The most recent graphics card drivers release from AMD, Adrenalin Edition 24.3.1 now rectifies the supposed “VRAM limits” AMD artificially imposed upon the Radeon RX 7900 GRE as it received a global DIY launch in Western countries recently.
Essentially, the Radeon RX 7900 GRE can be seen as what the Radeon RX 7800 XT was intended to be, boasting the Navi 31 core with 5120 Stream Processors and 16GB of GDDR6 memory. However, compared to its counterpart, the RX 7900 XT, the 7900 GRE suffers from a significant limitation in memory bandwidth.
While the RX 7900 XT features 20GB of VRAM with a 320-bit memory interface, resulting in an effective memory bandwidth of 800GB/s, the 7900 GRE is hindered by a narrower 256-bit memory bus and slower GDDR6 memory chips, resulting in a reduced effective bandwidth of only 576 GB/s.
The significant reduction in memory bandwidth has somewhat gimped the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, which would typically outperform the RX 7800 XT, featuring only 3840 Stream Processors, a 25% reduction compared to the GRE.
However, with faster GDDR6 memory chips clocked at 19.5Gbps versus 18Gbps and utilizing the same 256-bit memory bus, the RX 7800 XT has the potential for greater bandwidth at 624GB/s.
As a result, in various performance evaluations, there are instances where the RX 7900 GRE shows only marginal gains or even offers inferior performance compared to its smaller Navi 32 counterpart.
I was incredibly excited when AMD globally launched the Radeon RX 7900 GRE. As I mentioned previously, when NVIDIA countered with the RTX 4070 Super and the disappointing RTX 4070 Ti Super and 4080 Super graphics cards, AMD needed to fill a crucial gap in the market by offering near-RTX 4070 Ti performance at a price point of around $600.
The RX 7900 GRE was initially priced at $549 upon launch. However, its release was met with disappointment, as AMD had artificially restricted the ability to significantly overclock the graphics card’s memory.
This move seemed like an obvious attempt to discourage smart consumers hoping to address the GPU’s main weakness and achieve a substantial performance boost with minimal effort.
For instance, the power limit was restricted to just a 15% increase with the memory overclocking slider topping out at just 2316MHz, AMD proclaimed that this was a “bug” but in reality this was obviously premeditated to perhaps discourage individuals from buying a 7900 GRE but instead upselling them towards the 7900 XT instead given the severely gimped memory bandwidth the card has versus the 7800 XT even.
Although AMD’s latest Adrenalin 24.3.1 driver changelog didn’t explicitly state the removal of memory overclocking limits for the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, TechPowerUP promptly noticed the new development.
AMD has now introduced a clock limit override in its latest WHQL driver, enabling the Radeon RX 7900 GRE to achieve significantly faster clock speeds by adjusting the overclocking slider limit manually through AMD’s software.
Now that it’s possible to increase the graphics card’s memory frequency to a more reasonable level, TechPowerUP has observed a significant improvement in its performance metrics. The Radeon RX 7900 GRE is now capable of delivering comparative results that are up to 15% faster than stock.
The new drivers have unleashed the true potential of the Radeon RX 7900 GRE, which with a large enough memory overclock applied is merely 5.05% behind the Radeon RX 7900 XT on the first graphics test portion of 3DMark’s Time Spy Extreme.
In its default configuration, the original card achieved only 67.1 frames per second, as noted by TechPowerUP in their review of the Sapphire Nitro+ variant of the RX 7900 GRE. The memory frequency was previously hard-clocked to a maximum of 2316MHz. With the limited overclock, performance results increased by just 8% over default, allowing the card to outperform NVIDIA’s GeForce RTX 4070 Ti by 4.16%.
With an additional 300MHz added to the card’s memory, performance has skyrocketed, resulting in a remarkable 14.9% increase over a stock Radeon RX 7900 XT. Furthermore, there’s now a notable 10.61% gap between it and the 4070 Ti.
Considering you can currently purchase a Radeon RX 7900 GRE for just $539, whereas the cheapest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Ti will set you back $679, this is a significant statement. Especially when you’re willing to spare the five minutes it takes to overclock the graphics card, resulting in exponential performance improvement.
However, it’s worth noting that large-scale performance comparisons from major journalism outlets and tech YouTubers are rarely seen, which seems quite coincidental.
This is especially noteworthy considering that the Radeon RX 7800 XT is widely recognized amongst PC enthusiasts for delivering approximately 10% additional performance with a 400MHz overclock to its core frequency, a feat that the card can easily accomplish.
If you’re urgently in need of a new high-performance graphics card, the 7900 GRE might be worth considering, with these latest drivers it’s far better value than a $489 RX 7800 XT.
However, I would still recommend holding off for at least a few more months, as both NVIDIA and AMD are expected to release next-generation hardware possibly before the year’s end. For those who have already purchased one, AMD has provided a lifeline by addressing this so-called overclocking “bug,” so I would advise taking advantage of it.
