When it comes to AMD video card manufactures there really only a few different names that come to mind. At the top of that list for most people will be Sapphire. Those of you who made it out to LanOC v13 will also remember that Sapphire joined us for our event as well. When they offered to let us take a look at their new R9 series cards, I jumped at the chance. Boy was I surprised to see that they had made some significant changed to their product line, especially the Toxic model that we are going to take a look at today.

Product Name: Sapphire Toxic R9 270X 

Review Sample Provided by: Sapphire

Review Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

 

Specifications

GPU

Radeon R9 270X

Core Clock

1100 MHz

Boost Clock

1150 MHz

Memory Clock

6000 MHz

Memory Size

2048MB GDDR5

Bus Type

PCI Express 3.0

Memory Bus

256bit

Stream Processors

1280

Memory Type

64Mx32

DirectX 11

Yes

DVI Port

DVI-I / DVI-D

Power Connections

2 x 6 pin

DisplayPort

Yes

HDMI

HDMI 1.4a

HDCP

Yes

Cooling System

Triple fan cooler with 10mm heatpipe

Backplate

Yes

Demensions

308(L)X113(W)X41(H) mm

Features

SAPPHIRE Temperature LED Indicator

Black Diamond Choke

5000 Hours long life Capacitor

Accessories included

Crossfire Interconnect Cable x1

DVI to VGA adaptor x1

HDMI 1.4 1.8m cable x1

6 Pin to 4 Pin Power adaptor x2


Packaging

Over the years I can’t even count how many Sapphire cards I have had come into the office, but the second this new Sapphire Toxic R9 270X showed up I was extremely impressed with Sapphire’s new packaging. It is much more modern than their past designs and I think between the model specific colors, and the model naming being in the top right corner it will be easier to spot the difference between cards if they were sitting on a shelf. Along the bottom of the front you do have a little information about the card in the form of the round badges. On the back of the box you will find a little more information but there aren’t any specifications to be found. It would be nice to see dimensions listed if nothing else, considering the size of the card some people might be upset when they get home and find out it won’t fit.

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Inside the card is wrapped up in a static bag and then fit in its snug foam padding. Under the foam you will find a box that houses all of the accessories as well as the cards documentation and driver disc. You get an installation guide, driver cd, case sticker, and a registration code for Sapphire’s gold club as well. For accessories, Sapphire always goes above and beyond and this is no exception. You get two long model to six pin adapters, one DVI to VGA adapter, a crossfire adapter, and an HDMI cable. The only thing I would change if given the choice would be to get them to include a cool black crossfire bridge, maybe even with the Sapphire log on it if they wanted.

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The card itself also had a plastic wrap all over the fan shroud as well to prevent any damage to it.

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Card Layout and Photos

Well first thing is first, I can’t tell if orange is starting to get popular or if some of these companies are just pandering to my love of the color. It’s no surprise that I love the look of the Sapphire Toxic R9 270X, but it’s more than just the color. If they did this same fan shroud design in blue for example it would be just as eye catching. The multiple piece fan shroud design has another benefit as well, if you want to get the card to match your build you could repaint the orange part whatever color you wanted. The second thing that I wanted to point out right away with the Sapphire Toxic R9 270X is its length. I thought the Gigabyte card was long yet Sapphire managed to make this card even longer! Part of that is just packing in three fans and in this case also leaving a little room in between each fan as well.

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When you peak on the underside of the Toxic you can see more of its heatsink design. The build in heatpipe isn’t visible here as it just circles through the heatsink itself, but you can see what looks like a vapor chamber over top of the GPU itself with the heatpipe coming out from there.

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Up on the top edge of the Toxic Sapphire has cut out the Sapphire logo out of the black part of the fan shroud. Under that they have also built in lighting (that you will see farther down this page). The same cutout can also be found on the underside of the card as well, because they use the same piece on both sides to keep costs down.

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For power, the Toxic doesn’t change anything up from other R9 270X’s. It still requires two six pin power connections to power everything. The space between the heatsink/shroud is a little tight but it shouldn’t make unhooking those power connections difficult.

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Unlike our other R9 270X’s the Toxic has two Crossfire bridge connections. I’m not sure if this means the card will support triple Crossfire, but I have a feeling it won’t. I suspect they are sharing this same PCB with the R9 780X and this is just a quirk of that configuration, but I can’t confirm that.

