Radeon HD 7870 vs Radeon R7 260X

If you are going to buy a new graphics card and are choosing between Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon R7 260X, there are a couple of things to consider. Cards with more VRAM in general perform better and allow you to play on higher graphics settings. Size also makes a difference. A model with a large heatsink can occupy up to three expansion slots on a motherboard. Be sure you have enough room in your PC case. When comparing GPUs with different architectures, more processing cores and even higher TFLOPS will not always translate to better performance. To help you decide which GPU you need, we have measured frame rates in a number of popular games. For more on how the Radeon HD 7870 stacks up against Radeon R7 260X, check out specs charts below.

Main Specs

  Radeon HD 7870 Radeon R7 260X
Power consumption (TDP) 175 Watt 115 Watt
Interface PCIe 3.0 x16
Supplementary power connectors 1 x 6-pin
Memory type GDDR5 GDDR5
Maximum RAM amount 2 GB 4 GB
Display Connectors 2x DVI, 1x HDMI, 1x DisplayPort
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  • Radeon HD 7870 has 52% more power consumption, than Radeon R7 260X.
  • Radeon R7 260X has 2 GB more memory, than Radeon HD 7870.
  • Both cards are used in Desktops.
  • Radeon HD 7870 is build with GCN architecture, and Radeon R7 260X - with GCN 2.0.
  • Radeon HD 7870 and Radeon R7 260X are manufactured by 28 nm process technology.

Game benchmarks

high / 1080p 24−27 16−18
ultra / 1080p 14−16 9−10
QHD / 1440p 9−10 4−5
4K / 2160p 6−7
low / 720p 45−50 30−35
medium / 1080p 30−33 20−22
The average gaming FPS of Radeon HD 7870 in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is 56% more, than Radeon R7 260X.

Full Specs

  Radeon HD 7870 Radeon R7 260X
Architecture GCN GCN 2.0
Code name Pitcairn XT Bonaire
Type Desktop Desktop
Release date 5 March 2012 8 October 2013
Pipelines 1280 896
Core clock speed 1000 MHz
Boost Clock 1000 MHz
Transistor count 2800 Million 2,080 million
Manufacturing process technology 28 nm 28 nm
Texture fill rate 61.60
Floating-point performance 1,971 gflops
Length 170 mm
Memory bus width 256 Bit 128 Bit
Memory clock speed 4800 MHz
Memory bandwidth 104 GB/s
Shared memory -
DirectX DirectX 11.1, Shader 5.1
Shader Model 6.3
OpenGL 4.6
OpenCL 2.0
Monero / XMR (CryptoNight) 0.39 kh/s
FreeSync +
Bus support PCIe 3.0
HDMI +
Bitcoin / BTC (SHA256) 225 Mh/s
Eyefinity + +
Design reference
DDMA audio +
Decred / DCR (Decred) 0.63 Gh/s
Ethereum / ETH (DaggerHashimoto) 16.6 Mh/s 5.16 Mh/s
Zcash / ZEC (Equihash) 145 Sol/s
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