XFX R7 260X Review: Old wine, new bottle

After having tested a lot of high-end graphics cards, getting our hands on a mid-range graphics card was a welcome change. It is great to test beasts such as the **ASUS R9 290X** , ZOTAC GTX 780Ti AMP! Edition and so on and answer that eternal question: who holds the crown? The Reds or the Greens? High-end cards also bring with them new architectures and keep raising the bar year-on-year in terms of performance. But let’s be honest - these high-end cards belong to a very niche market segment, as they cost as much as a complete multimedia gaming rig. AMD’s R7 260X is designed for the masses and replaces the HD 7790 in the Radeon lineup. Let’s see if there’s any drastic change or if it’s merely a re-brand.   Build and Design [caption id=“attachment_217220” align=“aligncenter” width=“592”]  XFX R7 260X is a mid-range card meant for those on a tight budget[/caption] The XFX R7 260X has a custom all-black design which looks quite different from the red and brown coloured stock AMD design. Although it looks like it has a close shroud when seen upfront, there are actually two layers, with an opening in between. The top portion of the shroud is screwed onto the heat sink in the centre and the back panel on the edge, whereas another linear plastic base is attached to the PCB which covers the card along the edges. From the gap in between you can see the aluminum heat sink and it has two heat pipes coming out from the top. There is a black coloured fan in the centre. The shiny XFX branding is seen on the front of the card and on the top edge.   While the shroud design looks good, the plastic used isn’t of the best quality. The layer attached to the PCB for instance bends in many places. Even the top shroud flexes on minor pressure. [caption id=“attachment_217221” align=“aligncenter” width=“587”]  It comes with two DVI ports, a DisplayPort and an HDMI port[/caption]   On the display front, it has two DVI ports, a DisplayPort and an HDMI port. There is a Crossfire connector up top which will allow you to connect two of these cards if you want to go for a multi-GPU setup.   Features The R7 260X is based on the Bonaire XT architecture and is built on the 28nm process. This was the same architecture seen on the HD 7790. While the stock R7 260X is clocked at 1100MHz, we were surprised to find the R7 260X clocked 25MHz lower at 1075MHz. You can obviously, set the clock higher, but for a third-party card maker to come out with a card slower than stock speeds is rather strange. Even the memory clock is at 1600MHz instead of the stock 1625MHz. It has 2GB GDDR5 video memory and has a 128-bit memory bus.   The XFX R7 260X supports DirectX 11.2, OpenGL 4.3, Mantle, AMD TrueAudio and so on. It supports a maximum resolution of 2560x1600 (DVI) and 4096x2160 (HDMI and DP).   Test Setup Processor: Intel Core i7-4770K Motherboard: ASRock Z87M Extreme4 RAM: 2 x 4GB GSkill RipjawsX OS Drive: Plextor SSD, 256GB (boot drive) Additional Drive: Western Digital Velociraptor, 150GB (secondary) PSU: Cooler Master 800W Silent Pro Gold OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Monitor: ASUS PB278Q Catalyst Driver version: 13.11 Beta Nvidia driver version: 331.82   Performance 3DMark 11 3DMark is a computer benchmarking tool created and developed by Futuremark Corporation to determine the performance of a computer’s 3D graphic rendering and CPU workload processing capabilities. The latest version makes extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11, including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. We used the “Performance” preset for this benchmark.    Unigine Heaven 4.0 Unigine Heaven 4.0 is a DirectX 11 benchmark based on the Unigine engine which can be used to test the stability of a GPU under stressful conditions. It involves a run-through of an imaginary land involving floating islands, cobblestoned streets, smokey atmosphere, going through caves lit with burning fires, dragon statues and so on. You can adjust the tessellation, anti-aliasing filters, anisotropic filters etc. We run this test keeping the settings at Medium, no Anti-aliasing filter and Tessellation at Normal.     Battlefield 3 Battlefield 3 is a first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and is based on the new Frostbite 2 game engine. The game only supports DX10 and DX11, which enables enhanced in-game destruction with Destruction 3.0, creating more refined physics than its predecessor and quasi-realtime radiosity using Geometrics’ Enlighten technology. The game is a visual treat and a nightmare for graphics cards, which makes it perfect for our test. We used the “Ultra High” preset, Post AA – High, Blur – Full, Field of View – 90, Level – “Fear no Evil”.   