AMD R7 260X Review

Rating: 7.5.

Today AMD launch their latest R7 and R9 graphics cards and Kitguru is looking at some of the official designs, as well as one custom partner solution from Sapphire. This review focuses on the latest R7 260x reference card priced at $139. We put this card through its paces against a GTX650ti and the last generation HD7790. Is this card able to power the latest games at high resolution with modest image quality settings?

There was a time not too long ago when a budget solution like the R7 260x could not power a demanding game engine at 1080p but in their official literature AMD are focusing on true HD resolutions. AMD claim the R7 260x has ‘HD5870 performance' for only $139.

The AMD R7 260x will be sold with clock speeds up to 1,100mhz and memory speeds up to 6.5Gbps. It only requires a single 6 pin power connector and complies with the latest PCI E 3.0 standard. Gamers will be happy to hear that it has 896 Stream Processors, matching the HD7790 refresh. It ships with 2GB of GDDR5 – up from 1GB on the HD7790.

AMD are keen to focus on the new programmable audio pipeline. TrueAudio Technology is designed for game artists and engineers, to allow for sound processing. The technology is intended to transform game audio and programmable shaders transformed graphics.

This is featured on the AMD Radeon R9 290X, R9 290 & R7 260X solutions.

• Programmable audio pipeline grants artistic freedom to game audio engineers for sound processing
• Easy to access through popular audio libraries used by top game developers
• Fundamentally redefines the nature of a modern PC graphics card
• Spatialization, reverb, mastering limiters and simultaneous voices are only the beginning

For comparisons today we test the R7 260x against the Nvidia GTX650ti, AMD's HD7790 and as a more expensive reference performance point, the HD7850.

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