It appears that Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) will soon offer two new graphics cards that will sit in the USD 179 and lower price segment. The two new products will carry the Radeon R9 255 and Radeon R9 260 trade names and will most likely be used in pre-built computers that are supposed to be “gaming ready”.
Let’s face it though – these two graphics cards will not be speed monsters although they carry the “R9” moniker in their names. The R9 255 is based on 28 nm Cape Verde silicon and comes with 512 stream processors and 32 TMUs at 930 MHz and up to 2 GB of VRAM at 6.5 GHz, accessed over a 128-bit bus and offering 104 GB of bandwidth. The card will not be that power hungry requiring power from a 6-pin PCIe connector, which is good news.
The R9 260 will be a little more powerful offering a Bonaire GPU on 28 nm silicon, 896 stream processors and 56 TMUs at 1100 MHz, up to 2 GB of VRAM at 6.5 GHz accessed over a 128-bit bus and offering 104 GB of bandwidth. This one also draws power from a single PCIe power connector.
Both cards are now fully supported in the latest 13.12 Catalyst drivers although the exact date of their market release and their pricing are still unknown.
Source: AMD