Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 Review

1. Introduction2. Sapphire Dual-X R9 2703. Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 (Super High Res Gallery)4. Testing Methodology5. Unigine Heaven Benchmark6. Unigine Valley Benchmark7. 3DMark Vantage8. 3DMark 119. 3DMark10. Alien V Predator11. Sleeping Dogs12. Total War: ROME 213. Dirt ShowDown14. Tomb Raider15. Metro Last Light16. GRID 217. Splinter Cell: Blacklist18. Thermal Dynamics19. Acoustics Performance20. Power Consumption21. Overclocking22. Closing Thoughts23. View All Pages

This week AMD launch their new R9 270 graphics card – set to replace the HD7850 at the lower end of the enthusiast gaming market. Thankfully today we haven't been forced to review a reference AMD solution and instead we can focus on some higher grade partner cards.

We all love to see the reviews of the high end hardware such as the R9 290X and GTX780 Ti, but they account for a very small percentage of overall company sales for AMD or Nvidia. The high volume sales come in the lower end market and AMD have been keen to replace their long term HD7850 before the end of the year. The new R9 270 should be priced in the same zone, while bringing more power to the table.

The R9 270 is set to compliment the faster R9 270X, much like the HD7850 paired up with the HD7870 in the past. US pricing of the 270 is set at $179, or 134 euros in Europe. We therefore expect UK pricing to be between £130-£140 inc vat.

The official specifications for the R9 270 are shown above. AMD have given the card 1,280 Stream Processors – the same as the R9 270X version. The 270 core clock is significantly reduced, with AMD stating a maximum speed of 925mhz. Both partner cards we are reviewing today are overclocked and ignore the reference rating.

The R9 270 has 32 ROPS and 80 Texture Units with 2GB of GDDR5 connected via a 256 bit memory interface. Memory speeds are rated at 1,400mhz, or 5.6 Gbps effective. Typical board power is rated to 150W, which is the same as the HD7850 before it. The basic specifications are identical to the R9 270X, with lower core clock speeds differentiating the models.

The Sapphire box is nicely designed and it is good to see they have replaced the 3D Army women with a new robot. The purple colour scheme is certainly eye catching.

Inside the box are various video and power adapters, a quick start guide, software disc and a Crossfire cable and HDMI cable.

The Sapphire Dual X R9 270 is a dual slot card featuring a plastic cooler with dual fans. It is built on a black PCB.

The Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 is equipped with a single Crossfire connector for a 2 way configuration.

The card takes power from a single 6 pin power connector.

The Sapphire card has two DVI connectors, alongside a full sized HDMI and DisplayPort. It is Eyefinity capable.

The cooler comprises two thick heatpipes that run into two racks of aluminum fins on either side of the copper base.

Sapphire have overclocked their Dual-X R9 270 to 945mhz, with the memory held at 1,400mhz (5.6Gbps effective). The core is built on the 28nm process. It has 32 ROPS, 80 Texture units and the 2GB of GDDR5 memory is connected via a 256 bit memory interface.

For easy comparison purposes the image above shows the architecture of the more expensive R9 270X.
On this page we present some super high resolution images of the product taken with the 24.5MP Nikon D3X camera and 24-70mm ED lens. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later.




Today we are testing the R9 270 with the latest Beta 13.11 driver from AMD.

We are using one of our brand new test rigs supplied by PCSPECIALIST and built to our specifications. If you want to read more about this, or are interested in buying the same Kitguru Test Rig, check out our article with links on this page.

Comparison cards:
AMD R9 270X Reference (1050mhz core / 1400mhz memory)
ASUS R9 270X Direct CU II TOP (1,120mhz core / 1,400mhz memory)
VTX3D HD7870 Tahiti LE (975mhz core / 1500mhz memory)
VTX3D VChamp HD7850 (1000mhz core / 1225mhz memory)
ASUS HD7850 (860mhz core / 1,200mhz memory)
eVGA GTX760 SC (1072 mhz core / 1502mhz memory)

Software:
Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Unigine Valley Benchmark
3DMark Vantage
3DMark 11
3DMark
Fraps Professional
Steam Client
FurMark

Games:
Sleeping Dogs
Total War: Rome 2
Dirt Showdown
Tomb Raider
Metro Last Light
GRID 2
Alien V Predator
Splinter Cell Blacklist

All the latest BIOS updates and drivers are used during testing. We perform generally under real world conditions, meaning KitGuru tests games across five closely matched runs and then average out the results to get an accurate median figure. If we use scripted benchmarks, they are mentioned on the relevant page.
Unigine provides an interesting way to test hardware. It can be easily adapted to various projects due to its elaborated software design and flexible toolset.

