ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend Review - The RDNA 4 Mid-Range Reshuffle

Introduction

AMD launching a new RDNA 4 GPU aimed at delivering great value for those looking for a 1440p PC gaming is definitely a pleasant surprise, especially given the current climate in the consumer technology space. The Radeon RX 9070 GRE, or Golden Radeon Edition, is the third GPU in the Radeon RX 9070 Series, with this cut-down model sporting 25% less memory capacity than the 9070 and 9070 XT, with 12GB of GDDR6 instead of 16GB. Alongside its RDNA 4 architecture, optimized to deliver impressive 1440p performance, it easily eclipses the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB model on average while bringing the fight to the GeForce RTX 5070.

That said, there are a couple of notable things to get out of the way before we dive into all of that good stuff. First, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is new to the global market, but it's a card that debuted in China last year, so its RTX 5060 Ti-beating performance isn't exactly breaking news. Second, arriving in 2026 means it launches with an MSRP of $549, officially replacing the baseline Radeon RX 9070 at this price point - a GPU AMD has confirmed has a new MSRP of $619 USD. In a perfect, non-memory-constrained world, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE would debut at a more competitive $449; however, the unfortunate reality of the current market is that the $549 price makes it a compelling alternative to the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU.

With 1440p gaming performance, that is, on average, almost 20% faster than the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, there's a definite case made for AMD to release the Radeon RX 9070 GRE as an affordable and competitive mid-range entry-point for PC gaming in 2026. Especially now, as a year on from RDNA 4's debut, AMD's expanded AI or ML-powered FSR 4.1 upscaling technology has matured to the point where it's now available in hundreds of games, delivering image quality that's competitive with NVIDIA's DLSS. This is an area, alongside real-time ray-tracing performance, where AMD and its Radeon lineup have long held a 'distant second' position. With this no longer being the case, releasing the Radeon RX 9070 GRE at a price point that's competitive with the 16GB model of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti feels like a win.

Okay, with the price talk out of the way, the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend model we're reviewing here is an OC model that ships with a higher +200 MHz Boost Clock speed than the reference spec of 2,790 MHz. Getting to go hands-on with a couple of out-of-the-box Radeon RX 9070 GRE cards, this translates to slightly faster performance, but not something noticeable, as you're only looking at a couple of extra frames here and there. Elsewhere, the stylish, minimal 'Dark' design of the GPU delivers a clean look, with impressive cooling that, for the most part, keeps it quiet even during multiple consecutive hours of gaming.

58

As a new current-generation Radeon RX 9000 Series graphics card built for PC gaming at the popular 1440p sweet-spot for image fidelity, the focus of this review will be on how it compares to its GeForce RTX 50 Series competition, as well as the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT. Not only in terms of raw or rasterized performance, but also in ray-tracing enhanced with FSR 4.1, and even path tracing. When it comes to the latter, it definitely falls short and feels entry-level at best, but in every other respect, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE feels like a genuine disruptor. A new GPU that reshuffles the RDNA 4 mid-range line-up according to the current memory and supply-constrained market for PC gaming hardware.

Best Deals: ASRock Radeon RX 7700 XT Challenger 12GB GDDR6 Graphics Card

	Today	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$409.99 USD	$409.99 USD	$409.99 USD	Buy
	$409.99 USD	$409.99 USD	$409.99 USD	Buy
	$799.99 CAD	$799.99 CAD	-	Buy
	£588.75	£580.45	£571.01	Buy
	$409.99 USD	$409.99 USD	$409.99 USD	Buy
	Check Price	Check Price	Check Price	Buy
	Check Price	Check Price	Check Price	Buy
	Check Price	Check Price	Check Price	Buy
* Prices last scanned 6/7/2026 at 1:37 pm CDT - prices may be inaccurate. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We earn affiliate commission from any Newegg or PCCG sales.

RDNA 4 - AMD Levels the Playing Field

Below is a summary of AMD's new RDNA 4 architecture, applicable to all models.

AMD's new RDNA 4 architecture presents a massive improvement over the chiplet design that we saw with RDNA 3. Returning to the monolithic design of RDNA and RDNA 2 might sound like a regression, especially when AMD CPUs have gone in the other direction, but this isn't the case. In a nutshell, RDNA 4 is built for the modern era of PC gaming. This GPU architecture embraces ray-tracing performance as a key pillar, lays the groundwork for neural rendering, and supercharges AI performance with the new FSR Upscaling (ML) and native support for complex AI workloads. Throw in a revamped media engine for creators and streamers, and support for next-gen DisplayPort 2.1a displays, and RDNA 4 presents a new and revitalized direction for Radeon graphics.

