Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 GRE Pulse Review

Name: Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 GRE Pulse
Brand: Sapphire
Price: 550 USD

W1zzard

on Jun 1st, 2026,

in Graphics Cards.

Manufacturer: Sapphire

(90 Comments) »

Introduction

The Sapphire Radeon RX 9070 GRE Pulse is based on AMD's RDNA 4 architecture, targeting the mainstream gaming segment. Sapphire is an AMD-exclusive partner with a long track record of well-built Radeon graphics cards. Launched originally as a China-exclusive, around May 2025, the RX 9070 GRE slots in between the RX 9060 XT and the RX 9070, offering a cut-down Navi 48 GPU configuration.

The RX 9070 GRE uses AMD's Navi 48 XL GPU with 3,072 stream processors across 48 RDNA 4 compute units, paired with 12 GB of GDDR6 memory on a 192-bit bus, providing 432 GB/s of bandwidth. The "GRE" suffix stands for "Golden Rabbit Edition," a naming convention AMD introduced with the RX 7900 GRE. RDNA 4 brings significant improvements to ray tracing performance—AMD claims up to twice the RT performance per compute unit compared to RDNA 3—along with dedicated AI accelerators built into the compute units for the first time. These AI accelerators are central to AMD's pitch for the card: they power FSR 4, the first version of AMD's upscaling technology that uses on-chip machine learning hardware instead of shader-based algorithms. Previous FSR versions worked on any GPU but were limited in image quality; FSR 4 is designed to close the gap with NVIDIA's DLSS. FSR 4 and frame generation are supported in over 300 games. Priced at "starting at $550," AMD positions the RX 9070 GRE as filling the gap between the RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5070. The card connects via PCI-Express 5.0 x16 and supports DisplayPort 2.1a UHBR13.5 for high-refresh-rate display output. AMD's dual VCN media engine provides hardware acceleration for AV1, H.265, and H.264 encoding and decoding.

Sapphire's Pulse implementation features a dual-fan cooler with a compact PCB design, powered by two 8-pin PCIe connectors.

AMD Radeon RX 9070 GRE Market Segment Analysis
	Price	Cores	ROPs	Core Clock	Boost Clock	Memory Clock	GPU	Transistors	Memory
Arc B580	$280	2560	80	2670 MHz	N/A	2375 MHz	BMG-G21	19600M	12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 4060 Ti	$300	4352	48	2310 MHz	2535 MHz	2250 MHz	AD106	22900M	8 GB, GDDR6, 128-bit
RTX 5060	$300	3840	48	2280 MHz	2497 MHz	1750 MHz	GB206	21900M	8 GB, GDDR7, 128-bit
RX 7700 XT	$410	3456	96	2171 MHz	2544 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 32	26500M	12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RX 9060 XT	$390	2048	64	2530 MHz	3130 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 44	29700M	16 GB, GDDR6, 128-bit
RTX 5060 Ti	$380	4608	48	2407 MHz	2572 MHz	1750 MHz	GB206	21900M	8 GB, GDDR7, 128-bit
RTX 5060 Ti 16 GB	$520	4608	48	2407 MHz	2572 MHz	1750 MHz	GB206	21900M	16 GB, GDDR7, 128-bit
RTX 4070	$500	5888	64	1920 MHz	2475 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7800 XT	$450	3840	96	2124 MHz	2430 MHz	2425 MHz	Navi 32	28100M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 4070 Super	$600	7168	80	1980 MHz	2475 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 7900 GRE	$630	5120	160	1880 MHz	2245 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 4070 Ti	$700	7680	80	2310 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD104	35800M	12 GB, GDDR6X, 192-bit
RX 9070 GRE	$550	3072	96	1420 MHz	2790 MHz	2250 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	12 GB, GDDR6, 192-bit
RTX 5070	$560	6144	80	2325 MHz	2512 MHz	1750 MHz	GB205	31100M	12 GB, GDDR7, 192-bit
RTX 4070 Ti Super	$900	8448	96	2340 MHz	2610 MHz	1313 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RX 7900 XT	$680	5376	192	2000 MHz	2400 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	20 GB, GDDR6, 320-bit
RX 9070	$580	3584	128	2070 MHz	2520 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RX 9070 XT	$630	4096	128	2400 MHz	2970 MHz	2518 MHz	Navi 48	53900M	16 GB, GDDR6, 256-bit
RTX 5070 Ti	$860	8960	96	2295 MHz	2452 MHz	1750 MHz	GB203	45600M	16 GB, GDDR7, 256-bit
RX 7900 XTX	$800	6144	192	2300 MHz	2500 MHz	2500 MHz	Navi 31	57700M	24 GB, GDDR6, 384-bit
RTX 4080	$1200	9728	112	2205 MHz	2505 MHz	1400 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RTX 4080 Super	$1300	10240	112	2295 MHz	2550 MHz	1438 MHz	AD103	45900M	16 GB, GDDR6X, 256-bit
RTX 5080	$1150	10752	112	2295 MHz	2617 MHz	1875 MHz	GB203	45600M	16 GB, GDDR7, 256-bit

