The R9 270 cards seems to be one that’s often overlooked in the AMD R9 series but don’t let the lower model number fool you to think that it’s not a good card.
The card comes with Asus’ DCU II cooling system, and requires a single 6-pin PCI-E power connector to operate.
The I/O ports.
Below is the GPU-Z for the card.
More details at the official product page.
Test Setup
| Processor | Intel Core i5 4670K |
| RAM | Avexir Core Series 8GB DDR3-1600 |
| Motherboard | Asrock Z87 Extreme4 / TB4 |
| Driver | AMD Catalyst 13.11 |
Benchmark
Here we go!
Metro 2033
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| ASUS Radeon R9 270 | 36 |
| ASUS Radeon R9 280X | 76.5 |
| Sapphire R7 260X | 39.0 |
| CFX R7 260X | 43.5 |
| MSI GTX 760 | 55.5 |
*Strange but it is lower than R7 260X. Looks like I’ll be testing it again to confirm.
Unigine Heaven 4.0
| Card | 1080p (avg) |
| ASUS Radeon R9 270 | 38.9 |
| ASUS Radeon R9 280X | 59.5 |
| Sapphire R7 260X | 25.8 |
| CFX R7 260X | 48.8 |
| MSI GTX 760 | 45.2 |
Resident Evil 6
*Full HD at 1920×1080 – pardon me for the wrong screen resolution in the shot above.
| Card | 1080p (score) |
| ASUS Radeon R9 270 | 7954 |
| ASUS Radeon R9 280X (13.11) | 11441 |
| Sapphire R7 260X | 6138 |
| CFX R7 260X | 10142 |
| MSI GTX 760 | 9677 |
Just Cause 2
| Scene | Card | 1080p (avg) |
| Dark Tower | ASUS Radeon R9 270 | 88.22 |
| ASUS Radeon R9 280X | 121.90 | |
| Sapphire R7 260X | 56.8 | |
| CFX R7 260X | 112.12 | |
| MSI GTX 760 | 98.32 | |
| Desert Sunrise | ASUS Radeon R9 270 | 118.46 |
| ASUS Radeon R9 280X | 153.28 | |
| Sapphire R7 260X | 78.33 | |
| CFX R7 260X | 149.18 | |
| MSI GTX 760 | 118.76 | |
| Concrete Jungle | ASUS Radeon R9 270 | 71.92 |
| ASUS Radeon R9 280X | 87.42 | |
| Sapphire R7 260X | 47.64 | |
| CFX R7 260X | 73.18 | |
| MSI GTX 760 | 59.62 |
Sleeping Dogs
| Card | Score |
| ASUS Radeon R9 270 | 36.6 |
| Sapphire HD 7970 Ghz Edition | 45.5 |
| CFX R7 260X | 43.5 |
| MSI GTX 760 | 55.8 |
*I didn’t manage to test the R9 280X on this benchmark.
3DMark
Default settings
| Card | Score |
| ASUS Radeon R9 270 | 5119 |
| ASUS Radeon R9 280X (13.11) | 7513 |
| MSI GTX 760 | 5002 |
Temperature
Furmark Burn-in Test was used to stress the card. Fan settings are at Auto. Room set to ~25c.
Below is the full load details.
| Card | Idle(°C) | Load (°C) |
| ASUS Radeon R9 270 (auto) | 36 | 64 |
| ASUS Radeon R9 270 (manual : 100%) | 36 | 59 |
The beauty of Asus’ DirectCU II cooling system is the ability to maintain quite a silent operation while keeping the heat under very good control.
The Verdict
The R9 270 from Asus costs about RM 720, that’s almost half the price of an R9 280X but you get anywhere from half to even 3/4 of the R9 280X’s performance, this depends on the game engine. In comparison to the R7 260X, the R9 270 costs some RM 200 extra but the performance gains are almost in proportionate to the added cost.
Overall it’s the R9 270 is a solid performing GPU, kept cool with Asus’ outstanding DirectCU II cooling system.
GDDR3? Is that a typo?