AMD Radeon R9 270 Review: Replacing The Radeon HD 7800s

[cleeve]

AMD packages up another sub-$200 graphics card, this time calling it the Radeon R9 270. We expected a Radeon HD 7850 replacement, but received something quite different. Is it a worthwhile step up, or just a familiar piece of hardware with a paint job?

AMD Radeon R9 270 Review: Replacing The Radeon HD 7800s : Read more

 

[16bit]

Seems like a pretty solid card, but I would like to see benchmarks that include some of the higher end cards. Curious how big the gap between the 280x and the 270 is.

 

[CaptainTom]

I actually like this card... Make an overclocking review!

 

[esrever]

I feel like they don't need a 270x now since board partners could just have released OCed versions of this to fill the slot. Strange that they don't have a 7850 replacement.

 

[m32]

I actually like this card... Make an overclocking review!

I doubt this card has too much headroom in that department. The 6-pin is a gift and a curse.

 

[wdmfiber]

The chart need a typo fixed. The 7870 is I incorrectly labeled as 40nm, but it's built on the 28nm fab process; just like everything else. .

Frig... we've been stuck at 28nm for so long it's just "understood". You could get-away with leaving that whole column out.

 

[Sakkura]

Wonder if there'll be any versions with two 6-pin power connectors. They could be great value for overclocking.

 

[bustapr]

I wonder, how exactly does overclocking work with these cards? Wouldnt it just be varying its fan speeds whenever it hits a certain temperature and sends clockspeeds all over the place?

 

[AMD Radeon]

i am waiting for a price cut for R9 series

the previous version, 7870 GHz edition and 7870 XT is now so cheap

 

[tomfreak]

I will not be surprise they gonna release a R9-260X (R9 version of 260X) that is a rebrand of 7850. A curacao chip with a broken CU has to go somewhere.....

 

[witcherx]

why not radeon 7850 2gb?

 

[Da W]

How about crossfire? tri-crossfire? That would be interesting to see, 3x 270 with one 6pin connector each, instead of buying the monster that 290X is.

 

[rolli59]

So are they leaving room for R9 265X? Eventually there must be a card with disabled Shader Cores always has been, that is how they maximize their yields. Unless of course they keep the 7850 in the lineup like they have done with the lower end 6xxx series cards.

 

[Onus]

Da, this card only has one Crossfire connector, so tri-Crossfire will not be possible.
I wonder if it will Crossfire with a HD7870 though.

 

[tomc100]

Not sure why tomshardware is using COD Ghosts as a performance test. This game is one of the most poorly optimized game ever made right next to that Jurassic Park game in the 90's called Trespasser. The game is using the same Quake engine and is known to run poorly on SLI and crossfire.

 

[TeraMedia]

It looks like they intentionally hamstrung this card against OCing with that single 6-pin. There appears to be a bit of power headroom, but not much. Bumping freq and/or V will eat that up pretty quickly. It makes sense if they don't want to cannibalize 270X, I suppose, but oh well.

 

[slomo4sho]

An underclocked 270X that is $20 less. I am sure it can be clocked back up to the speed of the 270X at the very least. Look forward to some OC results.

 

[Onus]

That's the reference model. You can bet some board partners are going to either put an 8-pin on it or a pair of 6-pin connectors, just for OCing.
I'm still looking forward to a review of the R7s...

 

[ZEPd3Z]

So will this crossfire with an HD 7870 like the R9 280X with an HD 7970?

 

[iceclock]

looking good, hope the prices of the old 7870 goes down as the 270s and 280s come in stock.

 

[mapesdhs]

So basically the card is rereleased 20 months after initial launch, with a new
name and tweaked performance that's slower or little better than the original,
and pretty much the same price point. Can someone explain where one can
find Moore's Law in all this? IMO it all looks like a waste of time. I mean, after
20 months, this is all we get? Not impressed at all. I'd hoped AMD wouldn't
go down the road of rebranding (it was bad enough with the 8800GT fiasco),
but I guess they figure enough people will fall for the PR. I foresee yet more
cards on eBay from disgruntled gamers who upgraded only to observe little
or no speed gain.

The 290/290X at least offer something tangible, whether it's solid performance,
good prices, or both, sans noise issues, but these reissued older GPUs really
irritate me. Reminds me of the lacklustre improvements we've had in CPU power,
the halting of price drops for SSDs, the shooting back up of RAM prices since
Feb, and so on. If the PC market is shrinking, I don't think one can blame it
entirely on the rise of tablets & suchlike, or the dislike many have of Win8;
instead, IMO these days there are simply fewer items that are worth buying
as upgrades. All this stalls demand, people stop buying, or buy less often
as they wait for something better, which makes it look like the market is
shrinking when infact users are just waiting for products that are worthy
of their cash.

Sometimes I think it's a pity that all the various 3rd-party GPU makers can't
combine their own talents and come up with a completely separate GPU
development path to NVIDIA and AMD. Surely there's enough skill & knowledge
by now at ASUS, Sapphire, Gigabyte, EVGA, HIS, etc., to do this. Oh if only...

Ian.

 

[silicondoc_85]

I actually like this card... Make an overclocking review!

You won't like it much when the NDA (or the gigantic bias not mentioning it and pretending the topic doesn't exist here in the review) on the power circuits onboard is released.

Expect massive vrm blowouts and crashes with sad overclocking.
Crappy power sucking bins stuffed in the slot by amd, a way to get rid of their junk electromigration gpu's without scrapping them.

 

[masmotors]

can you crossfire it with a hd 7850 2 gb

 

[iceclock]

no. u cant im pretty shur

 

[spp85]

AMD radeon GPUs these days has the lowest frame time variance. They improved their drivers a lot!!