Packaging

The Card

The Sapphire RX 9070 GRE Pulse features a dual-fan cooler in Sapphire's clean Pulse design language. The backplate is metal with Sapphire and Pulse branding, and includes ventilation cutouts for improved airflow.

Dimensions of the card are 28.5 × 13.5 cm, and it weighs 1014 g.

Installation requires three slots in your system. We measured the card's width to be 53 mm.

Display connectivity includes two DisplayPort 2.1a ports and two HDMI 2.1b ports.

RDNA 4 features a dual VCN media engine with two independent hardware accelerators for encoding and decoding. AMD has improved H.264 and HEVC encoding quality—a long-standing complaint from streamers—and added AV1 B-frame support for better streaming bitrates.

The card uses two 8-pin power connectors, which allow a maximum of 300 W power draw, plus 75 W from the slot. The board power limit is set to 240 W, with a manual adjustment range allowing up to 264 W.

There is no lighting on the Sapphire RX 9070 GRE Pulse.

Teardown

The fan assembly can be removed easily, which makes it easy to replace a broken fan in a couple of years—no need to touch the thermal paste of the card.

The main cooler uses four heatpipes with an aluminium fin stack, providing cooling for the GPU, memory and VRM circuitry.

On the back, you'll find a metal backplate with a big cutout to improve airflow.

High-resolution PCB Pictures

These pictures are for the convenience of volt modders and people who would like to see all the finer details on the PCB. Feel free to link back to us and use these in your articles, videos or forum posts.

High-resolution versions are also available (front, back).

Circuit Board (PCB) Analysis

An 8+3 phase VRM powers the GPU. It is managed by a Monolithic Power Systems MP2868A controller.

All GPU power phases use Monolithic MPS MP87993 DrMOS with a rating of 50 A.

Powering the GDDR6 memory chips is a 2+1 phase VRM driven by a second Monolithic Power Systems MP2868A controller.

Just like GPU, the memory is handled by Monolithic MP87993 DrMOS chips, too

The GDDR6 memory chips are made by Samsung, and bear the model number K4ZAF325BC-SC20, they are rated for 20 Gbps. The Acer Nitro uses Hynix memory, while both the ASRock and Sapphire cards use Samsung.

The AMD Navi 48 GPU at the heart of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is a monolithic die. It is fabricated using a 4 nanometer N4P process at TSMC Taiwan. The die measures 357 mm², and comes with a transistor count of 53.9 billion.

Test System

Test System - GPU 2026
Processor:	AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D Zen 5, 5.2 GHz, 8 cores/16 threads
Motherboard:	MSI X870E Carbon Wi-Fi BIOS 7E49v1A95
Resizable BAR:	Enabled on all tested cards
Memory:	Thermaltake TOUGHRAM XG 2× 16 GB DDR5-6200 28-36-36-76 UCLK 1:1
Cooling:	Arctic Liquid Freezer III 280 mm AIO
Thermal Paste:	Arctic MX-6
Storage:	4 TB M.2 NVMe SSD
Power Supply:	Seasonic Prime TX 1600 W ATX 3.1 / 2x 16-pin 12VHPWR
Case:	darkFlash DY470
Operating System:	Windows 11 Professional 64-bit 25H2 VBS enabled (Windows 11 default)
Drivers:	RX 9070 GRE: 26.5.2 Press Driver NVIDIA: 596.49 WHQL AMD cards: 26.5.2 WHQL Intel: 101.8801 WHQL Date of Retest