Cooling, Noise, and Power
To start off our performance testing I put the 270X Gaming 4G though our cooling, noise, and power testing. All three of these tests are important for various reasons but aren’t always what people think about when looking at the performance of potential video cards. To start things off, I ran the 270X 4G through the Heaven Benchmark 4.0 and recorded its peak power usage in watts. The 270X 4G came in at 360 watts at peak in Heaven Benchmark 4.0, this is spot on for what the 2GB model did in my testing previously as well. In comparison to the other R9 270X’s tested this is on the low side, but not the lowest. A lot of that is related to the overclock set as well as the amount of power the cooling fans require.
When it came to testing the Twin Frozr IV cooling I ran it through noise testing first at idle, 50%, and 100% fan speeds. At idle the difference between all of the cards we have tested is minimal. At full fan speed the 270X Gaming 4G’s noise performance was in the middle of the pack. It was a few decibels off from the 2GB cards numbers, I can only assume this is just variations between cards because both of the coolers are of the same design. At 50% fan speed (a speed you are more likely to see in use) it came in at 66 decibels, a happy medium between the idle and 100% fan speeds.
As always MSI managed to put another card down near the bottom of our temperature charts for cooling performance. The 270X Gaming 4G performed extremely well with a peak temperatures of 60 degrees when looping the Heaven Benchmark 4.0. This is a huge difference from what some of the other cards we have tested in the past have done and is in near what the other 270X’s with aftermarket coolers did.
