In terms of overall gaming performance, the graphical capabilities of the AMD Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Edition are marginally better than the AMD Radeon R7 260X v2 PowerColor OC 1GB Edition.

The R7 260X has a 130 MHz higher core clock speed and the same number of Texture Mapping Units as the HD 6870. This results in the R7 260X providing 7.3 GTexel/s better texturing performance. This still holds weight but shader performance is generally more relevant, particularly since both of these GPUs support at least DirectX 10.

The R7 260X has a 130 MHz higher core clock speed than the HD 6870, but the HD 6870 has 16 more Render Output Units than the R7 260X. As a result, the HD 6870 exhibits a 12.3 GPixel/s better Pixel Fill Rate than the R7 260X. However, both GPUs support DirectX 9 or above, and pixeling performance is only really relevant when comparing older cards.

The R7 260X was released over a year more recently than the HD 6870, and so the R7 260X is likely to have better driver support, meaning it will be more optimized for running the latest games when compared to the HD 6870.

The Radeon R7 260X v2 PowerColor OC 1GB Edition and the Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Edition have the same amount of video memory, but are likely to provide slightly different experiences when displaying game textures at high resolutions.

The HD 6870 has 38.4 GB/sec greater memory bandwidth than the R7 260X, which means that the memory performance of the HD 6870 is noticeably better than the R7 260X.

The Radeon R7 260X v2 PowerColor OC 1GB Edition has 896 Shader Processing Units and the Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Edition has 1120. However, the actual shader performance of the R7 260X is 784 and the actual shader performance of the HD 6870 is 504. The R7 260X having 280 better shader performance is not particularly notable, as altogether the HD 6870 performs better when taking into account other relevant data.

The R7 260X transistor size technology is 12 nm (nanometers) smaller than the HD 6870. This means that the R7 260X is expected to run slightly cooler and achieve higher clock frequencies than the HD 6870. While they exhibit similar graphical performance, the R7 260X should consume less power than the HD 6870.

The Radeon R7 260X v2 PowerColor OC 1GB Edition requires 105 Watts to run but there is no entry for the Radeon HD 6870 IceQ X Edition. We would recommend a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the R7 260X and a PSU with at least 500 Watts for the HD 6870. The two GPUs have been recommended a PSU with the same amount of wattage. As such, there is no need to worry about which will more significantly affect your yearly electricity bills.