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Next to the crossfire connections Sapphire also slipped in a small button with their logo on it. After asking around I found out this buttons switches the card from BIOS to UEFI. This will turn on UEFI specific features like windows 8 fast booting assuming you have a UEFI motherboard as well.

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For connections on the Sapphire Toxic R9 270X you get a full sized display port, full sized HDMI, and two DVI connections. The white DVI supports VGA pass-through while the black one does not for those of you who still need a VGA connection. For ventilation Sapphire went with a design similar to what you see from EVGA with its high flow PCI plates, the metal between each slot isn’t very thick at all.

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I was already really impressed with the Toxic’s design but when I flipped the card over to find a full backplate I was ecstatic. The striped design on the backplate is sharp as well but it’s great to see Sapphire going above and beyond to both protect the card as well as add to its already good styling.

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I mentioned the Sapphire logo before, but I also wanted to show off what it looks like when everything is powered up. Sapphire has it glowing with a yellow color. It looks great in person especially, this is much better than the stick on Sapphire logos I have seen them use in the past on some cards.

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Our Test Rig and Procedures

Our Test Rig

CPU

Intel i7-3960X

Memory

Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM Quad Channel  (4x4GB)

Motherboard

Asus Rampage IV X79 Motherboard 

Cooling

Intel Active Thermal Solution RTS2011LC

Power Supply

Cooler Master Gold Series 1200 Watt PSU

Storage

Kingston Hyper X 120 SSD

Seagate Constellation 2tb Hard drive 

Case

High Speed PC Test Bench

Our Testing Procedures

Bioshock Infinite

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Bioshock Infinite on the “Xtreme” quality setting. This has a resolution of 1920x1080, FXAA turned on, Ultra Texture detail, 16x Aniso Texture Filtering, Ultra Dynamic Shadows, Normal Postprocessing, Light Shafts on, Ambient Occlusion set to ultra, and the Level of Detail set to Ultra as well.

Tomb Raider

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Tomb Raider on the “Xtreme” quality setting. This has a resolution of 1920x1080, Exclusive Fullscreen turned on, Anti-Aliasing set to 2xSSAA, Texture Quality set to Ultra, Texture Aniso set to 16x Aniso, Hair Quality set to TressFX, Shadow set to Normal, Shadow Resolution on High, Ultra SSAO, Ultra Depth of Field, High Reflection quality, Ultra LOD scale, Post Processing On, High Precision RT turned on, and Tessellation is also turned on. 

Hitman: Absolution

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Hitman: Absolution on the “Xtreme” quality setting other than the MSAA setting is turned down from 8x to 2x. That setting puts the resolution at 1920x1080, MSAA is set to 2x, Texture Quality is set to High, Texture Aniso is set to 16x, Shadows are on Ultra, SSA is set to high, Global Illumination is turned on, Reflections are set to High, FXAA is on, Level of Detail is set to Ultra, Depth of Field is high, Tessellation is turned on, and Bloom is set to normal.

Sleeping Dogs

Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Sleeping Dogs on the “Xtreme” quality setting. That means our resolution is set to 1920x1080, Anti-Aliasing is set to Extreme, Texture Quality is set to High-Res, Shadow Quality is High, Shadow Filter is set to high, SSAO is set to High, Motion Blur Level is set to High, and World Density is set to Extreme.

F1 2012

We use the built in benchmark for F1 2012. We set our resolution to 1920x1080 and then use the “Ultra” setting.

Batman Arkham Asylum

We used the built-in benchmark set to 1920 x 1080, Multi Sample AA 16XQ, Detail Level, Very High, Bloom: Yes, Dynamic Shadows: Yes, Motion Blur: Yes, Distortion: Yes, Fog Volumes: Yes, Spherical Harmonic Lighting: Yes, Ambient Occlusion: Yes, PhysX: Off

Total War: Shogun 2

Direct X11 Benchmark High setting

Crysis 2

Using Adrenaline Crysis 2 benchmark.  1080p, 4x Anti-Aliasing, DX11, Laplace Edge Detection Edge AA, on the Times Square map, with hi res textures turned on.