58

RDNA 4's overhauled Compute Unit, which houses all raster, ray-tracing, and AI hardware, has seen several enhancements over RDNA 3 and is one of the reasons the Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs deliver impressive performance gains. The RDNA 4 Compute Unit, or CU, features an enhanced memory subsystem, improved scalar units (for raw raster), dynamic register allocation to reduce latency and bottlenecks, and increased efficiency. The improvements also mean that Radeon RX 9000 Series GPUs can ship with much higher clock speeds than their RDNA 3 counterparts, hitting close to 3 GHz in several 9070 XT models, with 9060 XT models pushing up to 3.3 GHz.

The show's star, at least in terms of the massive improvement over what came before, has to be the arrival of RDNA 4's 3rd-Generation Ray-Tracing Accelerators. AMD is aware that game developers across PC and console platforms are embracing ray tracing, which provides a realistic depiction of lighting and related effects such as shadows and reflections. The only problem is that real-time ray-tracing is complex, requiring the right blend of raw performance and innovative technologies to enhance efficiency and deliver a playable experience.

One area RDNA 4's RT Accelerator delivers where RDNA 3's don't is the arrival of "Oriented Bounding Boxes," an innovative method of handling ray-tracing Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) data. Think of it as efficiently tracing rays through an environment and geometry with a lower memory cost and less hardware. RDNA 4's RT Accelerator also adds a second intersection engine to double the performance of specific raytracing workloads and calculations. The results can be seen in titles with heavy ray-tracing like Cyberpunk 2077, where the Radeon RX 9070 XT delivers a significant 30+% performance improvement over the previous gen flagship - the Radeon RX 7900 XTX. A card with 50% more RT Accelerators than the Radeon RX 9070 XT. The mainstream Radeon RX 9060 XT also delivers substantially faster ray-tracing performance than the Radeon RX 7600, to the point where mainstream RDNA 4 is now what you'd call RT-ready.

58

RDNA 4 also fully embraces AI, with new AI accelerators that support FP8 while delivering double the FP16 and four times the INT8 performance compared to RDNA 3's AI accelerators. For gamers, this means the new AI-powered FSR Upscaling (ML) delivers a massive improvement in image quality over FSR 3, now called FSR Upscaling (Analytical). However, in 2026, the good news is that, even though AMD's custom FP8-based AI model, trained on powerful AMD Instinct hardware, is currently exclusive to RDNA 4 hardware, the company is bringing an INT8 version to RDNA 3 and RDNA 2 GPUs.

With RDNA 4, AMD has also introduced its answer to NVIDIA's DLSS Ray Reconstruction and AI Frame Generation for Path Tracing with FSR Redstone's new AI-based Ray Regeneration and Frame Generation, alongside support for Neural Radiance Caching. FSR Redstone officially launched in December 2025, with support in over 200 games; however, this is mainly limited to FSR Upscaling (ML). With improved raw performance and a massive boost to ray tracing and AI performance, RDNA 4 represents an enormous leap forward over RDNA 3. However, catching up to GeForce RTX in these areas and offering a viable DLSS alternative still means early adopters will need to wait for AMD to deliver its full Path Tracing solution, which might not arrive until RDNA 5.

This brings us to RDNA 4's enhanced Media Engine, which offers creators and streamers significant improvements in H.264, HEVC, and AV1 encoding and decoding. NVIDIA's lead in this area has meant that few creators use Radeon hardware. With RDNA 4, AMD aims to close the gap and offer a viable alternative, especially in image quality when using popular settings in apps like OBS.

Specs and Test System

Specifications

Here's a comparison of the Radeon RX 9070 GRE specs with the Radeon RX 9000 Series.

