Mark suffers with déjà vu while testing the XFX R7 360
When you see the designation R7 360, you might assume it to be ‘new’. But the GPU in this card originates from the Bonaire Pro core, now renamed Tobago, which first appeared in the HD 7790 in 2013. Then it took another curtain call in the HD 8770, and then again in the R7 260.
That said, this is a GCN 1.1 specification GPU, and it supports Mantle, Vulkan and DX12. However, its underlying architecture remains unmodified, with the same numbers of transistors, fabrication scale and memory model.
XFX’s core edition is the baseline model of its R7 360 model, and it's backed the performance settings off a little, allowing for a smaller card and a single fan cooling system.
It has the mandatory 768 unified shaders, 48 texture units and 16 ROPs, just like the R7 260, and also the same 96GB/s bandwidth using 2GB of quad-pumped 1500MHz GDDR5 on a 128-bit bus.
For those installing it in their system, it needs the ubiquitous x16 slot, a single PCIe sixpin power line, and it can be connected to a DVI, HDMI or DisplayPort monitor. And for those who like multiple displays, this card can support up to four at any one time.
At a snip under £90, the card competes directly with the GTX 750 Ti cards and previous generation AMD R7 260X models.
I’ll be honest and admit I didn’t do the wide sweep of benchmarks I’d normally do the latest video technology. That’s because after half a dozen test results, the penny dropped that I’d seen these numbers before. And sorry to spoil the twist ending, but they were almost identical to the reference R7 260.
There were some exceptions; for whatever reason, the 3DMark Fire Strike Extreme and Ultra tests favour this design, even if they’re both still slideshows on this hardware.
I’d contest that in a blind test, two gamers playing on otherwise identical PCs wouldn’t be able to separate this and a typical R7 260. That’s a bit of a problem, because you can easily pick up an R7 260X that is about 5% quicker more cheaply than this. It does beat the GTX 750 Ti, but that’s based on even older GPU technology.
The quandary here is whether you go for this design, as it might have a higher resale value down the road, or go with the tried and trusted R7 260X and save some cash now. That’s a tough call.
This card is nicely made and styled, does what is expected of it, and it has enough power to play most games at 1080p with reasonable detail levels.
Also positively, it’s very quiet even when under load because of XFX’s very efficient Ghost Thermal 3.0 technology in the cooler.
But even with that desirable feature, I find it difficult to argue that it is sufficiently revamped from its predecessor to justify it over an older discounted card. Mark Pickavance
A new name, old specification and familiar benchmark scores.