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There's a cheaper AMD Radeon RX 9070 GPU in town, as the GRE edition has landed in the US. FYI, that stands for "Golden Rabbit Edition", but while the previously China-exclusive graphics card has an alluring name, you might be able to snag a superior model over Prime Day for near the same price.
The situation with the RX 9070 ahead of Prime Day gaming deals is pretty irritating. AMD originally released the card with hope in its eyes and a $549 MSRP, but that was before the dark days of RAMageddon. Now, the GPU will typically set you back over $600, and the lower spec "GRE" model has effectively replaced it on the pricing tier list.
Yes, I'm calling shenanigans, as many players won't be aware that the GRE wields 12GB GDDR6 VRAM instead of 16GB, a narrower 192-bit memory bus, 48 Compute Units versus 56, and 3,072 Stream Processors in place of 3,584. Considering you can get the beefier original for $50 even without Prime Day, that means the Golden Rabbit has little value on its bones, and the sales could make choosing the original a no-brainer.
At the same time, I get why AMD has opted to release the RX 9070 GRE worldwide, as RAMageddon is holding up. In theory, it lets the original model sit as a middle option between the new, cheaper version and the RX 9070 XT, which now costs a chunk above $600. If the $50 gap between the two vanilla 9070 variants persists or gets narrower, though, then it'll mean that you should just pay slightly more for a superior card.
Where things could get interesting is if the GRE model gets a Prime Day discount. I'm not placing any bets on that happening, but I wouldn't shun the new RX 9070 for close to or even just under $500. We're still talking about a card that's a tier above the Nvidia RTX 5060 Ti, although you can grab the 8GB version of the latter for under $370 if you're not fussed about VRAM.
My advice is to keep a close eye on both Nvidia and AMD's mid-range offerings over Prime Day. If the RX 9070 or GeForce RTX 5070 hits anywhere close to $550, then the Golden Rabbit is destined for the stew. The AI-fuelled RAM shortages mean that it's less likely to happen this year than ever, as margins are already slimmer. Still, all we can do is hope that gaming PC parts end up somewhat reasonable during the sales, even if we should all be paying way less.
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