The Radeon RX 9070 GRE, although positioned as a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB and RTX 5070 competitor, is the third GPU from AMD to make use of the flagship RDNA 4 'Navi 48' chip. Although cut down in terms of hardware, the TSMC 4nm GPU itself is still quite large, with 53.9 billion transistors on a 357mm-squared die. To add a bit of context, that's double the size of the RTX 5060 Ti's 181-mm die and still significantly larger than the RTX 5070's 263mm die. Essentially, what this means is that even though the Radeon RX 9070 GRE's price and performance present compelling value in 2026 when compared to the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU, the 20% on average improvement to in-game performance comes at the cost of efficiency, with the Radeon RX 9070 GRE drawing as much as 50% more power to achieve this result.

However, how the Radeon RX 9070 GRE compares to the Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT is perhaps the big story, spec-wise. In terms of VRAM capacity, Stream Processors, Compute Units, Ray Accelerators, and AI Accelerators, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE features a 25% reduction across the board when compared to the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT. Compared to the baseline Radeon RX 9070, the GRE model has 14 fewer Compute Units. This is, for the most part, directly reflected in the high-resolution gaming performance difference on the GRE model compared to these existing Radeon RX 9070 cards, give or take.

58

Ultimately, the most notable difference is the reduction in VRAM capacity and bandwidth: the 12GB of GDDR6 memory on the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is delivered over a smaller 192-bit bus, with a bandwidth of 432 GB/sec. This comes in around 33% slower than the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT, and in real-world usage, this translates to a card better suited to 1440p gaming than it is 4K. Where the Radeon RX 9070 GRE improves over the baseline Radeon RX 9070 is in its Boost Clock speed, which is pushed to 2790 MHz compared to 2520 MHz, a decision probably made to get that extra bit of performance at the cost of delivering a 220W GPU that is less efficient than the Radeon RX 9070. The custom ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend reviewed here is an OC model, so it is pushed even higher to 2920 MHz, with an increased power draw of 240W during full 100% GPU usage delivered via two standard 8-pin PCIe power connectors.

With the move to a smaller TSMC 4nm process and the arrival of more advanced AI hardware, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is also equipped to handle the latest AI workloads and is better suited to the new AI-powered suite of FSR technologies, including the new FSR 4.1 upscaling (Super Resolution). Although it's 1097 TOPs of INT4 and 549 TOPs of INT8, performance falls short of matching the Radeon RX 9070 and 9070 XT; it's still more than enough to deliver fantastic results when gaming at 1440p with FSR 4. And with more advanced ray-tracing hardware, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE's performance advantage over the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB extends to ray-tracing games, including RT-intensive titles like Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 25. That said, like other cards in the RDNA 4 line-up, even with more advanced RT hardware, path tracing performance is still a step or two behind the GeForce RTX 50 Series.

Kosta's Test System

Physical Design and Cooling

ASRock's Steel Legend design is one we've become familiar with in recent years, and in the Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend 'Dark' form, it presents a more minimal, stealthier take on the design. Although there's still some ARGB lighting on the Steel Legend branding on the side of the GPU, for the most part, you're looking at a black and grey camo-inspired, metallic, sci-fi meets industrial aesthetic that looks fantastic in an all-black or dark build. There's even a dedicated switch to turn off the lighting, which is a nice touch to go full 'Dark' mode right out of the box. Beyond the aesthetics, the overall build quality here is impressive, and the large 2.9-slot design sports a full metal backplate with ample vent space, alongside a reinforced metal mid-frame to prevent GPU sag or the PCB from bending.

58

The ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend also comes equipped with three of the company's redesigned striped-ring fans that deliver improved airflow while supporting a 0dB mode that causes them to stop entirely when the GPU's temperature drops below a certain threshold. Basically, unless you're gaming or in the middle of a GPU-intensive workload, the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend will remain completely silent. Add a nickel-plated copper base to maximize the GPU contact area, a high-density fin stack on the heat sink, high-quality thermal paste, premium power delivery, and little touches like a 2-ounce copper foil PCB with a premium matte black finish, and ASRock's latest Steel Legend design is a winner.

58

Although its 298 x 131 x 58mm dimensions are on the smaller side for triple-slot gaming GPUs, they're still large enough to be unsuitable for some small form-factor builds. When you get into the mid-range performance territory of cards like this and the GeForce RTX 5070, it's always nice to see compact designs. However, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE still uses the same large 'Navi 48' die as the more premium Radeon RX 9070 models, and you can expect the overall physical size of the various models to be more in line with those of more mainstream offerings like the Radeon RX 9060 XT. All in all, the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend is an impressively built and cooled GPU with a stealthy look that should appeal to a wide range of gamers.

