AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE

AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE

AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE: In-depth Expertise on the 2025 Graphics Card

Introduction

In 2025, the AMD Radeon RX 7900 GRE remains one of the most discussed solutions for gamers and enthusiasts. It combines advanced architecture, an impressive amount of memory, and an attractive price-to-performance ratio. In this article, we will explore who this model is suitable for, how it performs with modern games and tasks, and whether its purchase is justified in the face of competition from NVIDIA.


1. Architecture and Key Features

RDNA 3: The Heart of the RX 7900 GRE

The card is built on RDNA 3 architecture, which utilizes a 5nm process from TSMC. This has allowed for a 15% increase in transistor density and power efficiency compared to RDNA 2.

Ray Accelerators and FidelityFX Super Resolution 3.0

- Ray Accelerators: 48 hardware blocks for ray tracing, which is 20% more than the RX 7800 XT.

- FSR 3.0: Upscaling technology with Frame Generation support. In "Quality" mode, FPS gain reaches 50-70% without noticeable loss of detail.

- Hybrid Compute Units: A combination of standard and AI cores to optimize calculations in games and professional applications.

Competition with NVIDIA

AMD currently lacks a direct equivalent to NVIDIA's DLSS 3.5, but FSR 3.0 is catching up in quality. On the other hand, the RX 7900 GRE offers more video memory than the RTX 4070 Ti (16 GB vs. 12 GB).


2. Memory: Speed and Impact on Performance

GDDR6 with a 256-bit Bus

- Capacity: 16 GB — sufficient for rendering in 4K and working with high-resolution textures.

- Bandwidth: 576 GB/s (18 Gbps × 256 bits / 8). For comparison, the RTX 4080 achieves 716 GB/s thanks to GDDR6X but is priced $200-300 higher.

Practical Advantages

- In games with "heavy" textures, such as Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, the RX 7900 GRE shows stability in 4K without drops due to VRAM shortage.

- For editing 8K video in DaVinci Resolve, 16 GB is the optimal minimum.


3. Gaming Performance: Numbers and Resolutions

Testing in Popular Projects (2024-2025)

- Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultra, RT Off):

- 1080p: 144 FPS

- 1440p: 102 FPS

- 4K: 62 FPS (with FSR 3.0 — 85 FPS).

- Starfield (Ultra):

- 1440p: 88 FPS, 4K: 54 FPS.

- Horizon Forbidden West (PC Port):

- 4K/Ultra: 68 FPS.

Ray Tracing: Strengths and Weaknesses

With RT enabled, peak FPS drops by 30-50%. For example, in Cyberpunk 2077 (RT Ultra, 1440p) — 45 FPS, but with FSR 3.0 — 65 FPS. This is worse than the RTX 4070 Ti (75 FPS with DLSS 3.5) but is cheaper.


4. Professional Tasks: Editing, Rendering, Computations

3D Modeling and Rendering

- In Blender (using HIP), the rendering speed is 15% slower than that of the RTX 4070 Ti on CUDA.

- For work in Maya or ZBrush, 16 GB VRAM is a sufficient resource.

Video Editing

- DaVinci Resolve and Premiere Pro use AMD hardware acceleration. Exporting an 8K project takes 10% less time compared to the RX 6900 XT.

Scientific Computing

- Support for OpenCL and ROCm 5.5 allows the GPU to be utilized in machine learning, but for complex neural networks, NVIDIA with CUDA is preferable.


5. Power Consumption and Heat Dissipation

TDP and Real Figures

- The reported TDP is 300W. In FurMark tests, power consumption reaches 320W.

- The recommended power supply is at least 750W (for example, Corsair RM750x).

Cooling System

- The reference model uses a three-fan design. Temperature under load is 72-75°C, but noise levels reach 38 dB.

- For cases: a minimum of 2 intake fans and 1 exhaust fan is advised. A good option is the Lian Li Lancool III.


6. Comparison with Competitors

AMD vs NVIDIA

- RX 7900 GRE ($649) vs RTX 4070 Ti ($799):

- In 4K without RT, AMD is 10-15% faster.

- With ray tracing, NVIDIA leads by 25-30%.

- RX 7900 GRE vs RX 7900 XT ($749):

- The lower model lags in performance by 5-8% but saves $100.

Conclusion: For gaming without RT and tasks focused on VRAM, AMD is the choice. For maximum RT quality and AI features, NVIDIA is the better option.


7. Practical Tips

Power Supply and Compatibility

- Minimum of 750W with an 80+ Gold certification.

- Compatible with PCIe 4.0 and 5.0, but the performance boost from PCIe 5.0 in games is less than 2%.

Drivers and Software

- Adrenalin 2025 Edition offers automatic overclocking and fan tuning.

- Issues: Occasional lags in new games, but updates are released every 2-3 weeks.


8. Pros and Cons

Strengths:

- Best price for 16 GB of memory in the segment.

- Excellent performance in 4K and 1440p.

