Article - Guide - Review

AMD Radeon R9-270

Today we review the new AMD Radeon R9 270, not to be confused with the 270X model! The non X models are bound to offer value for money as these puppies are really Pitcairn in disguise (Radeon HD 7870). Though this product is slightly slower than its bigger brother, the 270X, it is capable of pushing some nice numbers allowing you a very decent gaming experience for a tip-top price in the 135 EUR (ex VAT) and 179 USD marker, and that is WITH a copy of Battlefield 4.

Now before we begin with the new graphics cards, the first thing that you guys will need to get used to is the new naming schema. AMD ended with the Radeon HD 7000 and 8000 series graphics card in 2013. Logic dictates that AMD would have continued with a series 9000. But hey now, we already have had the Radeon 9000 series many years ago (2003), oh and who doesn't remember the Radeon 9800 Pro, right? As such it was time to bring in a new naming schema, a bit more in line with AMD's APUs. R9 will be high-end and R7 will be mainstream and inevitably R5 being entry level. After that you'll notice products being tagged as 250, 260X, 270/270X, 280X and the coolest two of them all the Radeon R9 290 and R290X, (which are yet to be released). Though almost all of these are all new model graphics cards, most of them are respin products based of the Radeon HD 7000 series with a number of improvements. The respin products will get a new PCB, cooling, clock frequencies and much like NVIDIA boost, power, voltage, fan and load limiters. In the long run there are three products in the lineup that come with a new GPU. For example the R7 260X and then of course R9 290 / 290X will be Hawaii GPU based. The cards with new silicon come with a truckload of new features like integrated DSPs offering TrueAudio technology. The rest (270/270X/280X) will keep the older specs. I agree that is a little confusing, but we'll explain it all over the next pages.

AMD now releases their Radeon R9-270 product line. Though this product is slightly slower than its bigger brother, the 270X, it is capable of pushing some truly nice numbers allowing you a very decent gaming experience. The AMD Radeon R9 270 offers nice performance at a good price point. With the reference model, the GPU core clocking is in at up-to 925 MHz whereas the memory is clocked at reference frequencies of 5.6 Gbps. Combine that with all your favorite games and you'll notice that today's offering is solid in many ways.

For this particular article we'll be looking at a slightly faster clocked edition, the Direct CU II OC version from ASUS.  Head over to the next page where we'll startup a photo-shoot first.