AMD is closing out the year with yet another new GPU announcement, though this one isn't quite like the last few we've brought you. If you've been hanging around here for any length of time recently, you've probably read about the semi-new Radeon R9 and R7 series cards that AMD launched back in early October. If that wasn't enough, the company soon followed up with the truly new, ultra-powerful Radeon R9 290X, based on the GPU formerly codenamed Hawaii. And then a few days after that, the slightly tamer Radeon R9 290 hit the scene, and at a very aggressive price point to boot. There's also been a bit of drama since then due to some significant performance variability between R9 290 and 290X series cards, but that's still playing out.

In the meantime, AMD wants to bring its GCN architecture, Mantle support, and TrueAudio engine down to ever lower price points, with a new member of the Radeon R7 family, dubbed the Radeon R7 260. As its name suggests, the Radeon R7 260 is very similar to its big brother, the R7 260X, which itself is similar to the previous-gen Radeon HD 7790...