AMD Radeon R7 260X 2 GB Review 16

AMD Radeon R7 260X 2 GB Review

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Introduction

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Alongside the Radeon R9 280X and R9 270X, AMD launched its entry-level Radeon R7 260X graphics card fit for visually-intensive desktops with some mild gaming thrown into the mix. The specifications of the R9 280X and R9 270X may dwarf those of the R7 260X, yet it deserves to be taken seriously from an academic standpoint. The graphics core inside the SoC that drives the Microsoft Xbox One entertainment system isn't all that different from the Radeon R7 260X, at least on paper.



Priced at $139, the Radeon R7 260X makes building gaming-ready desktops under $400 possible. It succeeds either the Radeon HD 7670 or the HD 7770, depending on how you interpret AMD's new nomenclature. The R9 290 series will succeed the HD 7900 series in the product stack. The R9 280 series succeeds the HD 7800 series (sub-$300 class) and the R9 270 series succeeds the HD 7700 series (sub-$200 class). But such an arbitrary product stack repositioning would create unreal price-performance increments at the points AMD's various HD 7000 series products launched, which is why AMD tweaked pricing a little to give buyers a different and equally valid way of looking at AMD’s new product stack by using price points.

As with the other two GPUs launched by AMD today, the Radeon R7 260X isn't based on any new silicon. It has quite a few things in common with the Radeon HD 7790 launched just this March, but differs from the HD 7790 by running higher clock speeds and double the standard memory amount. Its GPU core is clocked at 1100 MHz (compared to the 1000 MHz on the HD 7790) and memory runs at a scorching 1625 MHz (6.50 GT/s effective), which yields over 100 GB/s of memory bandwidth on even this relatively narrow 128-bit wide memory bus. The bandwidth is then comparable to what GDDR5-enabled GPUs with 256-bit wide interfaces managed before the 4 GT/s GDDR5 era. The other big difference is in its memory amount: it is now at 2 GB as opposed to the 1 GB on the HD 7790. Based on the 28 nm "Bonaire" silicon, the Radeon R7 260X features 896 stream processors based on the Graphics CoreNext architecture, 56 texture memory units (TMUs), and 16 raster operations units (ROPs).

In this review, we put an AMD Radeon R7 260X reference design through its paces.

Radeon R7 260X Market Segment Analysis
 Radeon
HD 7770
GeForce
GTX 650 Ti
Radeon
HD 6870
Radeon
HD 7790
Radeon
HD 7850
Radeon
R7 260X
GeForce GTX
650 Ti Boost
GeForce
GTX 660
Radeon
HD 7870
GeForce
GTX 580
Radeon
R9 270X
GeForce
GTX 660 Ti
GeForce
GTX 760
Shader Units640768112089610248967689601280512128013441152
ROPs16163216321624243248322432
Graphics ProcessorCape VerdeGK106BartsBonairePitcairnBonaireGK106GK106PitcairnGF110PitcairnGK104GK104
Transistors1500M2540M1700M2080M2800M2080M2540M2540M2800M3000M2800M3500M3500M
Memory Size1024 MB1024 MB1024 MB1024 MB2048 MB2048 MB2048 MB2048 MB2048 MB1536 MB2048 MB2048 MB2048 MB
Memory Bus Width128 bit128 bit256 bit128 bit256 bit128 bit192 bit192 bit256 bit384 bit256 bit192 bit256 bit
Core Clock1000 MHz925 MHz900 MHz1000 MHz860 MHz1100 MHz980 MHz+980 MHz+1000 MHz772 MHz1050 MHz915 MHz+980 MHz+
Memory Clock1125 MHz1350 MHz1050 MHz1500 MHz1200 MHz1625 MHz1502 MHz1502 MHz1200 MHz1002 MHz1400 MHz1502 MHz1502 MHz
Price$100$130$170$110$135$140$150$190$170$310$200$235$250
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