One of the best parts about a new video card launch is having the chance to be able to check out the differences between the same models from multiple companies. It seems like every company anymore has their own cooling design and their own names for each of the cards features. One of the companies who has performed well in all of our previous launches has been the Twin Frozr designs from MSI. Today I’m going to take a look at their R9 270X Gaming that features a Twin Frozr cooling design along with a few gaming features that help it stand out.

Product Name: MSI R9 270X Gaming

Review Sample Provided by: MSI

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

Packaging

The packaging for the R9 270X Gaming really isn’t any different than the previous Gaming cards from MSI with exception of the GTX 780 Gaming that was larger. That means we have the same dragon across the top as well as the Gaming Series badge as well. The only area that actually is different on the cover is the small AMD logo in the bottom right corner and the same logo up in the top right logo with the model name. The back of the packaging does have more information and an easier to find model name as well. Here we have information on their gaming app, thermal design, and military class 4. There is also a feature and specification list as well over on the right side.

Inside you will find a black box with all of the accessories on top. The R9 270X Gaming is tucked up under in protective foam and a static protective bag as well. For accessories you get two Molex to 6-pin adapters, one DVI to VGA adapter, and then your driver/software disc. You also get a small quick user’s guide as well in case you need help with the installation.

Card Layout and Photos

At first glance the R9 270X Gaming really isn’t very different from MSI’s other gaming cards. Really the only difference is with the GPU itself. This is great because their Gaming cards have been very popular with people (and with us) due to their clean red and black styling and top notch cooling performance. The design of this card is slightly taller than a normal R9 270X, this helps MSI fit two large fans over a heatsink that pulls the heat from the GPU using multiple heatpipes. Each heatpipe helps spread the cooling out over a larger area rather than it be focused just over the GPU.

Just like other Twin Frozr cards (and just about any other card with an aftermarket cooler) a good portion of the air blown over the heatsinks will vent into your case. You can especially see this on the end of the card where it is completely open. This isn’t anything unusual, but I like to point it out because if you were planning on putting this card into a case that already has cooling issues you would be adding to them. This is also how MSI is able to improve on the cooling design over a reference design, more airflow helps keep things cooler.

Unlike the Sapphire 270, MSI went with the single Crossfire Bridge, just like you would find on a reference card. Of course due to the different height of this card you need to make sure that you only crossfire two of the same card together. Here you can also see part of the support bracket that runs across the top of the card, preventing the PCB from flexing at all.

Also along the top edge you will find the R9 270X Gaming’s power connections. Like the reference card, this card requires two 6-pin power connections to supply the needed power to get you gaming. Just next to the power plugs you will also find a small switch. This is a BIOS switch that lets you go crazy with BIOS overclocking and still have a backup BIOS, keeping you safe!

Like other MSI Gaming Series cards, the R9 270X Gaming has a nice flat black PCB finish that should be at home in nearly any build. You can see that the PCB isn’t a direct copy of a reference design as well. The first clue to this is the height, but along with that MSI has taken advantage of that additional space, they didn’t just expand it to allow for more cooling. Unlike the reference card, there also isn’t an X shaped bracket on the back of the GPU itself for support. They trust the heatsink and shroud to maintain its strength.

For connections we have what I basically consider the standard setup now. You get HMDI and DisplayPort connections, both full sized. Then you have two DVI connections, one with analog pass-through for people who need VGA. The rest of the back is filled in by a 2/3 slot vent.

Our Test Rig and Procedures

Cooler, Noise, and Power

On average, MSI has performed especially well in our previous reviews when it came to cooling and noise performance. So when it came time to put the R9 270X Gaming to the test I was excited to see if they would be able to uphold their record. I started off first with the cooling testing in Heaven Benchmark 4.0. The 270X Gaming gave us great results as a whole against all of the cards tested in the past, but when it came to going against the other R9 270Xs it was edged out ever so slightly by the Sapphire card and by 7 degrees by the Gigabyte card with three cooling fans. I wouldn’t consider this a fail, but it’s not a win as well.

