AMD Radeon R7 M260

The AMD Radeon R7 M260 is a lower mid-range DirectX 11 graphics card for laptops. Just like the older Radeon HD 8700M and 8600M series, it is based on the Mars chip (28nm GCN architecture) with 384 shader cores, 24 TMUs and 8 ROPs. The core is clocked at up to 715 MHz (128 bit version) or 980 MHz (64 bit version) and can access up to 4 GB of DDR3 memory (1000 MHz, 2000 MHz effective).

Performance

The performance of the 128 bit Radeon R7 M260 is just slightly below a GeForce 825M, while models using a 64 bit memory interface will be a bit slower. Current and demanding games of 2013/2014 can be played fluently only in low resolutions and detail settings. In older games, however, higher quality settings will be possible.

The 384 shaders can be used with OpenCL 1.2 for general-purpose calculations (as 6 compute units). Compared to old TeraScale 2 chips, the GCN-based Mars architecture offers improved performance in this framework.

Features

Features of the R7 M260 include video decoding for MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, VC-1, MPEG-2, and Flash directly by the AMD GPU. Multi-View Codec (MVC) and MPEG-4 part 2 (DivX, xVid) HD videos are compatible as well.

The R7 series also supports automatic graphics switching between the integrated GPU and discrete GPU. Called Enduro, the technology supersedes AMD's Dynamic Switchable Graphics and is similar to Nvidia's Optimus. Furthermore, the M265 can directly support multiple monitors using Eyefinity Technology if Enduro is disabled.

Other features include ZeroCore for reducing power consumption when the display is turned off and Power Gating to power down areas of the chip that are not used. PowerTune allows automatic overclocking and underclocking of the graphics card as long as the GPU is within its TDP limit. For example, the chip may be underclocked when running FurMark and OCCT, but will overclock in certain games like Lost Planet, Crysis or Resident Evil 5.

The integrated HD audio processor is able to transmit HD Audio (TrueHD or DTS Master Audio) over HDMI and DisplayPort (e.g., for Blu-Ray videos). Additionally, it allows audio output simultaneously and in parallel to multiple devices with the new Discrete Digital Multipoint Audio (DDMA) feature.

Power consumption

The power consumption should be similar to the old Radeon HD 8670M or the Nvidia GeForce 825M. As a result, the R7 M260 is best suited for 13-inch notebooks or larger.

Radeon R7 M200 Series Radeon R7 M275DX 896 Radeon R7 M260X 384 @ 0.72 GHz 128 Bit @ 4000 MHz Radeon R7 M270 384 @ 0.83 GHz 128 Bit @ 1800 - 2000 MHz Radeon R7 M265 384 @ 0.83 - 0.98 GHz 64/128 Bit @ 1800 - 2000 MHz Radeon R7 M260 384 @ 0.72 - 0.98 GHz 64/128 Bit @ 1800 - 2000 MHz
Codename	Opal Pro / Mars
Architecture	GCN
Pipelines	384 - unified
Core Speed	715 - 980 (Boost) MHz
Memory Speed	1800 - 2000 MHz
Memory Bus Width	64/128 Bit
Memory Type	DDR3
Max. Amount of Memory	4 GB
Shared Memory	no
API	DirectX 12 (FL 11_1), Shader 5.0, OpenGL 4.3
Transistor Count	1 Billion
technology	28 nm
Features	Mantle, PCIe 3.0, Zero Core, PowerTune
Notebook Size	medium sized
Date of Announcement	07.01.2014

Benchmarks