Introduction

AMD's new Radeon R9 270X draws its lineage more from the Radeon HD 7800 series than any other. The R9 270X is, for all intents and purposes, identical to the Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition which launched at $350, but settled down to around $250, holding on to that price point quite well and for quite long. At 1050 MHz, its GPU core clock speed is 5 percent higher, and at 1400 MHz (5.60 GT/s effective), its memory clock speed is a significant 16 percent higher than the HD 7870.

The 28 nm "Pitcairn" silicon on which the Radeon R9 270X is based features 1,280 stream processors based on the Graphics CoreNext micro-architecture, 80 texture memory units (TMUs), 32 raster operations units (ROPs), and a 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface holding 2 GB of memory.



The R9 270X reviewed today comes from PowerColor. Their R9 270X PCS+ comes with a completely new cooler design and the PCB has seen some changes, too. With a core clock of 1100 MHz, the GPU overclock isn't as large as on other cards, but the 25 MHz memory OC will help with performance. Also included in the package is a portable power bank to recharge your phone or tablet on the go. The best part? All this comes at reference design pricing of just $200.

Packaging

Contents

You will receive:

• Graphics card
• Driver CD + documentation
• Portable power bank + documentation + cable
• DVI adapter

The included Power Bank is PowerColor's own product. It contains a 4100 mAh Li-Polymer battery that will come in extremely handy when you have to recharge your tablet or phone on the go. The surface is made from a soft plastic that has a nice silk like surface touch. A blue LED indicator shows the charging state (it's blue, not purple, camera got confused).

The Card

PowerColor's new PCS+ cooler makes a good impression. Its shroud is, just like the backplate, made of metal, which gives the product a very high quality feel to the touch. Dimensions of the card are 24 x 11 cm.


Installation requires two slots in your system.


Display connectivity options include two DVI ports, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort. You may use all outputs at the same time, so triple-monitor surround gaming is possible with one card.

The GPU also includes an HDMI sound device. It is HDMI 1.4a compatible, which includes HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies support.


One CrossFire connector allows you to combine up to two R9 270X cards in a CrossFire configuration.


Pictured above are the front and back, showing the disassembled board. High-res versions are also available (front, back). If you choose to use these images for voltmods, etc., please include a link back to this site or let us post your article.