Battlefield 3

Using Fraps with the game set to Ultra settings with 4x MSAA Antialiasing Deferred, 16X Anisotropic Filter, at 1920x1080.

Sniper V2 Elite

1920 x 1080 resolution, graphics detail set to ultra

Dirt Showdown

1920 x 1080 resolution, 4x MSAA multisampling, Vsync off, Shadows: ultra; Post Process: High; Night Lighting: High; Vehicle Reflections: Ultra; Ambient Occlusion: Ultra; Water: high; Objects: Ultra; Trees: Ultra; Crowd: Ultra; Ground Cover: High.

Metro Last Light

Using the included benchmark tool. The settings are set to 1920x1080, DirectX 11, quality is set to very high, Texture filtering is untouched at 4x, and motion blue is set to normal. SSAA is unselected, PhysX is unselected, Tessellation is off. We run through scene D6 three times to get an average score.

Synthetic Benchmarks

For video cards our synthetic benchmarks are limited to 3DMark Vantage 2011, and 3DMark 2013 (AKA 3DMark). In 3DMark Vantage 2011 we run both performance and extreme benchmarks. The same goes for the most current version of 3DMark, we run through Fire Strike on standard and extreme settings.

Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0

Using the “Extreme” preset

Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0 heat testing

We run through Unreal Heaven at 1080p for 30 minutes to test in game heat performance and noise output of the card while under load.

Power Usage

Using Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0, we get our “load” power usage number from the peak power usage during our test. We get our numbers from a Kill-A-Watt connected to the test benches power cord.

Noise Testing

Our Noise testing is done using a decibel meter 3 inches away from the video card on the bottom/fan side of the card. We test an idle noise level and then to get an idea of how loud the card will get if it warms all the way up we also turn the fan speed up to 100% and test again. The 100% test isn’t a representation of typical in game noise levels, but it will show you how loud a card can be if you run it at its highest setting or if it gets very hot.


Cooling, Noise, and Power

When building your PC there are a lot of things you have to take into account, especially when building a budget PC where you have to make compromises. A few examples of this would be less cooling in your case or a smaller power supply in order to put as much money as you can into things like the Sapphire Toxic R9 270X. That is why I make sure to include cooling, noise, and power testing on all of our video card reviews. It’s especially interesting to see the differences between different cards with the same base architecture. To start things off, I put the Toxic through our noise testing at both idle and 100% fan load tests to get an idea of its possible noise range. Actually noise performance will be lower assuming the cooling does a good job and doesn’t require the fans to be running at 100%. Sadly the three fan design was noisier than most of the cards I have tested in the past in both idle and 100% load tests. This is related to the triple fan design without a doubt.

When it came to temperature testing, I had high hopes. Sapphire obviously sacrificed noise testing for cooling performance. The end result were numbers that were impressive when compared to other cards tested, but a little higher than the R9 270X Windforce that I wrote about yesterday. Of course, these results also depend on the fan profiles that manufactures set, if they had the fans picking up speed at higher temps the load temp can end up running higher. Not to mention the Toxic does have a higher overclock, I’m sure that played a big role in the temperature difference as well.

So what about power usage? Well compared to the other R9 270X in our graph the Toxic does pull more wattage at idle. With a higher overclock this is to be expected. Under load that same overclock pulled more as well. This pushed the power usage up over some of our overclocked GTX 760’s as well. I wouldn’t say the Toxic R9 270X is good if you are trying to save on your power bill, but I have a feeling we will see the reason for the additional power draw when we take a look at the performance testing!

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Synthetic Benchmarks

I’ve talked about this before but synthetic benchmarks don’t really give you any idea of how your card is going to perform in games, but they are a good way to compare from card to card to see the performance difference between them. Because of that I was excited to see where the Sapphire Toxic R9 270X was going to land, I saw it was pulling more power than the Gigabyte R9 270X, but how much of that translated into performance? Well going off of the 3DMark Fire Strike results alone it looks like it translated into a nice bump. The overclocked Toxic card actually pulled ahead of the GTX 760’s short of the extremely fast Hawk model. This is well above the R9 270X Windforce especially. The same happened in 3DMark 11 with the performance setting but just like the Gigabyte card the extreme setting did show the Toxic’s weakness with its lower memory bus size. Heaven Benchmark 4.0 was similar, but there was a nice 2+ FPS bump up over the Windforce still.

