SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7900 GRE Review – High-End Name, Mid-Range Price

AMD’s Radeon RX 7900 GRE was initially not meant for global markets – the “GRE” stands for “Golden Rabbit Edition”, which clearly indicates that this is meant for Chinese markets when it launched one year ago. We’re well into the Year of the Dragon now, but how does the GPU hold up since then? In this review, we take it for a spin courtesy of the SAPPHIRE Pulse variant, as AMD does not offer the MBA (Made by AMD) version of this card.

Unboxing

The SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7900 GRE we’re reviewing today comes in this form, with an inner box that houses the GPU and some accessories surrounded by thick foam for protection.

With all the items laid out on the table, you can find the GPU, as well as components for the GPU support bracket. The bracket runs the entire length of the GPU and is secured by the same set of screws that supports the GPU’s PCIe bracket.

Walkaround

The card is not large for a GPU of this class – at 320mm, it should fit into mATX cases reasonably. However, SFF cases may need to double check, though the relatively short height should make it easier to fit into narrower cases. The fan blade design is rather unique, with a sharp angle in the middle of the blade’s profile.

The top and bottom views reveals the heatsink layout, and here we can see the fins are not quite tightly stacked as some of the MBA cards. This means less air pressure is required to push the air, which means lower fan speeds, and lesser noise, in theory. The VRAM thermal pads are fairly visible too, which shares the same contact plate as the GPU core itself.

From here, we can see the backplate cutout is relatively small compared to GeForce cards – this is attributed to the different PCB shape this card uses. Most GeForce GPUs we’ve seen so far has a shorter length and wider width (usually having a cutout as big as the fan), but here the Radeon’s PCB is relatively long in length in exchange for shorter width on the PCB.

For I/O, SAPPHIRE opted for a 2+2 layout, with a pair of DisplayPort 2.1 ports and a pair of HDMI 2.1 ports. Both are capable of outputting 8K, but the former can deliver much greater refresh rate, though there isn’t many monitors that can fully reach DP 2.1’s potential right now.

Specifications

SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7900 GRE Review

Full specifications available on the product webpage.

GPU Core & VRAM: AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE
GPU Core Variant	Navi 31 XL
Microarchitecture	RDNA 3
Process Node	TSMC N5 (GCD) TSMC N6 (MCD)
Transistors	28.1 billion
Die size	304mm² (GCD) 6x 37.5mm² (MCD) 529mm² combined
Compute Units (CUs)	80
Stream Processors	5120
AI Accelerators	160
Ray Accelerators	80
Cache	64MB L3 (4x Infinity Cache)
VRAM Configuration	16GB GDDR6 256-bit
Memory Bandwidth	18Gbps, 576GB/s peak
Add-in board: SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7900 GRE
Game/Boost Clocks	1927 / 2293 MHz
TDP (TBP)	268W
Factory Recommended PSU	700W
Dual BIOS Mode	No
Display Outputs	2x DisplayPort 2.1 2x HDMI 2.1 *Max output resolution: 7680×4320 (8K)
Power Connector	2x 8-pin PCIe connector
Bus Interface	PCIe 4.0 x16
Dimensions	2.5-slot, 320 x 128.75 x 52.57 mm

Test Bench

CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K
Cooling	Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux 30th Anniversary Edition Cooler Master MasterGel Maker
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 HERO
GPU	SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7900 GRE
Memory	Kingston FURY RENEGADE RGB DDR5-6400 CL32 (2x16GB)
Storage	Samsung SSD 980 PRO 256GB (Boot) Kingston NV1 1TB
Power Supply	Cooler Master MWE Gold 1250 V2 Full Modular 1250W
Case	VECTOR Bench Case (Open-air chassis)
Operating System	Windows 11 Home 23H2

Performance

All benchmarks are done in out-of-the-box settings unless otherwise specified. Games are tested under these settings (upscaling features such as NVIDIA DLSS, AMD FSR, or Intel XeSS are turned off unless otherwise specified):

• Forza Horizon 5 (RT ON)
  Maximum settings (all settings maxed out to EXTREME preset when available, Ray Tracing set to EXTREME).
• Forza Horizon 5 (RT OFF)
  Ultra High preset – Ray Tracing turned off.
• Red Dead Redemption 2
  All settings are set to ULTRA – slightly higher quality over ‘Favor Quality’ from the in-game settings slider.
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (RT ON)
  HIGHEST preset. RT Shadows set to ULTRA (which overrides default Shadow settings).
• Shadow of the Tomb Raider (RT OFF)
  Same as the previous run – except RT Shadows turned OFF, with Shadow settings set to ULTRA instead.
• F1 2022 (RT ON)
  ULTRA HIGH preset. Ray Tracing is set to HIGH under this preset.