A lot of their customers claim that they have never seen such extremely-effective code, which is so easy to understand.

Heaven Benchmark is a DirectX 11 GPU benchmark based on advanced Unigine engine from Unigine Corp. It reveals the enchanting magic of floating islands with a tiny village hidden in the cloudy skies. Interactive mode provides emerging experience of exploring the intricate world of steampunk.

Efficient and well-architected framework makes Unigine highly scalable:

• Multiple API (DirectX 9 / DirectX 10 / DirectX 11 / OpenGL) render
• Cross-platform: MS Windows (XP, Vista, Windows 7) / Linux
• Full support of 32bit and 64bit systems
• Multicore CPU support
• Little / big endian support (ready for game consoles)
• Powerful C++ API
• Comprehensive performance profiling system
• Flexible XML-based data structures

We use the settings shown above at 1920×1080.


The Sapphire Dual X R9 270 outperforms the overclocked VTX3D HD7850, but falls around 4 frames per second behind the HD7870 Tahiti LE.
Valley Benchmark is a new GPU stress-testing tool from the developers of the very popular and highly acclaimed Heaven Benchmark. The forest-covered valley surrounded by vast mountains amazes with its scale from a bird’s-eye view and is extremely detailed down to every leaf and flower petal. This non-synthetic benchmark powered by the state-of-the art UNIGINE Engine showcases a comprehensive set of cutting-edge graphics technologies with a dynamic environment and fully interactive modes available to the end user.

We test with the settings above both at 1920×1080.


On a performance level, the Sapphire Dual X R9 270 slots right between the HD7850 and HD 7870 Tahiti LE, averaging 55.4 frames per second. Interestingly, the minimum frame rates on the new R9 270 are higher than those achieved with the HD7870 Tahiti LE.
Futuremark released 3DMark Vantage, on April 28, 2008. It is a benchmark based upon DirectX 10, and therefore will only run under Windows Vista (Service Pack 1 is stated as a requirement) and Windows 7. This is the first edition where the feature-restricted, free of charge version could not be used any number of times. 1280×1024 resolution was used with performance settings.


The Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 scores 27,450 points in this Direct X 10 benchmark, around 2,500 points ahead of the HD7850, but 2,500 points behind the HD7870 Tahiti LE.
3DMark 11 is designed for testing DirectX 11 hardware running on Windows 7 and Windows Vista the benchmark includes six all new benchmark tests that make extensive use of all the new features in DirectX 11 including tessellation, compute shaders and multi-threading. After running the tests 3DMark gives your system a score with larger numbers indicating better performance. Trusted by gamers worldwide to give accurate and unbiased results, 3DMark 11 is the best way to test DirectX 11 under game-like loads.If you want to learn more about this benchmark, or to buy it yourself, head over to this page.


The Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 puts in a good showing against the HD7870 Tahiti LE in the Direct X 11 based 3DMark, around 400 points behind.
3DMark is an essential tool used by millions of gamers, hundreds of hardware review sites and many of the world’s leading manufacturers to measure PC gaming performance.

Futuremark say “Use it to test your PC’s limits and measure the impact of overclocking and tweaking your system. Search our massive results database and see how your PC compares or just admire the graphics and wonder why all PC games don’t look this good.

To get more out of your PC, put 3DMark in your PC.”


Again, a middle ground between the HD7850 and the HD7870 Tahiti LE, scoring 5,482 points.
Aliens V Predator has proved to be a big seller since the release and Sega have taken the franchise into new territory after taking it from Sierra. AVP is a Direct X 11 supported title and delivers not only advanced shadow rendering but high quality tessellation for the cards on test today. To test the cards we used a 1920×1080 resolution with DX11, Texture Quality Very High, MSAA Samples 1, 16 af, ambient occulsion on, shadow complexity high, motion blur on.

No problems powering this game at 1080p, averaging 70 frames per second, and dropping to just above 40 frames per second in the most taxing section of the environment.
Sleeping Dogs started development as an original title, but was announced in 2009 as True Crime: Hong Kong, the third installment and a reboot of the True Crime series.As a result of the game’s high development budget and delays, it was canceled by Activision Blizzard in 2011. Six months later, it was announced that Square Enix had picked up the publishing rights to the game, but the game was renamed Sleeping Dogs in 2012 since Square Enix did not purchase the True Crime name rights.

