HIS R7 260X iPower IceQ X2 2GB Pro Reviews

The Radeon R7 260X is pretty much an overclocked HD 7790. It uses the same GPU with higher clock speeds on memory and GPU. A nice surprise is that the chip supports AMD TrueAudio, a unique feature it shares with R9 290 Series GPUs. HIS did not overclock their card, which is quite unfortunate because it has the card match the performance numbers of the AMD R7 260X reference design to a tee. Gaming performance numbers are around 8% higher than those of the HD 7790, 17% lower than the HD 7850, and 24% behind the GTX 650 Ti Boost. These numbers mean that the R7 260X should only be able to handle full HD 1080p gaming at reasonable detail settings and without anti-aliasing, at least in most cases. Some of the more demanding titles will also require you to run lower details. The HIS cooler significantly improves noise and temperature levels over the really poor AMD reference design heatsink, but it is not as quiet as I would like. Quieting down the card would have been easy given its low temperatures, and it would have provided an additional selling point over other R7 260X custom designs out there.

This is our first retail R7 260X 2GB and we're impressed with what HIS has done. It would've been nice to see them maybe bump the core up 50 MHz or so, but ultimately the cooler is the highlight of this product when compared to the reference model, and when it comes to the cooler, it really stands out for all the right reasons. If you're looking for a mid-$100 video card, this is one that you could consider.