Product Photos - AMD R9 270X
The AMD R9 series then, in particular the 270X. It looks like an all new design, but basically this is a Radeon HD 7870 in disguise, it is powered by a Pitcarn GPU and runs roughly at the performance level of the Radeon HD 7950, which for the money is not bad thing alright.
The card has been advertised as being capable of 1080P performance with all the image quality settings maxed out in mind. These cards will sell for $199, that really is a gamer’s sweet spot pricing wise. The card does as specified as you will find out in our benchmark sessions, but with future games the card might run out of its 1080P juice though as it is a bit borderline.
Connectivity wise the output connectors will vary per brand -- the reference boards will get two DVI connectors and then HDMI and DP (full) connectors. I'm happy to see that AMD finally has stepped away from the god awful annoying mini-DP connectors.
As you will see, the performance of the card is fairly comparable towards the Radeon HD 7950, however this GPU harbors 1280 shader processors and the core clock frequency is set up-to 1.05 (boost) GHz. The AMD Radeon R7-270X will come in both a 2GB and 4GB model. That memory is 256-bit and will run up-to 5.6 Gbps.
At the rear side of the card we see a rather familiar PCB. Overall a fairly clean design, the cards are PCI-E gen 3.0 compatible and will have one Crossfire connector, so 2-way Crossfire is the maximum you can go here.
You will need to power the card with 2 x 6‐pin power connectors. The card has rated TDP of 180 watts, we measured 177 Watts under full load so that figure is pretty spot on. But we'll talk about that later.
The AMD Radeon R9 270X will pretty much replace the Radeon HD 7950 / Boost edition cards. Though nothing new in peformance and featrues, at a 199 USD pricetag this product is pretty kick-ass price wise for what you get.