The Games and Tests

PC gaming spans a wide range of genres and styles, from indie games with simple 2D graphics to massive 3D worlds lit by cutting-edge real-time ray tracing. With that, each gamer's needs and requirements vary. High refresh rates and reduced latency are more important than flashy visuals or playing at the highest resolution possible for those who live and breathe fast-paced competitive games. For those who want to live in a cinematic world and become a key player in an expansive narrative, ray tracing and high-fidelity visuals are a stepping stone toward greater immersion.

58

Our chosen benchmarks cover various games, engines, APIs, and technologies. For the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend, all tests are run at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K, and include results for performance-boosting Super Resolution technologies such as FSR Upscaling (ML) (or FSR 4), as well as the new AI-powered FSR Frame Generation. In many ways, FSR 4 numbers are more important than native rendering; however, our benchmark results are still sorted using 'raw performance' or native rendering.

Here's the breakdown of games, settings, and what's being tested.

Games and Settings Benchmarked

Path Tracing Games and Settings Benchmarked

GPUs Included in Our Testing

Offering a wide range of GPUs for comparison adds much-needed context when evaluating overall performance, efficiency, and value. Here's the full list of GPU models included in the results: INNO3D GeForce RTX 5060 8GB TWIN X2 OC, SAPPHIRE Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB PULSE OC, MSI GeForce RTX 5060 Ti Ventus 2X 16GB, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Founders Edition, MSI GeForce RTX 4070 Ti GAMING X TRIO, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5070 Founders Edition, GIGABYTE Radeon RX 9070 GAMING OC, ASRock Radeon RX 9070 XT Steel Legend, MSI GeForce RTX 5070 Ti Ventus 3X, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080 Founders Edition.

Gaming Performance Analysis

Average Gaming Performance - 1080p Results

58

Naturally, as it's marketed as a 1440p PC gaming GPU, the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend is an impressive performer at 1080p. Compared to RDNA 4's 1080p mainstream PC gaming GPU, the Radeon RX 9060 XT 16GB, it's 26.9% faster on average. At this resolution, it's also 15.3% faster than the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, while coming within 4.4% of the GeForce RTX 5070 but ultimately falling short. As the games we test include multiple titles with ray tracing, such as Cyberpunk 2077, DOOM: The Dark Ages, and F1 25, these results are impressive. However, there is more to the story than simply looking at the overall average, as even though the Radeon RX 9070 GRE matches the RTX 5070's performance in DOOM: The Dark Ages with its ray-traced global illumination, the RTX 5070 pulls ahead by 10 and 20% in Cyberpunk 2077 and F1 25, respectively, as these are titles with multiple concurrent RT effects.

The other big difference between Radeon and GeForce comes when looking at competitive shooter performance. Playing Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 at 1080p, and the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend is 13% faster than the GeForce RTX 5070, whereas in Counter-Strike 2, it's the one game where its performance falls short of the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti. Looking at the other cards in the Radeon RX 9070 Series, the GRE's overall 1080p gaming performance is within 8.5% of the baseline Radeon RX 9070 and 14.2% of the flagship Radeon RX 9070 XT. This is a relatively small performance gap among three GPUs in the same lineup, but it widens in favor of the GRE's beefier siblings when the resolution is increased to 1440p and 4K.

Average Gaming Performance - 1440p Results

58

Increasing the resolution to 1440p and the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend's triple-digit 109 FPS average is great, as is the 127 FPS average when you factor in FSR 4. At this resolution, FSR 4 and the new FSR 4.1's 'Quality' preset delivers fantastic image quality, to the point where it can be considered a free performance boost. And it's enough to be a game-changer in demanding titles, with Cyberpunk 2077 with the Ultra-quality RT preset seeing its 41 FPS performance increase to a more playable and smooth 71 FPS, while F1 25's 64 FPS average increases to smoother and more stable 98 FPS. Putting these numbers up front highlights just what a difference FSR 4 makes, while also underscoring how AMD has closed the 'DLSS gap' with its RDNA 4 lineup.

