Sapphire Radeon R7 260X OC 2GB Graphics Card Review

Tom Clancy is responsible for a countless number of video games, but his Splinter Cell series has become something special, with each game released having been considered “great” overall. The latest in the series, Blacklist, is no exception, and thankfully for us, its graphics are fantastic, and not to mention intensive. For those who love a stealth element in their games, this is one that shouldn’t be skipped.

RIP, Tom Clancy.

Manual Run-through: From the start of the ‘Safehouse’ level in Benghazi, Libya, we progress through until we reach an apartment building that must be entered – this is where we end the FPS recording.

Blacklist is a beefy game, and the R7 260 has a very hard time keeping much above 30 FPS. The 260X, by contrast, keeps closer to 40. Sapphire’s card in particular doesn’t make much of a gain, despite its 50MHz boost.

Total War: SHOGUN 2

Strategy games are well-known for pushing the limits of any system, and few others do this as well as Total War: SHOGUN 2. It fully supports DX11, has huge battlefields to oversee with hundreds or thousands of units, and a ton of graphics options to adjust. It’s quite simply a beast of a game.

Manual Run-through: SHOGUN 2 is one of the few games in our suite where the built-in benchmark is opted for. Strategy games in particular are very difficult to benchmark, so this is where I become thankful to have the option of using a built-in benchmark.

* Test run at 2xAA

Interestingly, SHOGUN 2 becomes the first title where Sapphire’s card performed under the reference. As mentioned earlier, these kinds of variances are normal when the clock differences are so small. Still, this was the case across multiple runs, and could be tied to the driver change (13.12 versus 14.1).