Sooner or later in the course of the fog of 2021 or 2022, I observed that my son’s most well-liked model of fruit snacks had switched from together with 0.9 ounces per pouch to 0.8 ounces per pouch. Most shrinkflation is supposed to fly below the radar, however on this case, I simply occurred to note it. It felt dangerous! It’s tangible proof that your cash is just not going so far as it did within the very current previous.
Somewhat over a yr in the past, AMD launched the Radeon RX 9070 for a instructed retail worth of $549. This month, it’s launching the equally named Radeon RX 9070 GRE for a instructed retail worth of $549. This new card (truly the US launch of a GPU that’s been accessible in China for a yr or so) has 85 % as many GPU cores, 75 % as a lot reminiscence, and 66 % as a lot reminiscence bandwidth because the common RX 9070.
We’ll consider the RX 9070 GRE within the context of the present GPU market, the place costs have been edging upward because of the identical AI-driven RAM shortages and worth hikes which have made PC constructing and shopping for such a depressing expertise for the previous few months. But it surely’s onerous to not be a bit of upset about such a transparent instance of GPU shrinkflation—the identical cash for a markedly inferior product.
RX 9070 GRE specs and speeds
| RX 9070 XT | RX 9070 | RX 9070 GRE | RX 9060 XT | RX 7800 XT | RX 7700 XT | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Compute items (Stream processors) | 64 RDNA4 (4,096) | 56 RDNA4 (3,584) | 48 RDNA4 (3,072) | 32 RDNA4 (2,048) | 60 RDNA3 (3,840) | 54 RDNA3 (3,456) |
| Enhance Clock | 2,970 MHz | 2,520 MHz | 2,790 MHz | 3,130 MHz | 2,430 MHz | 2,544 MHz |
| Reminiscence Bus Width | 256-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit | 128-bit | 256-bit | 192-bit |
| Reminiscence Bandwidth | 650GB/s | 650GB/s | 432GB/s | 320GB/s | 624GB/s | 432GB/s |
| Reminiscence dimension | 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 12GB GDDR6 | 8 or 16GB GDDR6 | 16GB GDDR6 | 12GB GDDR6 |
| Complete board energy (TBP) | 304 W | 220 W | 220 W | 150 (8GB) or 160 W (16GB), as much as 182 W | 263 W | 245 W |
I discover AMD’s “GRE” label extra complicated than useful. “Further letters” often means “higher,” throughout each AMD and Nvidia’s GPU lineups (see XT, Ti, XTX, Tremendous, and so on), however on this case, it means “worse.”
The RX 9070 GRE does use the identical Navi 48 GPU silicon as the remainder of the 9070 collection, however is considerably reduce down: 3,072 shader cores as a substitute of three,584 for the 9070 or 4,096 for the 9070 XT; a 192-bit reminiscence interface as a substitute of 256-bit; and 12GB of reminiscence fairly than 16GB. It’s not a transparent successor to any specific previous Radeon card, however its {hardware} is most much like the previous RX 7700 XT, which launched at $449 in 2023.
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