AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE 12 GB Shows Up for Pre-Order, Will Release on May 8th
Good news for gamers and PC builders. It appears AMD is preparing to release a new graphics card soon. The new Radeon RX 9070 GRE 12 GB has just surfaced for pre-order in China, and the listings confirm an early May launch.
Interestingly, this contradicts some earlier rumors that indicated the card could be pushed back to later this year. But now official retail listings and even some AMD marketing materials are pointing towards a much sooner release.
Pre-Orders are Live: The Details Emerge
How do we know the date. One of the retailers who have the new card in their stock is major Chinese online retailer JD.com. We can see an ASUS Radeon RX 9070 GRE ATS OC model available for sale, with a custom triple-fan cooler. The listing even specifically states that it has a shipping date of May 8th, so we know the date for sure.
Taking a closer look at this particular ASUS variant, it draws two 8-pin power connectors and AMD advises a 750W power supply for it. The board total power is specified at 220W, which is very sensible. The packaging evident in the listings clearly reveals the "12 GB VRAM" detail.
What is Under the Hood
So what kind of performance we can expect. Official figures released show the Radeon RX 9070 GRE uses AMD's Navi 48 GPU, as with other 9070 cards. What this 'GRE' version will be is probably a cut-down spec job, possibly to offer a cheaper price point.
Following earlier rumors, we anticipate this card to feature 3072 stream processors (cores) running at up to 2790 MHz. As the naming suggests, it comes with 12 GB of VRAM on a 192-bit memory bus, running with 18 Gbps memory chips to provide a total memory bandwidth of 432 GB/s.
Early Pricing Looks Promising
Of course, naturally, everybody is wondering what the price is. The ASUS version listed on JD.com sells for 4499 RMB with a modest pre-order reduction down to 4476 RMB. Other versions we've heard appearing for something in the vicinity of 4199 RMB. Taking that 4199 RMB and roughly estimated converting to US dollars with the consideration China's usual 20% VAT is not included in US MSRPs, brings us to the realm of a calculated $450 price.
As AMD's GRE Golden Rabbit Edition models have previously shipped nearly as close to their claimed MSRP as possible, this $450 price point is likely a safe bet for what the actual MSRP will be. We'll definitely be keeping an eye out for more news from AMD in the days before this May 8th launch date.
