Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 GRE Pulse

[W1zzard]

The Sapphire Radeon RX 7900 GRE Pulse emerges as the best GRE model released today, offering exceptional value at AMD's MSRP of $550. Outperforming the RX 4070 Super in raster, it operates whisper-quiet, catering to gamers and enthusiasts seeking top-tier performance without exceeding their budget.

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[Chaitanya]

Its a shame Sapphire has dumped their easy to replace fans and their cooling solution is single heatsink for both GPU and VRAM + VRM (while until a generatio back there were 2 separate heatsinks with 2nd heatsink acting as support for PCB).

 

[theouto]

I wish this would've released about a year ago, legitimately the same price I paid for my 6800XT haha.

Oh well, at least it's a good GPU at a seemingly good price.
Great review w1zzard!

 

[AusWolf]

What's with that stupid fan curve? My Pulse 7800 XT doesn't show any such weirdness. C'mon, Sapphire, you can do better than this!

As for the chip itself, it looks like an overclocked 7800 XT. Sure, it's got 33% more cores, but is choked on a power limit. Nothing special.

 

[Mysteoa]

What is with the "No support for DLSS" for downsides?

 

[jesdals]

I wonder if it would be on par with 6950x

 

[HD64G]

A good product imho in all metrics for the current market conditions: vfm, oc ability, temps, noise, efficiency.

 

[Anymal]

• Erratic fan speed behavior

OMg, amd, get your shit together.

 

[FeelinFroggy]

What is with the "No support for DLSS" for downsides?

Well DLSS does not work on the card and DLSS is better than FSR at frame generation. I'd argue that any card that does not support DLSS is a negative. That's not saying these are bad cards or Nvidia is the only way to go, but this card cannot use some features that many people find useful for gaming.

 

[Dimitriman]

What the 7800XT should have been to begin with. Better late than never I guess.

 

[AusWolf]

• Erratic fan speed behavior

OMg, amd, get your shit together.

It's not AMD. Fan behaviour is totally fine on basically every other card. Sapphire must have overlooked something with the GRE.

 

[chrcoluk]

$250 cheaper than Nvidia, nice.

 

[W1zzard]

What is with the "No support for DLSS" for downsides?

[..] FSR works well and is supported in many games, which makes the technology easy to use. AMD has recently released FSR 3 Frame Generation, which is only available in a few titles so far, but the list will definitely grow in 2024. While AMD's FSR is hardware-agnostic—it works on all GPUs from all vendors—NVIDIA's DLSS requires certain hardware units, which is a strong selling point for NVIDIA. While an NVIDIA card will give you the ability to run all currently available upscalers; DLSS, FSR and XeSS, owning a Radeon card means you won't be able to use upscaling in games that support NVIDIA DLSS exclusively. NVIDIA DLSS 3 is the best frame generation technology available today, is usable combined with native rendering or DLAA (upscaling not required), and is only supported on NVIDIA GeForce 40 series cards. AMD thus developed AFMF, which is a driver-level frame-generation solution that works in nearly all games, but at lower quality, because it doesn't have knowledge of static objects like the HUD and text overlays, to exclude those from frame generation.

Well DLSS does not work on the card and DLSS is better than FSR at frame generation. I'd argue that any card that does not support DLSS is a negative. That's not saying these are bad cards or Nvidia is the only way to go, but this card cannot use some features that many people find useful for gaming.

Agree 100%

 

[Legacy-ZA]

I wish this would've released about a year ago, legitimately the same price I paid for my 6800XT haha.

Oh well, at least it's a good GPU at a seemingly good price.
Great review w1zzard!

Heck, it's the same thought I had, if they released this one year ago at this price I would have bought it, but with the newer generations just around the corner, I will wait and see. That being said, if both AMD & nVidia keeps going nuts with the prices, I will continue to vote with my wallet.

 

[tussinman]

$250 cheaper than Nvidia, nice.

It's only $50 cheaper than the card its competing with (4070 Super). No way AMD would undercut $250 in the upper midrange bracket, leaving too much money on the table.

 

[Pumper]

Should have released it globally before the Super cards. Now, in EU, these start at the same prices as the 4070Super, and nvidia offers overall a better package.

 

[Anymal]

It's not AMD. Fan behaviour is totally fine on basically every other card. Sapphire must have overlooked something with the GRE.

W1zz would disagree, right?

 

[sethmatrix7]

4070 performance for 25$ more is pretty sad.

On a different note- people put way too much stock in features that aren't available in the vast majority of games.

 

[chrcoluk]

It's only $50 cheaper than the card its competing with (4070 Super). No way AMD would undercut $250 in the upper midrange bracket, leaving too much money on the table.

Comparing to Nvidias cheapest 16 gig card. The 4070 super is weaker as less VRAM.

 

[Chrispy_]

This silicon is held back so much by power limits, presumably to avoid cannibalisation of the 7900XT. Given the bus width and number of CUs available compared to the 7800XT I just assumed it would do better, but I guess perhaps as a mobile die (if that's what these are) these are picked/tuned/binned for lower leakage that doesn't scale as well at desktop TDPs as the desktop-focused silicon.

• Erratic fan speed behavior

OMg, amd, get your shit together.

AMD had no part in that.

Fan speeds are the work of the AIB who need to define in the VBIOS what type of fan controller and fans are used, how many fans there are, define the fan speed curves against temperature of the GPU die, GDDR6 modules, and VRMs.

Sapphire are normally good, but I guess this is a rushed VBIOS or possibly Sapphire are struggling with the mobile-first nature of this silicon.

 

[tussinman]

Comparing to Nvidias cheapest 16 gig card.

That's not how this works. The card you're referring to is competing both price and performance to the 7900XT.

The 4070 super is weaker

It's literally tested as within a frame difference at 4k and less than 2 FPS difference at 1440p. The margin of error is higher than the difference between the 2 cards so calling either weaker is laughable.

less VRAM.

Nothing in the review noted that Vram was an issue and showed no difference at 4k or minimum frames. Reality is most buyers will take the card that has DLSS, almost 20% better efficiency, and better ray tracing/compute.

Back to the original point no AMD isn't undercutting Nvidia by $250, they wouldn't dip into their profit margin that highly on a card in this price bracket

 

[AusWolf]

W1zz would disagree, right?

Did he say anywhere that it's AMD's fault? I don't think so.

 

[Timbaloo]

WTF is that video playback power consumption? How could AMD mess that up on a card that is not even a new gen? 3x more than the direct competitors?

 

[cfenton]

Comparing to Nvidias cheapest 16 gig card. The 4070 super is weaker as less VRAM.

By that metric Intel is killing both AMD and Nvidia with the A770 at $290. Of course in reality it turns out evaluating a GPU only by VRAM isn't a great metric.

 

[Pepamami]

By that metric Intel is killing both AMD and Nvidia with the A770 at $290. Of course in reality it turns out evaluating a GPU only by VRAM isn't a great metric.

It would work if 4070 was 16GB and 7900Gre was 20GB, I would say who needs extra 4GB, when 16GB is more than Fine. But sadly 4070 has only 12GB of vram.