MSI Radeon R7 370 GAMING 2G Review - Introduction

MSI R7 370 GAMING 2G

While waiting on AMDs news Polaris based products to arrive on the market we have some time to kill. Today we take a look at an entry level to mainstream product, the AMD Radeon R7-370 series in the form of the MSI Radeon R7 370 GAMING 2G. The R7 370 means 1080P gaming is in reach at a price under the affordable 149 Euro/ USD marker. We test the MSI's latest that is armed with their TwinFrozr design cooler.

The Radeon R7-370 as tested today is fitted with a total of 1024 Stream processors and comes with a single precision compute performance of 2 TFlops. This model is toed towards 2 GB of GDDR5 memory (256-bit) and a relatively TDP of 110W which will be supplied through a single 6-Pin power connector. For those that get a bit of a deja-vu, yes that is very comparable to Pitcairn Pro aka the Radeon HD 7850. It's a similar yet slightly revised GPU being used, yet tweaked on the clocks and seated onto a new PCB. The clocks are set at a maximum of 975 MHz boost for the graphics core on the reference product, this MSI model is running 1050 MHz. The memory operates at 5.7 GHz effective clock speed alongside a 256-bit memory interface. The card is PCI-Express 3.0 compatible. Equipped with AMD’s Graphics Core Next Architecture the R7-370 is ready for gaming on a budget, this is a sub 150 USD product. The AMD Radeon R7-370 graphics card is AMD CrossFire compatible as well AMD Eyefinity Technology and AMD ZeroCore Power ready. The card would be a nice HTPC card as well, but you can certainly play games with it as well if you stay away from the highest resolutions of course.
  

Name	R9 380 GAMING 2G	R7 370 GAMING 4G	R7 370 GAMING 2G
GPU	AMD Radeon™ R9 380	AMD Radeon™ R7 370	AMD Radeon™ R7 370
Core Clock (Base/Boost)	1000 MHz	1020 / 1070 MHz	1000 / 1050 MHz
Memory Speed	5600 MHz	5700 MHz	5700 MHz
Memory Size / Type	2 GB / GDDR5	4 GB / GDDR5	2 GB / GDDR5
Cooling	Twin Frozr V	Twin Frozr V	Twin Frozr V
Backplate	√	x	x
Connectivity	DisplayPort / HDMI / DL-DVI-I / DL-DVI-D	DisplayPort / HDMI / DL-DVI-I / DL-DVI-D	DisplayPort / HDMI / DL-DVI-I / DL-DVI-D
Dimensions	268x138x40 mm	258x132x37 mm	258x132x37 mm

 
As stated these product have been injected into the 149 USD price bracket, much like the similar specced R7 265 was introduced at 149 USD two years ago. Have a peek at the card first though. We received a model from MSI running slightly higher clock frequencies, of course. This is the gaming model.  Let's head on-wards into the review.