The AMD Radeon R9 270X & R9 270 Review: Feat. Asus & HIS
by Ryan Smith on November 13, 2013 12:01 AM ESTBattlefield 3
Our major multiplayer action game of our benchmark suite is Battlefield 3, DICE’s 2011 multiplayer military shooter. Its ability to pose a significant challenge to GPUs has been dulled some by time and drivers, but it’s still a challenge if you want to hit the highest settings at the highest resolutions at the highest anti-aliasing levels. Furthermore while we can crack 60fps in single player mode, our rule of thumb here is that multiplayer framerates will dip to half our single player framerates, so hitting high framerates here may not be high enough.
When it comes to Battlefield 3, NVIDIA has the slight edge in general, so this is one of the 270 series weaker games. The 270X can hold GTX 660 to a draw, but in the more directly competitive 270 vs. GTX 660 matchup, GTX 660 is going to be 10% faster. In any case our highest setting will be marginally playable; the averages are more than fine, but the minimum framerates will in our experience drop below 30fps here, so a drop down to 2X MSAA or no MSAA may be necessary to get a consistent experience out of the 270 series.
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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.