Moving on to noise testing, I was happy to see that the difference in cooling performance was made up in noise performance with just the Asus card pulling ahead by less than two decibels. The R9 270X Gaming’s idle performance left a little to be desired, but it wasn’t any worse than the Gigabyte card with its triple fans.

At 360 watts under load the R9 270X Gaming fell just above the Asus and Gigabyte cards but still well below the Sapphire. This is to be expected when you figure in the differences in overclocking between each of the cards as well.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Synthetic benchmarks aren’t going to show you exactly how your card will perform in game but they are a great way to compare between multiple cards because of their consistency. I put the MSI R9 270X Gaming through our suite of synthetic benchmarks including the latest 3DMark, 3DMark 11, and Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0. Before we talk about the results, here is a look at the overclocks from each of the R9 270X’s that we have had the chance to take a look at, this helps us understand why each card performs the way it does. We ran the card in gaming mode, because this is its default, putting it in OC Mode would give up a bump up near the Asus card.

As for the results, the R9 270X Gaming actually came in really close to the other cards that had a higher overclock. This result was consistent across all five of our benchmarks. The MSI R9 270X Gaming looked great up against other cards as well, even outperforming the overclocked GTX580 Classified. Its amazing how far we have come performance wise in the past few years.

In Game Benchmarks

So looking past the synthetic benchmarks, in game results are what it’s all about right? I know that’s why I want a new video card at least. This is even clearer when it comes to this card because MSI clearly labeled it the Gaming edition. So I put the MSI R9 270X Gaming through our 11 in game benchmarks. Out of those 11 benchmarks five of the benchmarks had an average FPS of 60 or more, what most consider to be the perfect FPS. Looking at those same results again, I was curious how many still fell into the 30FPS or above category, as 30 FPS is still considered playable in most cases. With that in mind all 11 of the benchmarks performed above 30 FPS with four of those up just below 60 FPS. As expected the MSI R9 270X Gaming came in just below the other 270X’s that had higher overclocks but you can still expect it to outperform any reference clocked 270X’s as well.

Overclocking

I for one am not one to settle for stock speeds or even the overclocked speeds that manufacutres provide. Because of that I was sure to go through and overclock the MSI R9 270X Gaming to see what kind of headroom you still might have. Obviously this depends on the card, but this should give you an idea at least. I started off by bumping up the GPU clock speed from the 1080MHz that it ran stock to 1200MHz and then to 1300MHz. At 1300MHz it did fail with a blue screen, from there I knew our limit was between 1200-1300MHz. I slowly bumped it down until it finally passed at 1225MHz. This gave an additional 4+ FPS over the original overclock.

Next I moved on to overclocking the memory, sadly the results here are the same as what I have seen on all of our 270X’s with our limit being a software limit. There is obviously still a lot of room there if you do a BIOS overclock, but in my experience memory overclocks don’t give as much return. Last I ran through tests with both of our overclocks, interestingly enough it failed until I bumped the Memory clock down slightly. Obviously the higher GPU clock pulled away some of the voltage needed to maintain the memory overclock. If you look you will even see that my test results were faster at the stock memory clock than overclocked at all.

Overall and Final Verdict

So at the end of the day, where does the MSI R9 270X Gaming stand against the competition? Well compared to other 270X’s it could use a little higher overclock to compete, but its performance as a whole only falls in just slightly below the others. What I really do love about this card over the others is its cooling design. The Twin Frozr cooling not only performed well but still impresses me every chance I get to check it out. In this case the black and red theme is especially eye catching as well and makes me want to put together an entire build just to match it. If on the market for an R9 270X MSI’s gaming edition would be on my short list, especially when you consider that it falls in on the cheap side of things with an MSRP of $199.99. Bundle that with the recently introduced deal that will get you a free copy of Battlefield 4 and you really have a great value for a quality card. 

Author Bio

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.