The AMD Radeon R9 270X & R9 270 Review: Feat. Asus & HIS
by Ryan Smith on November 13, 2013 12:01 AM ESTThe Test
As the 270X and 270 are based on the existing Pitcairn GPU, AMD won’t be doing anything special as far as drivers are concerned. The drivers for today’s 270 launch will be Catalyst 13.11 Beta9.2, first released last week to incorporate some 290 series fan speed adjustments.
| CPU: | Intel Core i7-4960X @ 4.2GHz |
| Motherboard: | ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional |
| Power Supply: | Corsair AX1200i |
| Hard Disk: | Samsung SSD 840 EVO (750GB) |
| Memory: | G.Skill RipjawZ DDR3-1866 4 x 8GB (9-10-9-26) |
| Case: | NZXT Phantom 630 Windowed Edition |
| Monitor: | Asus PQ321 |
| Video Cards: |
XFX Radeon R9 280X Double Dissipation AMD Radeon HD 7950 Boost AMD Radeon HD 7870 AMD Radeon HD 7850 AMD Radeon HD 7770 AMD Radeon R9 270X HIS Radeon R9 270 IceQ X2 Asus Radeon R9 270 DirectCU II OC NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost |
| Video Drivers: |
NVIDIA Release 331.58 WHQL AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta v5 AMD Catalyst 13.11 Beta v9.2 |
| OS: | Windows 8.1 Pro |
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Waveblade - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
It's like different people work on different products!Roland00Address - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
A commandment of any cell phone reviews, thou shall not rush battery life tests.Tetracycloide - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
Be thou particularly careful testing battery life when thine available anecdotes vary wildly. Be thou definitive.slayerxj - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
I may not read the article very carefully, and I keep wondering that why 280X has a star behind it.Gigaplex - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
I'm getting a little tired of this TDP nonsense. Two cards with the same TDP from the same product family of the same manufacturer that clearly consume different amounts of power - the TDP numbers are now meaningless. And don't get me started on Intels SDP.yannigr - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
If both are under 150W, then where is the problem? Maybe R9 270 consumes close to 130W-140W and not 150W, giving the necessary room to AMD's partners to oc the chip without passing the 150W limit.dylan522p - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
OCed 270 is 270xslapdashbr - Monday, November 18, 2013 - link
Under 150W means it only needs one 6-pin power connector (like the 7850 or 660 which it replaces/competes with) and in general is much more power-efficient. The 270 (non-x) is aimed more at builders with power limits or old systems that can't support a dual-6-pin GPU, or perhaps computational tasks where performance per watt is more important than performance per card. The 270x is full-powered but less efficient and is better suited for gamers and tweakers. I wouldn't get a 270 to save $20 unless the lower power limit was important, in which case it's actually a good buy, as it should still edge out a gtx 660 while staying under 150W total power.dylan522p - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
SDP at least makes sense.maximumGPU - Wednesday, November 13, 2013 - link
quick comment on the DCUII coolers from asus. I too have been very impressed with them. my goal was silent yet powerful computing, and the DCUII cooler on my GTX670 plays that part admirably.