Looking at how its performance stacks up against other GPUs, the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend increases its average 1440p gaming performance lead over the mainstream Radeon RX 9060 XT to 31.3% and over the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB to 19.8%. As with the 1080p gaming results, performance varies from title to title, but the 20% increase over the RTX 5060 Ti is significant enough for the Radeon RX 9070 GRE to stand out if both cards were side by side on a shelf at roughly the same price. And even though the GeForce RTX 5070 widens its lead to 5.2% at this resolution, it's close enough that the two cards are mostly interchangeable in terms of raw performance. However, it's worth noting that an overclocked RTX 5070 would see this lead increase to double digits.

Looking at the full Radeon RX 9070 Series, these 1440p results offer the clearest picture of how these various models differ. Naturally, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is the slowest of the three, but the baseline Radeon RX 9070 is only 11.4% faster on average, while the Radeon RX 9070 XT is 18.7% faster. Basically, you're getting an extra 10% each step on the Radeon RX 9070 Series ladder, so to speak, which means the overall value proposition will come down to price and how much that extra performance costs.

Average Gaming Performance - 4K Results

58

With lower VRAM capacity and memory bandwidth, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE begins to struggle a bit at 4 K resolution is increased to 4K. Even though it's 22% faster at this resolution, on average, than the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, the rest of the cards we've been focusing on also begin to pull away. For 4K gaming, we found the GeForce RTX 5070 to be 7.6% faster than the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend, with the Radeon RX 9070 and Radeon RX 9070 XT coming in 15.3% and 23.8% faster, on average. This isn't to say that the Radeon RX 9070 GRE isn't suitable for 4K gaming. Still, it's a resolution where you'll need to make a few compromises in the form of turning off heavy RT effects and enabling FSR 4 using the 'Balanced' or 'Performance' presets to maintain a fast and smooth frame rate when playing the more visually demanding games out there.

Benchmarks - 3DMark Synthetic Tests

3DMark offers a suite of synthetic benchmarks built to test GPUs in various scenarios. 3DMark Steel Nomad is a cutting-edge DirectX 12 benchmark that uses modern rendering techniques to push GPUs to their limits. The 'Light' version tests at 1440p, while the main Steel Nomad benchmark tests pure native 4K rendering. Port Royal is a benchmark focused exclusively on real-time ray tracing for lighting effects, including reflections, shadows, and more.

When looking at the full Radeon RX 9000 Series lineup, the Steel Nomad and Steel Nomad Light synthetic benchmark scores for the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend more or less mirror what we see when gaming at 1440p or 4K in modern PC games. And that is reflected in the Radeon RX 9070 GRE scores, which sit around 15% lower than the baseline Radeon RX 9070 and 20 to 25% lower than the Radeon RX 9070 XT. However, when you compare the Steel Nomad and Steel Nomad Light scores for the Radeon RX 9070 GRE with those for the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti and RTX 5070, the results are a little strange. For example, in the 4K-based Steel Nomad benchmark, the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend's score sits 45.3% higher than the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB, while that lead drops to 17.7% when looking at the 1440p-based Steel Nomad Light results. And when it comes to the GeForce RTX 5070, its Steel Nomad Light score is 16.9% higher than the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend's, which isn't really indicative of what you'll find in most real-world gaming scenarios.

58

As for the 3DMark Port Royal ray-tracing benchmark, the 9070 GRE's score accurately reflects the gains RDNA 4 has made in the RT space beyond full ray tracing or path tracing. Here, the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend's score is within 10% of the GeForce RTX 5070, while managing to eclipse the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti's score by 28.4%. As with other synthetic benchmarks, the 9070 GRE's score is also with 15% of the baseline Radeon RX 9070 and within 25% of the Radeon RX 9070 XT.

Benchmarks - 1080p Gaming

Benchmarks - 1440p Gaming

Benchmarks - 4K Gaming

FSR Redstone - Upscaling, Frame Generation, Ray Regeneration

Exclusive to RDNA 4 and the Radeon RX 9000 Series of desktop graphics cards, AMD's latest version of FSR - dubbed FSR Redstone - now encompasses a full suite of AI-powered rendering technologies that finally closes the gap between FSR and NVIDIA DLSS. AMD FSR Upscaling (ML), also called FSR 4, is powered by a new ML-based algorithm that delivers a dramatic improvement in image quality when upscaling from lower resolutions to 1080p, 1440p, or 4K.