Crysis 2 Crysis 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Crytek and is based on the new CryEngine 3. Just like the first iteration of the game, Crysis 2 continues to be one of the best-looking shooters to date. The settings used for this benchmark were “Ultra and High” preset in Adrenalin, DX11 and High-resolution texture patch.     Dirt 3 Dirt 3 is a rallying video game and the third in the Dirt series of the Colin McRae Rally series, developed and published by Codemasters. The game is extremely scalable and features DX11 tessellation effects. We used the built-in benchmark tool, along with “Ultra” quality preset.   Metro: Last Light Metro: Last Light is a first-person shooter video game that continues Metro’s legacy of being one of the most demanding games for the best of GPUs. The game has a lot of DX11 eye-candy, which really puts a strain on any GPU. All DX11 features were enabled for the benchmark and we used the built-in benchmark for this test.   Bioshock Infinite Bioshock Infinite developed by Irrational Games uses a modified version of the Unreal Engine. It’s a first-person shooter which takes place in a fictional floating city called Columbia. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings. In the Ultra settings you have FXAA On, Ultra texture detail, 16x AF, Ultra dynamic shadows and with the Medium settings you have FXAA On, High texture detail, 8x AF and High dynamic shadows.   Tomb Raider Tomb Raider is a third-person shooter which is a reboot of the famous series with Lara Croft as the protagonist. In this reboot, she is ship-wrecked on a mysterious island which presents its own set of challenges which Lara has to overcome. The game is based on a customised CrystalEngine. It also features the AMD TressFX technology which adds more realism to hair rendering and physics. We ran the benchmark using the in-built benchmark tool at the Ultimate and Ultra settings. On the Ultimate preset, you have TressFX activated, 16x AF, FXAA whereas the Ultra preset has Normal hair quality, 16x AF, FXAA.   Sleeping Dogs Sleeping Dogs is an open-world third-person action-adventure game developed by United Front games and Square Enix London Studios. Set in modern-day Hong Kong the game involves you playing as Wei Shan, an undercover cop, who infiltrates a local Triad gang. We ran the benchmark using the Adrenaline Benchmark tool and used the Ultra and Medium settings.   Temperatures We noted the temperature of all the participating cards at idle and load states. The fan speeds were kept on auto. We noted maximum load temperatures after running benchmarks such as FurMark at 1080p preset, 3D Mark 11, Battlefield 3 and Metro: Last Light and taking an average.    Power Consumption We used an energy monitoring device to measure the power consumed by the total rig with the graphics cards on them. The Cooler Master 800W PSU was plugged into the power meter which gave out the power consumed in Watts on the display. After powering on the system we let it stay unused for a good five minutes to get the idle power reading and then ran three instances of FurMark 1080p preset to get the maximum load power.      Verdict and Price in India The XFX R7 260X is a mainstream card and as you may have noticed from the charts above, it performs on par with the older Radeon HD 7790. In fact, the R7 260X shares a lot in common with the HD 7790 as far as most specifications go, except for a larger capacity video memory, faster clock speeds and new feature support such as AMD TrueAudio, Mantle and so on. In terms of performance, barring Metro: Last Light which is a taxing game, the R7 260X is playable with most other games at Full HD resolutions. On the NVIDIA side, from the current generation GTX 700 series, all cards are faster than the R7 260X.   The XFX R7 260X comes at a market price of Rs 10,675 which is decent pricing considering the HD 7790 starts from Rs 10,500 onwards as well. If you are on a tight budget, this card makes more sense than the older HD 7790. Unfortunately, we did not have the GTX 650Ti on hand to be tested using the newer drivers. But you can check out the scores we got on older drivers on the **ASUS GTX 650Ti DC2T** ,  which is priced around Rs 10,500 or even the **ZOTAC GTX 650Ti AMP Edition** which is a little more pricey.