- Support for DisplayPort 2.1 for 240Hz monitors.

Weaknesses:

- Ray tracing lags behind NVIDIA.

- Lack of an equivalent to DLSS Frame Generation.

- Noisy cooling system under load.


9. Final Recommendation: Who Should Consider the RX 7900 GRE?

This graphics card is an ideal choice for:

- Gamers playing in 4K without RT or using FSR 3.0.

- Enthusiasts who value memory capacity and future-proofing.

- Editors and Designers whose programs are optimized for AMD.

If you're willing to compromise on average RT performance for a savings of $150-200, the RX 7900 GRE will be a worthwhile investment. However, fans of Cyberpunk 2077 with ultra RT settings should look towards NVIDIA.


Prices are current as of April 2025. The quoted price refers to new devices in U.S. retail chains.

Basic

Label Name
AMD
Platform
Desktop
Launch Date
July 2023
Model Name
Radeon RX 7900 GRE
Generation
Navi III
Base Clock
1287MHz
Boost Clock
2245MHz
Bus Interface
PCIe 4.0 x16
Transistors
57,700 million
RT Cores
80
Compute Units
80
TMUs
?
Texture Mapping Units (TMUs) serve as components of the GPU, which are capable of rotating, scaling, and distorting binary images, and then placing them as textures onto any plane of a given 3D model. This process is called texture mapping.
320
Foundry
TSMC
Process Size
5 nm
Architecture
RDNA 3.0

Memory Specifications

Memory Size
16GB
Memory Type
GDDR6
Memory Bus
?
The memory bus width refers to the number of bits of data that the video memory can transfer within a single clock cycle. The larger the bus width, the greater the amount of data that can be transmitted instantaneously, making it one of the crucial parameters of video memory. The memory bandwidth is calculated as: Memory Bandwidth = Memory Frequency x Memory Bus Width / 8. Therefore, when the memory frequencies are similar, the memory bus width will determine the size of the memory bandwidth.
256bit
Memory Clock
2250MHz
Bandwidth
?
Memory bandwidth refers to the data transfer rate between the graphics chip and the video memory. It is measured in bytes per second, and the formula to calculate it is: memory bandwidth = working frequency × memory bus width / 8 bits.
576.0 GB/s

Theoretical Performance

Pixel Rate
?
Pixel fill rate refers to the number of pixels a graphics processing unit (GPU) can render per second, measured in MPixels/s (million pixels per second) or GPixels/s (billion pixels per second). It is the most commonly used metric to evaluate the pixel processing performance of a graphics card.
431.0 GPixel/s
Texture Rate
?
Texture fill rate refers to the number of texture map elements (texels) that a GPU can map to pixels in a single second.
718.4 GTexel/s
FP16 (half)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy.
91.96 TFLOPS
FP64 (double)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy, while single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
1437 GFLOPS
FP32 (float)
?
An important metric for measuring GPU performance is floating-point computing capability. Single-precision floating-point numbers (32-bit) are used for common multimedia and graphics processing tasks, while double-precision floating-point numbers (64-bit) are required for scientific computing that demands a wide numeric range and high accuracy. Half-precision floating-point numbers (16-bit) are used for applications like machine learning, where lower precision is acceptable.
46.9 TFLOPS

Miscellaneous

Shading Units
?
The most fundamental processing unit is the Streaming Processor (SP), where specific instructions and tasks are executed. GPUs perform parallel computing, which means multiple SPs work simultaneously to process tasks.
5120
L1 Cache
256 KB per Array
L2 Cache
6MB
TDP
260W
Vulkan Version
?
Vulkan is a cross-platform graphics and compute API by Khronos Group, offering high performance and low CPU overhead. It lets developers control the GPU directly, reduces rendering overhead, and supports multi-threading and multi-core processors.
1.3
OpenCL Version
2.2
OpenGL
4.6
DirectX
12 Ultimate (12_2)
Power Connectors
2x 8-pin
Shader Model
6.7
ROPs
?
The Raster Operations Pipeline (ROPs) is primarily responsible for handling lighting and reflection calculations in games, as well as managing effects like anti-aliasing (AA), high resolution, smoke, and fire. The more demanding the anti-aliasing and lighting effects in a game, the higher the performance requirements for the ROPs; otherwise, it may result in a sharp drop in frame rate.
192
Suggested PSU
600W

Benchmarks

FP32 (float)
Score
46.9 TFLOPS
Blender
Score
2780.87
Vulkan
Score
141871
OpenCL
Score
159982

Compared to Other GPU

FP32 (float) / TFLOPS
60.838 +29.7%
52.244 +11.4%
37.936 -19.1%
Blender
15026.3 +440.3%
3514.46 +26.4%
1064 -61.7%
552 -80.2%
Vulkan
382809 +169.8%
91662 -35.4%
61331 -56.8%
34688 -75.5%
OpenCL
385013 +140.7%
167342 +4.6%
75816 -52.6%
57474 -64.1%