp version? Too confusing, these things shouldn't be so segmented in a globalized market.
    This card was given a different model though, the 7900 GRE, so there shouldn't be much confusion. That name is arguably easier to distinguish than the existing 7900 XT and 7900 XTX, which have a larger difference in specs between them, despite having even more similar names.
    Reply
  • phxrider
    I don't see the point in this card as a desktop GPU, unless power consumption is a really big deal in some countries... It has a lot of promise as a laptop GPU though.
    Reply