I decided to use this card on a an i5 midrange PC build for my friend: XFX Radeon R7 260X Double Dissipation Video Card - 2GB GDDR5, PCI-Express 3.0 (x16), AMD CrossFireX - R7-260X-CDF4 It looked good for the price, but after using it to play Far Cry 3, I was sadly disappointed that nearly all in game graphic settings must be turned down to LOW in order to average just 24FPS. I installed the latest drivers... Plenty of RAM (Gskill Ripjaws 2x8Gb @ 1866Mhz. Looks like I made a GPU mistake and I'm going to have to crossfire this GPU with an additional card. I'm a little shocked because the reviews on this card all read, "best card for the money! I play BF4 at Ultra settings and it's great!" You see my system and if I was less one of my GTX260 Ti cards then no way I could play BF4 at Ultra everything settings. From now on I need to stop reading mindless reviews. the card was only $159.00 with free shipping so I guess I got what I paid for.
What resolution are you trying to run the game at? Resolution can make a big difference. Judging by Hilbert's review, it is a pretty weak card for 1600x1200 and higher.... From Hilbert's review.... http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/radeon_r7_260x_r9_270x_280x_review_benchmarks,29.html
Thanks for the tip... The gaming PC is for my friends 13 year old son. I felt bad like I did not deliver good PC gaming on that system. I was dumping all graphics levels and was mind set on keeping max Res on the 24" Asus gaming monitor. I will try a bit lower resolution and see if that allows me to at least bump up depth of field and landscape settings in far cry 3. Maybe improve FPS and some depth of view... Important setting with Far Cry 3. This game is pretty demanding. With my system when set to ultra every setting and max res, even I only get average 40 FPs. The game seems to be very GPU demanding. Beautiful game with all settings at ultra and max res though. Best rendering of water I've ever seen in a PC game if your system has the guts to do it. Fun to play also. Love the open environment that's less linier than most FPS games.
I haven't really tried turning the graphics settings up at all but I also haven't had a lot of time to play it either. I was going to get an R5 240 for my HTPC until I started reading reviews of the 260X. These cards really should be better than they are seeing as how AMD is pushing for 4K resolution with their high-end cards.
Yup... Setting aside graphic demanding games, that friend build with it's i5 CPU, great ram, nice MSI z77 mobo and Samsung EVO SSD it's a plenty fast computer. Upon reflection, I may have been more wise to have went quad core AMD and used that extra CPU cash to dump on $325 video card, rather than the 260x I selected. I may try to bust him for just $160 more, as I'm confident in crossfire I can give him a big jump with gaming... I made the fatal flaw of not focusing on gaming and put a few buck in hardware that could have made this system a better gaming platform... I think I did so because I really love the i5 ivy that I have. I love this OCed Ivy so much that I really feel no need to upgrade to i7 with ivy or Haswell... At least not yet.
I bought this card and was able to compare to ASUS 650ti boost oc 2gb and I can say that R7-260x pretty close or may be similar to 650ti boost, but more quieter and colder. I had just some problems with drivers (windows installed drivers by default), but after updating drivers from disc, which was in a package with this video card, everything worked fine. I would recommend this product to everyone!
At a price point of $159 and option to Crossfire, I'm not thumbs downing this R7-260X card. I was expecting too much for the money. The cooling is good, drivers are good, it's nice and quiet too. My idea about adding a second card for this friend build may not be an option because of Power Supply. I used a great Seasonic X Series 650w modular PS, but with an additional R7 I may be cutting it close, although wattage isn't everything and this Seasonic may have the stones to run a second card no problem.
Has the R7 265 been released yet? That is a better card for the money, expected to retail at 150USD pricepoint, it's a faster card than the GTX750 Ti actually. The R7 260X is just above entry level, if you're getting a second card, I'd be interested to know how they perform. BTW, don't believe everything you hear on the net, especially from youtubers...I've seen a claim by one who has a Q6600 + GT520 combo and he claimed he'd maxed out Crysis 3 & BF4 (IIRC) with his system. I seriously doubt his claims, but there you have it, an example of the kind of crap that can be found.
Normally I would do a lot more research on a GPU before buying. Mostly checking enthusiast PC hardware sites such as Guru and Toms Hardware. In this case I was in a hurry to build and deliver the PC, but Tiger Direct had shorted my hardware order absent the video card because it was out of stock. They didn't charge me for the card I ordered, but I didn't have time to wait on another order so I went to Best Buy and among what they had the R7-260X was the best of limited selection they had so I bought it just to complete the build. User ratings were good on NewEgg for the card, but you really can't fully trust any component from just buyer reviews on NewEgg. For example my MSI Z77-GD55 Mobo had many poor buyer reviews on NewEgg when I bought it, but I updated the bios and it's been a great board for me. No problems getting my i5 ivy to a 100% stable 4.4Ghz. Over a year now and still zero problems. I notice a lot of buyer reviews on NewEgg report a great many DOA issues with all make and model motherboards. I've done about 40 builds over the last 8 Years and I've never suffered a DOA mobo so either I'm lucky or perhaps many of these DOA reviews are installation errors they caused or they missed something important.