This game is still a system killer at these maximised settings. We test at 1920×1080.

The Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 struggles to maintain smooth frame rates at all times at these settings, dropping to 23 frames per second a couple of times in our test environment. The performance however is much better than the overclocked HD7850, but not quite as smooth as the HD7870 Tahiti LE.Total War ROME 2 is the eighth stand alone game in the Total War series, it is the successor to the successful Rome: Total War title. The Warscape Engine powers the visuals of the game and the new unit cameras will allow players to focus on individual soldiers on the battlefield, which in itself may contain thousands of combatants at a time.

Creative Assembly has stated that they wish to bring out the more human side of war this way, with soldiers reacting with horror as their comrades get killed around them and officers inspiring their men with heroic speeches before siege towers hit the walls of the enemy city.

This will be realised using facial animations for individual units, adding a feel of horror and realism to the battles.

To test the cards today we use the ULTRA profile settings shown above at 1920×1080.

The Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 manages to achieve higher frame rates than the HD7870 Tahiti LE in this benchmark, although the minimum frame rates are marginally lower.
Dirt Showdown is the latest title in the franchise from Codemasters, based around the famous Colin McRae racing game series, although it no longer uses his name, since he passed away in 2007.

Today we test the hardware at 1920×1080 with the Ultra profile and 8 x MSAA.

This engine is very strong in favour of AMD hardware, as shown by the results. This is the only test in which the R9 270 can outperform the superclocked GTX760 for instance.
After a delayed release from late 2012 to March 2013, the game received much anticipation and hype. Tomb Raider received much acclaim from critics, who praised the graphics, the gameplay and Camilla Luddington’s performance as Lara with many critics agreeing that the game is a solid and much needed reboot of the franchise. Much criticism went to the addition of the multiplayer which many felt was unnecessary. Tomb Raider went on to sell one million copies in forty-eight hours of its release, and has sold 3.4 million copies worldwide so far.

We use the ULTIMATE profile shown above and test at 1920×1080.

Smooth frame rates throughout, never dropping below the sweet spot of 30. The HD7850 by comparison drops an additional couple of frames per second at these settings.Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. 4A Games’ proprietary 4A Engine is capable of rendering breathtaking vistas, such as those showing the ruined remnants of Moscow, as well as immersive indoor areas that play with light and shadow, creating hauntingly beautiful scenes akin to those from modern-day photos of Pripyat’s abandoned factories and schools.

We test this game with the built in benchmark with very high quality settings at 1920×1080 – details shown in the image above.

This is a very intensive benchmark, as indicated by the minimum frame rates. That said, the Dual X R9 270 manages to outperform the HD7850, although it falls around 3 frames per second behind the HD7870 Tahiti LE.Grid 2 is the sequel to the racing video game Race Driver: Grid. It was developed and published by Codemasters. The game includes numerous real world locations such as Paris, numerous United States locations, and many more, and also includes motor vehicles spanning four decades. In addition, it includes a new handling system that developer Codemasters has dubbed ‘TrueFeel’, which aims to hit a sweet spot between realism and accessibility.

We test at 1920×1080 with the Ultra image quality preset, as shown above. 8x MSAA was enabled to improve image quality.

GRID 2 runs well on all the hardware today, although the new Sapphire Dual X R9 270 clearly has a performance edge over the HD7850, averaging around 8 frames per second more.
Splinter Cell Blacklist is the sixth installment in the series.

The game begins with Sam Fisher and his old friend Victor Coste who are about to depart from Andersen AFB in Guam when an unknown enemy force destroys the entire base.

Assisted by hacker specialist Charlie Cole, Sam and Vic manage to escape, although Vic is injured after protecting Sam from a grenade. Soon after, a terrorist group calling itself “The Engineers” assumes responsibility for the attack and announce that it was the first of a deadly countdown of escalating attacks (called “The Blacklist”) on United States assets, declaring that they will halt the attacks only after the U.S. government accomplish the demand of calling back all American troops deployed abroad.

We test with a series of high image quality settings as shown above and with 4x MSAA and 16 x Anisotropic filtering enabled.

The HD7850 struggles to maintain solid frame rates in this engine at these settings. The Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 on the other hand maintains a 25+ frame rate at all times.
The tests were performed in a controlled air conditioned room with temperatures maintained at a constant 24c – a comfortable environment for the majority of people reading this. Idle temperatures were measured after sitting at the desktop for 30 minutes.Load measurements were acquired by playing Crysis Warhead for 30 minutes and measuring the peak temperature. We also have included Furmark results, recording maximum temperatures throughout a 30 minute stress test. All fan settings were left on automatic.


