Radeon R7 260X 

A card in this performance class should be well below 30 dBA.

It is possible that running at higher clocks has such a big effect on power, or that performance just doesn't scale as well with higher clocks on this chip (Bonaire), which would affect the performance per Watt metric, too.

Another surprise is the use of fast 7 Gbps GDDR5 memory, but unfortunately the R7 260X runs only 1600 MHz memory clock, and not 1750 MHz that the memory would officially support.

Memory overclocking works very well thanks to the Hynix memory chips.

The other big difference is in its memory amount: it is now at 2 GB as opposed to the 1 GB on the HD 7790.

Its GPU core is clocked at 1100 MHz (compared to the 1000 MHz on the HD 7790) and memory runs at a scorching 1625 MHz (6.50 GT/s effective), which yields over 100 GB/s of memory bandwidth on even this relatively narrow, 128-bit wide memory bus.

HIS is following their established graphics card styling, with a metal application that looks like stamped metal, though it is actually made of plastic.

This means that R7 260X should just be able to handle full HD 1080p gaming at reasonable detail settings, in most cases without anti-aliasing, and lowered details in some more demanding titles.

Unfortunately I could not overclock memory beyond 1800 MHz, which looked more like a software issue than a limitation of the memory itself.

With an MSRP of $140, the R7 260X feels quite expensive compared to other options in that price and performance segment.

Personally I think a more realistic price for R7 260X would be below $120.

I could imagine that AMD has artificially set a high price for their R7 260X, to ensure that existing HD 7790 inventory at retailers will be sold quickly, instead of rotting on shelves for ages.

The difference is very small, though, (1-2 Watt) and barely worth mentioning.

We see slightly higher non-gaming power consumption from the HIS model; that is, compared to the R7 260X reference design.

The higher operating temperature also contributes to power draw, because the hotter a GPU runs, the more power it will consume to perform the same work.