Synthetic Benchmarks

We’re comparing the Radeon RX 7900 GRE against its sibling, the Radeon RX 7800 XT, and two variants of RTX 4070s from Team Green. The Radeon card sits nicely in between the two GeForce cards for the most part, though its ray tracing capabilities are still somewhat behind NVIDIA’s equivalent RT cores today.

Gaming – 4K (3840 x 2160)

The general performance of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE is pretty much this: for rasterization, it’s faster than RTX 4070, but slower than the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER; but for ray tracing, it’s pretty much on the same ballpark as the RTX 4070, which runs at least 50W less than the Radeon GPU in full bore. As far as power efficiency goes, it’s very much NVIDIA’s game right now.

Gaming – 1440p (2560 x 1440)

Reducing the resolution down to 1440p and we can see the Radeon GPU somewhat closed the gap against the RTX 4070 Ti SUPER – in Red Dead Redemption 2, the performance is almost on par as Rockstar’s RAGE engine runs better on Radeon cards. On the flipside, NVIDIA scores landslide victory on Shadow of the Tomb Raider in all scenarios. It seems like the faster effective bandwidth of Radeon GPU (it has 64MB of L3 cache plus 256-bit memory bus) may have helped it closing the gap in this resolution.

Gaming – 1080p (1920 x 1080)

Same trend applies in 1080p, where even the max settings can still achieve high framerates even with ray tracing added to the mix. That being said, it’s still comparable to the RTX 4070, not the beefed-up RTX 4070 Ti SUPER, which is only slightly ahead of the 7900 GRE in rasterization-only games.

Thermals

In terms of thermals, there’s quite a bit of discrepancy between the core temperatures and the VRAM temperatures: while the core temperature reached 74°C at the end of the 10-minute Furmark stress test, the VRAM fared much worse, reaching 94°C, which is a whopping 20°C higher than the core itself. However, on a more positive note, SAPPHIRE has opted with what looks like a highly conservative fan curve that ultimately settles at ~1,060RPM, which is on the low side.

It’s a similar story here with the Time Spy Extreme test, with the fans seeing a rollercoaster-like behavior but setting in at the same fan speed as the Furmark run earlier. Despite SAPPHIRE listing a 268W TBP for this GPU, the figure never exceeded beyond 256W based on our data.

Software

The software responsible for tuning SAPPHIRE GPUs is the TriXX app, and it’s a very interesting implementation, to say the list. Surprisingly, TriXX is designed as a portable app which means no installations are required to adjust the settings. However, the app’s functionality is somewhat limited, as there is no tuning page for adjusting fan speeds or power. In fairness though, you can already do that through AMD Software anyway.

One dedicated section of the app shows a feature called TriXX Boost, which “lets you run games at higher FPS rates by reducing the rendering resolution slightly, and then upscaling the final output image.” Sounds exactly like how AMD’s Radeon Super Resolution works, though the app does offer some granularity for what kind of resolution it’ll operate.

Conclusion

The SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7900 GRE can be considered one of the best 1440p cards available today, especially if you’re looking to get a good bang for the buck. This particular variant of the RX 7900 GRE costs RM3,199 at the time of this writing, which puts it on equal price footing as NVIDIA’s lower-end RTX 4070.

The main takeaway from the comparison between this Radeon GPU and the RTX 4070 is that the Radeon simply offers better value if you’re using it exclusively for gaming. For the price, the RX 7900 GRE offers better framerates in general, is roughly equal on ray-traced games, and offers bigger VRAM capacity which should help with long-term longevity as games demands more video memory over time.

Of course, there are tradeoffs: the GPU demands more power to operate, and anything that involves CUDA in creative workloads also naturally takes the Radeon out of the equation as far as performance is concerned. VRAM temperatures also runs a bit hotter than we’d like, but this should be easy to fix with a custom fan curve via AMD Software.

Still, all things considered, SAPPHIRE’s offering is overall a solid one for 1440p gaming, especially in a time when good value is getting increasingly difficult to come by.

Special thanks to AMD Malaysia for providing the SAPPHIRE PULSE Radeon RX 7900 GRE for this review.