FSR Frame Generation (ML) upgrades AMD's Frame Generation technology for the RDNA 4 generation with a new AI approach powered by a neural network that improves image fidelity and reduces image artifacts, such as ghosting. FSR Ray Regeneration (ML) is an AI-powered denoiser, similar to DLSS Ray Reconstruction, built for ray tracing. FSR Radiance Caching is best described as FSR Upscaling for ray tracing calculations. It accelerates ray tracing by leveraging AI and a Neural Radiance Cache to infer complex lighting calculations in real time, reducing GPU load.

58

Although AMD's new AI-powered FSR 4 upscaling is available in hundreds of titles, widespread adoption for the new AI-powered Frame Generation and Ray Regeneration is still in its infancy, so to speak. These performance-enhancing and motion-smoothing technologies, like their DLSS counterparts, are best utilized when you've got a baseline performance of around 60 FPS with FSR 4, as using Frame Generation to push that into 100+ FPS territory maintains similar latency and overall responsiveness. However, as we've noted in recent reviews of RDNA 4 GPUs, FSR Frame Generation image quality and overall stability still fall short of matching NVIDIA's DLSS 4 and DLSS 4.5 Multi Frame Generation technologies, even though it's limited to generating a single additional frame rather than three or four.

Path Tracing Performance

Path Tracing builds on real-time ray tracing by applying the concept of ray-traced effects to everything - global illumination, shadows, reflections, indirect lighting, and more. With multiple bounces, it's a hardware-intensive, cutting-edge look at the future of PC gaming, made possible only by AI tools and technologies. With RDNA 4 dramatically improving ray-tracing performance over RDNA 3, GPUs like the Radeon RX 9070 GRE are capable of rendering stunning Path Traced visuals; however, it's more proof of concept than practical.

Although we're only including the results of two games with their respective path tracing modes, it's clear that this is RDNA 4's Achilles heel, so to speak. Right off the bat, like the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti, path tracing on the Radeon RX 9070 GRE is best kept at the 1080p resolution, where even here performance falls short of matching the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti - a card that it consistently outperforms by around 20% in standard ray-tracing or non-RT gaming workloads. Naturally, this makes the GeForce RTX 5070 considerably faster for path tracing. Without widespread support for FSR Redstone in several of the biggest Path Tracing-ready games on PC, the technology is pretty much GeForce RTX-only right now, as NVIDIA's GPUs have the performance, responsiveness, and image fidelity advantage.

Temperature and Power Efficiency

58

With its advanced cooling and thermal design, the ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend runs cool and quiet, even when stressed. And best of all, it's a quiet GPU, the sort where you need to check to make sure the fans are spinning. That said, the Radeon RX 9070 GRE disappoints in overall efficiency, as it draws roughly the same power while gaming at 1440p as the baseline Radeon RX 9070. And in overclocked form, the 220W power rating increases to 240W. For those out there looking for a power-efficient 1440p gaming GPU, this is worth highlighting, as the GPU pulls, on average, up to 90W more power than the GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU when gaming at 1440p. This isn't a deal-breaker per se, as the overall price and in-game performance still give the 9070 GRE the clear advantage, but it does highlight an area where Radeon still has some catching up to do.

Final Thoughts

The Radeon RX 9070 GRE is getting a global release in 2026, a brand-new GPU launching at a time when we weren't expecting anything new, given the current climate. Although it's this climate that has led to the Radeon RX 9070 GRE launching with an MSRP that was previously assigned to the beefier Radeon RX 9070, the $549 USD price tag is still compelling when you factor in that it's the current going rate for a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti 16GB GPU. As for the performance, well, it presents a definite shake-up and realignment of the RDNA 4 lineup, with the Radeon RX 9070 GRE and its 12GB of VRAM becoming the Radeon mid-range choice at the price point previously associated with the GeForce RTX 5070. Although it falls short of the RTX 5070, its notable lead over the RTX 5060 Ti is enough to justify its positioning, even though we would have loved to see it arrive at a more affordable price.

58

And that's because the Radeon RX 9070 GRE accomplishes what it sets out to do, and that is deliver a fantastic 1440p PC gaming experience, with or without ray-tracing, with the bonus of AMD's new FSR 4 technology. DLSS still has the advantage in overall quality and features, but FSR 4 and FSR Redstone close the gap in meaningful ways, adding notable value to the new Radeon RX 9070 GRE. And in ASRock Radeon RX 9070 GRE Steel Legend form, this value includes overclocked performance, impressive cooling, and build quality.