AMD Releases Radeon R7 260, Set to Retail for $109

When AMD released its first Volcanic Island graphics cards in October, it followed-up with additional models almost immediately. After a single month, the company had released eight models ranging from $89 up to $549. Today, we see a ninth model added to the list, coming to us in the form of the R7 260.

Unlike AMD’s previous product stacks, which would see models such as “XX50”, “XX70” and even sometimes “XX30” or “XX90” released, the current-generation makes things a bit easier. Now, for a given model number, there might be an “X” variant; this denotes that the same core was used, but it’s a better overall part. In this particular example, the R7 260 series is based on Bonaire – 260 is Pro, and 260X is XTX.

So, what are the differences between those two cards, then?

The R7 260 costs $20 more than the R7 250, but it’s a much more capable card – it doubles the cores and increases the memory performance. Given the choice between either of these two cards, the 260 should be targeted given the small difference in price.

Compared to the R7 260X, the 260 loses about 17% of its cores and halves its RAM, to sit at 1GB. I admit that 1GB is a little painful to look at in this day and age, but for a card of this price-point, it’s implied that a resolution as high as 1080p is not the target.

I’m in the process of wrapping-up some benchmarking on this card and others (using a slightly adjusted GPU test suite), so stay tuned for our full review of this card soon.