AMD Radeon R7 260X 2GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

AMD’s official MSRP of the Radeon R7 260X is $139 while in the UK Overclockers have told us this graphics card will start from £109.99 and that they have an extensive range of cards from HIS, Sapphire, Gigabyte, ASUS and MSI available at launch. Of course at the moment the R7 260X is encroaching on HD 7850 pricing territory both in the UK and USA and if you’re urgent to buy a graphics card at this price point my advice is to grab a HD 7850 2GB graphics card while stocks last because this end-of-life clearance pricing will not last forever. In terms of what Nvidia offer at this price point well you can grab the GTX 650Ti Boost for around the same starting price in both the UK and USA. Our tests show the GTX 650Ti Boost is also a better performer.

Final Thoughts

The HD 7790 took the entry level market by storm when it was released but within a short period of time Nvidia hit back and released the GTX 650Ti Boost and the HD 7790 was rapidly pushed off its pedestal. Now we’ve seen AMD rehash the HD 7790 as the R7 260X and the pricing hasn’t really changed at all. To be honest we’re back at square one again with the same graphics card and the same (if not a slightly higher) price. While the R9 280X and R9 270X both offer more performance than the cards they replaced AND lower prices, the R7 260X offers only marginally more performance and the same price. The R9 280X and R9 270X both destroy Nvidia at their respective price points but with the R7 260X AMD get played out the park by Nvidia. Of course AMD will tell you that the R7 260X is designed to compete with the GTX 650 Ti (non-boost) but we all know that the GTX 650 Ti Boost can be had for around the $120-$150 price point too. In more or less every benchmark we see the GTX 650Ti Boost quite far ahead of the R7 260X and considering it can be had for the same price of $139 I see no reason for gamers to even consider the R7 260X unless you want to take advantage of some unique AMD features like Direct X 11.2 support, OpenGL 4.3 support, Mantle API support, the Never Settle Bundle or Eyefinity 6 support. If AMD wanted the R7 260X to be successful it needed to be based off the HD 7850 GPU if they wanted to conquer the $139 price point, or it needed to be priced much lower if they wanted the “HD 7790 rehash” to work. I can’t really see the R7 260X succeeding and in my honest opinion they should go back to the drawing board with the pricing or GPU choice.

Pros

• Decent performance
• Overclocks well
• 2GB of VRAM copes better with higher resolutions

Cons

• Beaten comfortably by equivalently priced Nvidia GTX 650Ti Boost
• Priced the same as the card it is replacing
• Mediocre reference cooling solution
• Just an overclocked HD 7790

“AMD’s R7 260X was AMD’s attempt at phasing out the HD 7790 and replacing it with something better. AMD have succeeded in creating a marginally better product but the increase in performance just isn’t enough to compete with Nvidia’s GTX 650Ti Boost, neither is it enough to justify an identical price to the product it replaced – the HD 7790. For a “new generation” graphics card this is more like one step forward, two steps back, than it is progression. Only consistently strong overclocking potential and very aggressive pricing can make the R7 260X a good buy.”

Thank you to AMD for providing this review sample.