The Dual-X cooler performs well, hitting around 62c under gaming load, and peaking further to 67 under the synthetic Furmark stress test. The cooler doesn't score quite as well as the Direct CU II TOP featured on the faster R9 270X.
We have built a system inside a Lian Li chassis with no case fans and have used a fanless cooler on our CPU. The motherboard is also passively cooled. This gives us a build with almost completely passive cooling and it means we can measure noise of just the graphics card inside the system when we run looped 3dMark tests.

We measure from a distance of around 1 meter from the closed chassis and 4 foot from the ground to mirror a real world situation. Ambient noise in the room measures close to the limits of our sound meter at 28dBa.

Why do this? Well this means we can eliminate secondary noise pollution in the test room and concentrate on only the video card. It also brings us slightly closer to industry standards, such as DIN 45635.

KitGuru noise guide

10dBA – Normal Breathing/Rustling Leaves
20-25dBA – Whisper
30dBA – High Quality Computer fan
40dBA – A Bubbling Brook, or a Refrigerator
50dBA – Normal Conversation
60dBA – Laughter
70dBA – Vacuum Cleaner or Hairdryer
80dBA – City Traffic or a Garbage Disposal
90dBA – Motorcycle or Lawnmower
100dBA – MP3 player at maximum output
110dBA – Orchestra
120dBA – Front row rock concert/Jet Engine
130dBA – Threshold of Pain
140dBA – Military Jet takeoff/Gunshot (close range)
160dBA – Instant Perforation of eardrum

The Dual-X cooler is quiet under gaming load, although audible. Not the greatest result from Sapphire based on previous results, but it is still a good cooler with modest noise emissions. When idle the fans rest at 1,200 rpm. This rises to around 2,200 rpm when gaming and 2,500 rpm in Furmark.
To test power consumption today we are using a Keithley Integra unit and we measure power consumption from the VGA card inputs, not the system wide drain. We measure results while gaming in Crysis Warhead and the synthetic stress test Furmark and record both results.

The card takes around the same power as the HD7850 consuming around 120 watts when gaming.
To overclock today we are using Catalyst Control Center.


We managed to get just over 10% more out of the core, peaking at 1,045 mhz before minor artifacting would occur. The memory stability peaked at 1,485mhz (just under 6Gbps effective).


The additional manual overclock helps push the Dual-X R9 270 into the same scoring zone as the HD7870 Tahiti LE, scoring between 7,800 and 7,900 points.
The AMD R9 270 is set to replace the long standing HD7850 at the lower end of the enthusiast gaming market. As our results show today, the new R9 270 is markedly faster than the older solution.

We didn't get a reference card to review, focusing today on several partner cards, products you can actually buy. The Sapphire Dual-X R9 270 is an excellent card, supplied in a modestly overclocked state, with a custom cooling solution.

As always, the Sapphire cooler is very impressive, holding a low level of noise while maintaining temperatures in the low 60's under gaming load. It isn't quite as quiet as some of the Sapphire coolers we have tested in the last year, but noise levels are still low enough to be barely audible in a chassis with several fans installed.

The power consumption of the new R9 270 is similar to the previous HD7850, so AMD have managed to create a more powerful model while holding a similar power envelope – this is certainly a point worth making.

Overclocking potential of the R9 270 core seems strong. We managed to increase the speed by around 10% (100mhz), to 1,045mhz. This will help increase the average frame rate a little in the latest Direct X 11 titles and performance at 1080p is already generally very impressive. Most of the games we tested today held above 25 frames per second at 1920×1080 with image quality settings maxed.

Pricing of this Sapphire model has yet to be confirmed although AMD have confirmed that the reference model will cost $179 or 134 euros. UK pricing is likely to be around £130 inc vat, similar to the prices of the HD7850. At this price it is a very welcome addition to the new AMD R9 range. We would expect this Sapphire Dual-X version to ship with a small premium.

Pros:

• Excellent custom cooler.
• low noise levels.
• good performance for the price.
• will power many Direct X 11 titles at 1080p with high image quality settings.

Cons:

• Not the quietest Sapphire cooler we have tested.

Kitguru says: An excellent card from Sapphire and an ideal graphics card for gamers on a tighter budget who own a 1080p panel.

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