Rumor gives me hope that if AMD RX 9070 GRE arrives outside of China, the GPU could pack 16GB

If AMD's RX 9070 GRE ever gets shipped outside of Asia - it's currently exclusive to that region - we might just get a 16GB flavor of the graphics card, which would be a definite crowd pleaser.

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Of course, the RX 7900 GRE graphics card started in Asia only, and was later distributed elsewhere, so it isn't like it's out of the question for the RX 9070 GRE to follow in those footsteps.

The idea that AMD may be planning a variant of the RX 9070 GRE with 16GB of video RAM - currently it has a 12GB VRAM pool - comes from the Board Channels forum over in China (as flagged by VideoCardz).

That's a source that should be treated with more caution than most, but the theory is that this beefier version of the RDNA 4 graphics card might be launched in September or October 2025. In other words, it should be right around the corner.

That being the case, if there is a global launch of the RX 9070 GRE, it might be that we'll skip straight to having the 16GB model (maybe alongside the 12GB version, or instead of it).

If that's true, it's going to make a lot of PC gamers happy, as 16GB is seen as the sweet spot for future-proofing VRAM - at least through the lens of pricing, as going any higher means a very expensive flagship GPU of some variety. It's certainly a lot more of a comfortable loadout than 12GB, and we may see a beefier memory bus complementing it too, making for more overall bandwidth.

Based on recently conducted benchmarking, the RX 9070 GRE looks to be an impressive performer for 1440p gaming (at least away from ray tracing) - it's over 20% faster than the NVIDIA RTX 5060 Ti 16GB (and nearly 30% quicker than the RX 9060 XT 16GB).

If priced right, a 16GB flavor of this graphics card could go down very well indeed. Still, we're getting ahead of ourselves - first we must hope that AMD plans to release the RX 9070 GRE globally, as it did with the RX 7900 GRE, and that's far from guaranteed at this point in time.

There's a lot of buzz around AMD's next-gen graphics cards right now, too, with the theory being that there could be a powerful new Radeon flagship inbound - one that could rival the RTX 5090. The question is: can Team Red get this RDNA 5 (or UDNA) GPU out before the RTX 6090 - the rumor mill seems to believe so, on balance, with the next-gen Radeon line-up supposedly set for a late 2026 launch.