AMD Launches Radeon R7 260 Graphics Card

News
By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

AMD's Radeon R7 260 has been unleashed!

The AMD Radeon R7 250 and R7 260X are already on the market, but the R7-260 had not been released until now. AMD has launched it, and its specifications are known.

The graphics card is based on the 28 nm Bonaire silicon, which is the same die as featured in the R7-260X or HD 7790. That said, it does feature fewer stream processors, as only 768 out of the 896 cores are enabled. Its clock speed has also been reduced to 1.0 GHz, as compared to the 1.1 GHz clock speed of the R7-260X. The R7-260's memory runs at an effective speed of 6.0 GHz and tallies up to 1 GB over a 128-bit wide memory interface.

Pleasantly, the card also supports a number of the new technologies from AMD, including Mantle and TrueAudio. It also has support for DirectX 11.2.

There was no official word on what the card would cost, but it seems that it'll be priced at around $110 to sit between the pricing of the R7 250 and the R7 260X.  It is expected to start shipping halfway through January.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

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15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • robax91
    Hopefully it's really cheap, otherwise it will have no place in the already bogged market for low end GPUs whose price doesn't make sense.
    Reply
  • tsnor
    @ robax91 who said "... otherwise it will have no place in the already bogged market for low end GPUs whose price doesn't make sense..." This could be a yield management/manufacturing decision rather than a product roadmap point people wanted. The chip used is just a sort of failed R7-260Xs (couldn't hit frequency or had a bad core). "... based on the 28 nm Bonaire silicon, which is the same die as featured in the R7-260X or HD 7790. That said, it does feature fewer stream processors, as only 768 out of the 896 cores are enabled...."
    Reply
  • Onus
    Hmmm, looks like a HD7770 replacement. The pic appears to show a 6-pin PCIe connector; too bad about that, but a low-profile single-slot version would still be sweet for TINY (i.e. not Prodigy-huge) mini-ITX builds.
    Hopefully, AMD will get their Bonaire driver problems sorted too.
    Reply
  • robax91
    12219190 said:
    @ robax91 who said "... otherwise it will have no place in the already bogged market for low end GPUs whose price doesn't make sense..." This could be a yield management/manufacturing decision rather than a product roadmap point people wanted. The chip used is just a sort of failed R7-260Xs (couldn't hit frequency or had a bad core). "... based on the 28 nm Bonaire silicon, which is the same die as featured in the R7-260X or HD 7790. That said, it does feature fewer stream processors, as only 768 out of the 896 cores are enabled...."

    As I said, if the price doesn't make sense, it has no place. Using left over chips that failed spec doesn't change the fact that unless it has a decent price, there is no point to the product. Also, I was referring to the Linus Catchphrase "Why does this exist?" as he has done benchmarks/reviews for several newer cards from AMD and some of the x and non x versions are so similar in performance (but not price) it makes you question half of their line. The answer was money, btw.
    Reply
  • bob hays
    12219601 said:
    12219190 said:
    @ robax91 who said "... otherwise it will have no place in the already bogged market for low end GPUs whose price doesn't make sense..." This could be a yield management/manufacturing decision rather than a product roadmap point people wanted. The chip used is just a sort of failed R7-260Xs (couldn't hit frequency or had a bad core). "... based on the 28 nm Bonaire silicon, which is the same die as featured in the R7-260X or HD 7790. That said, it does feature fewer stream processors, as only 768 out of the 896 cores are enabled...."

    As I said, if the price doesn't make sense, it has no place. Using left over chips that failed spec doesn't change the fact that unless it has a decent price, there is no point to the product. Also, I was referring to the Linus Catchphrase "Why does this exist?" as he has done benchmarks/reviews for several newer cards from AMD and some of the x and non x versions are so similar in performance (but not price) it makes you question half of their line. The answer was money, btw.

    I agree with what you're saying, but tsnor's answer makes a lot of sense, try to understand his comment before going against it.
    Reply
  • Lightbulbie
    Looks like an AMD version of NVIDIA's 650 Ti..
    Reply
  • Amdlova
    but 650ti don`t SLI and that can do crossfire... Nvidia only want tons of money. i think will this crossfire with 260x and 7790
    Reply
  • Onus
    I don't think Robax91 is arguing against tsnor; tsnor is just offering a reason why these products were released rather than "failed" but usable silicon being tossed.
    And, I doubt tsnor will disagree that the price has to make sense, or no one will buy it. "Why does this exist?" is indeed a very good question. Just add "What price makes sense for this product?"
    Reply
  • beoza
    is it just me or does the bottom left corner (PCIE Connector) not look right? The HSF shroud extends over the connector.
    Reply
  • Onus
    Looks like parallax to me...you can see where the shroud takes a 90 degree bend back toward the board at the bottom. The connector no doubt extends below that.
    Reply