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.
