The AMD Radeon R9 270X & R9 270 Review: Feat. Asus & HIS
by Ryan Smith on November 13, 2013 12:01 AM ESTMeet The AMD Radeon R9 270X
We’ll start off with our sole 270X card, AMD’s reference Radeon R9 270X. Unfortunately this is one of those cases where the reference card hasn’t been picked up by their partners for their own use, so this card isn’t going to be available at retail. The partners have all gone with their various standard open air cooler designs – honed from the 7870 – which means that a 270X with a blower will unfortunately not be available. The open air coolers do well when it comes to noise, but in this segment it’s nice to have a blower or two available for cramped OEM systems.
In any case, the reference 270X is a very natural evolution of the 7870 that came before it. AMD has kept the same board length of 9.5”, so in terms of functionality and size little has changed. And of course the livery has been done to match the GTX 290 series, featuring the same style shroud and the same fan used to complete AMD’s flagship cards.
Cracking open the reference 270X, we can see that AMD has gone with the same design principles internally too. The 270X is designed like a smaller 290, right down to the metal baseplate providing cooling for various discrete power components and the RAM chips. Meanwhile the heatsink is a scaled down version of the heatsink AMD used on 290, retaining the same general fin structure but forgoing the vapor chamber for a triple copper heatpipe design. Though the placement of the heatpipes strikes us as a bit odd; they’re directly in the channel that air should be going through, and where the 290 had more heatsink instead.
Moving on to I/O, the reference 270X utilizes AMD’s new reference design of 2x DL-DVI-D, 1x HDMI, and 1x DisplayPort. Compared to the 7800 series AMD has dropped the two Mini DisplayPorts for a single full-size DisplayPort, and brought back the second DVI port. Whether partner cards use this implementation or not is largely going to depend on whether partners utilize new board designs; if partners reuse 7800 series board designs, then they’re likely to have 1 DL-DVI port and 2 Mini DisplayPorts, and otherwise it will be AMD’s reference design.
Finally, as a 180W card the 270X has the standard 6-pin + 6-pin PCIe power sockets. It’s only rated for 180W, so this will provide ample power and then-some.
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Quidam67 - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
you make a valid point in some respects, but keep in mind for some people (including me) that is a different class of card, in terms of it's power requirements and the physical form factor. At this level of card, I'm looking for a small card and preferably a single 6 pin power adapter. I'm working with a small sized rig here that can still offer solid 1080p gaming.jnad32 - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
What he said, and there are going to be hard as hell to find here very soon.dwade123 - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
It's struggling with current-gen games, and will become obsolete with next-gen console ports.creed3020 - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
"Finally for our look at noise, the results are fairly typical for every card except the Asus. Asus’s 270 by comparison to everything else now holds the new record for quietest card on our current testbed, coming in at just 36C"@ Ryan: I believe you meant to say 36 dB
Ryan Smith - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
Indeed I did. Thank you.Hrel - Thursday, November 14, 2013 - link
I don't under the 270X. Isn't that just an overclocked 270? Overclocking your GPU isn't hard, at all. Why would anyone pay extra for an overclock? Also, since when do GPU manufacturers release overclocked cards as if they're different cards?I'd like to see an overclocking comparison between the GTX660 and the 270. Find the highest stable OC on both then compare them.
I just really don't see the point of the 270X.
Da W - Friday, November 15, 2013 - link
It got an extra 6 pin connector.Tujan - Saturday, November 16, 2013 - link
Is there going to be any advantages to using 8.1 Windows over Windows 7 where the newer cards advances are concerned ? That is will any of the advatages implemented to the new AMD cards 'not' be an advatage to Windows 7 users ?hapkiman - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
"it shipped at lower clockspeeds then 7870," "Then" should be written as "than," and a "the" is necessary. e.g.:"it shipped at lower clockspeeds than the 7870,"
P39Airacobra - Sunday, May 11, 2014 - link
I bought a HIS Radeon R9 270 IceQ X2, I originally was going to get the MSI gaming model, But right before I got the money Newegg raised it from $179 to $189, So I instead got the HIS for $179. (10 bucks is 10 bucks man!) And I am very happy with the HIS 270 it performs very very well. Best fastest GPU I ever owned. And it will match the 270x just by simply going into AMD overdrive and moving the clock from 925 to 1050. It is a amazing card, I highly recommend it.