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In Game Benchmarks

Synthetic benchmarks are well and good but it all comes down to the actual performance in game right? After seeing what the Sapphire Toxic R9 270X did in the Synthetic benchmarks I couldn’t wait to check out the in game results. Not surprisingly I was just as impressed. Of the 12 games I benchmarked, eight of them had an average of over 60 FPS, what most people consider to be the ideal FPS. This is especially impressive considering all of the tests are run with the settings turned all the way up including AA in most cases. The games that didn’t hit 60 FPS all still came in over 30 FPS as well without having to turn their settings down. The difference between the Toxic and Windforce cards was even more impressive with the average FPS being 85.28 on the Toxic and 79.70 on the Windforce. That overclock made more of a difference than I would have ever expected!

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Overclocking

To test overclocking on our cards I break it all down by GPU and then Memory clock speeds to get the higher possible clock on each and then attempt to run them together. I document all of it below as well. With the Sapphire Toxic R9 270X I started with its GPU clock speed and with its already high overclock I jumped up to 1250MHz to start. This passed without any issues, but as soon as I went to 1300MHz things failed. The same happened again when I tried increasing the power available. I finally got it to pass at 1275MHz. This is higher than what I was able to pull from the Gigabyte card, its highest was 1225MHz.

Next my memory overclocking was short lived. When you combine the high base overclock the Toxic provided, combined with the low limit that AMD set. I quickly ran into that limit without an issues. I have a feeling these cards are capable of a lot more if you get into overclocking them via a BIOS flashes.

Surprisingly, my combined testing failed the first time at 1275MHz on the GPU but dropping things down to 1265MHz corrected that issue and gave a pass result. In the end the Toxic overclocked better than our last R9 270X although I can’t help but feel there is a lot more to be found for performance in it if you tried.

GPU Clock Speed Overclocking

GPU Clock Speed

Pass/Fail

FPS Result

Notes

1250MHz

Pass

46.52

 

1300MHz

Fail

N/A

Blue Screen, Had power control setting set to 0%

1300MHz

Fail

N/A

Blue Screen

1275MHz

Pass

47.09

 

Memory Clock Offset Overclocking

Memory Clock Speed

Pass/Fail

FPS Result

Notes

1600MHz

Pass

43.33

 

1625MHz

Pass

43.50

 

Combined GPU and Memory overclocks together

GPU Clock Speed

Memory Clock Speed

FPS Result

Notes

1275MHz

1625MHz

N/A

Blue Screen

1265MHz

1625MHz

47.15

 


Overall and Final Verdict

Not to look down on anything Sapphire has done in the past, but I think it’s obvious that Sapphire has really stepped up their game with the introduction of the Sapphire Toxic R9 270X. They completely changed their design strategy when it comes to the cooler for this card, not to mention the revamped color scheme and packaging as well. I really dig the styling that they went for on the Toxic R9 270X and that is even ignoring the fact that they went with my favorite color as well. Including a backplate was a welcome surprise that helps complete the package. On top of it all they even lit up the Sapphire logo up on the top to show off what card you are running.

The performance testing of the Toxic R9 270X was especially impressive. I couldn’t believe that small bump in GPU clock speed as well as the memory overclock managed to squeeze even more performance out of the R9 270X above what I saw yesterday from the Gigabyte model. I was a little disappointed with the noise test results but the performance results made it all worthwhile.

When I first saw the price point on the Toxic R9 270X I was a little surprised, especially when you compare it to the Gigabyte Windforce. But After taking everything into account I can completely see their justification for the higher price. First you are getting an aftermarket heatsink with the built in backlit logo on top. Additionally you are getting an even higher overclock, with performance that pushes the card up over the overclocked GTX 760’s in almost every instance. Lastly Sapphire even included an HDMI cable in with everything. All in all, I think this justifies the higher cost of the Toxic. 

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld's Avatar
garfi3ld replied the topic: #33119 11 Oct 2013 13:31
Happy Friday everyone! Today I have a review of Sapphires flagship R9 270X called the Toxic. Enjoy

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