Lately, I’ve felt like I’ve been limiting my gaming experience by having to lower settings just to get decent frame rates. So, I decided it was time to treat myself for once and saved up some money. Over the weekend, I mustered up the courage to visit Microcenter and finally upgrade to a decent mid-range GPU.

I’ve always been very frugal when it comes to building PCs, usually keeping my budget within the $300 range. This time, I was deciding between the XFX 7900 GRE and the Hellhound 7900 XT. Internally, I was still battling my frugal nature, hesitant to spend more on the 7900 XT. So, I left it to fate—since neither GPU was displayed in the glass case, I told the associate I’d prefer the GRE but would take the XT if the GRE wasn’t available.

Well, here we are, two days after purchasing the GRE, and I have no regrets about skipping the 7900 XT. The GRE fits nicely into my budget without breaking the bank, and I was even able to add a Microcenter warranty while still keeping the total cost equal to the XT’s price alone before taxes.

Installation was super easy after using DDU, and I haven’t run into any issues so far. The AMD Adrenalin software offers a lot of exciting features that I can’t wait to explore. For anyone on the fence about upgrading but hesitant to spend on an XT, I highly recommend the GRE. It seems to have an amazing value.

Now, I’m playing everything on ultra settings with exceptionally high frame rates. It’s such a relief to set my games to high or ultra without worrying about sacrificing visual quality just to maintain decent performance at 1440P.