At the moment, only PC gamers in China get to enjoy AMD's Radeon RX 9070 GRE, basically a three-quarters version of its superb RX 9070 XT, with 48 compute units and 12 GB of VRAM. However, the GPU rumour mill is fizzing a bit with a claim that Team Red is planning on releasing a 16 GB variant. If that's the case, it could be a sign that AMD is also aiming for a global release of the graphics card, possibly to gatecrash Nvidia's RTX 50 Super party.
News of the claim was reported by IT Home (via X-user Ruby_Rapids), though there aren't a great deal of details: "AMD is planning an upgraded version of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE, which may upgrade the video memory capacity to 16GB to meet market demand," it says, according to a machine translation. On the one hand, the claim is worded positively about the upgrade, but on the other hand, the VRAM boost is only a 'may'.
The current version of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE sports 12 GB of GDDR6, whereas the RX 9070 XT on which it's based, gets an additional 4 GB. That's because the full Navi 48 GPU in that card has a 256-bit memory bus, along with 64 compute units (CUs). The GRE version is down 25% in both areas (192 bits, 48 CUs) because the GPUs in these cards are Navi 48s with defects. AMD just disables the iffy sections so that they can still be used.
However, some of these chips will have fully functional L3 cache and memory interfaces, so AMD could indeed be hoarding these in preparation for releasing an upgraded version of the 9070 GRE.
Although the claim suggests that a 16 GB variant is to meet market demands, I suspect that if this all goes ahead, it's because AMD wants something to release when Nvidia launches the inevitable Super versions of its GeForce RTX 5070 and RTX 5070 Ti. Traditionally, these models have sported more shader units and/or higher clock speeds, but the rumour mill also suggests that Nvidia will be using larger 3 GB GDDR7 VRAM modules, too.
In other words, the RTX 5070 Super could boast 18 GB of memory, with the RTX 5070 Ti sporting 24 GB. Unless Nvidia also releases an RTX 5080 Super with 24 GB of RAM, I'm not overly convinced we might see such configurations, and given Team Green's approach of drip-feeding improvements, there's a good chance none of the Supers will come with more VRAM.
Whatever Nvidia does eventually do with its RTX 50 lineup, if AMD boots the Super party doors open with a trio of 16 GB 9070 cards—undercutting Nvidia on price, meeting it head-on in performance—then it'll be good news for PC gamers who've been hoping for more competition in the mid-range sector.
Given how well the original RX 7900 Golden Rabbit Edition was received, especially once it became globally available, a 16 GB RX 9070 GRE will absolutely fly off the shelves (which, of course, will ruin the prices).
The only negative I can see in all of this is what happens when you explain to people completely new to PC gaming what GRE means with respect to XT (and no letters at all), especially since it got changed to mean 'Great Radeon Edition' earlier this year. AMD makes some amazing hardware, but hoo boy, does it not have a clue with naming its stuff.
