Over the past couple of months, we have published several articles from the “Surviving the Bottom” series at once, where we considered the most affordable graphics adapters for ultra-budget systems. In general, it is possible to sit out the mining boom on them, but as we found out, none of the tested cards can provide acceptable performance at 1080p. With such models, you can only rely on 720p. Therefore, in this article, we decided to conduct a study of the performance of a graphics card that still boasts a good frame rendering speed in native 1080p resolution.

In this article, we overclocked and tested the Radeon R9 270X in 24 games.

Before starting the review of the card, I’ll allow myself a small remark: the Radeon R9 270X is literally a slightly overclocked HD 7870 (tests of which are already on our website). The main difference between the cards is the base frequency of the video memory: 5600 MHz versus 4800 MHz. But the GPU frequencies in most HD 7870 models are often slightly higher than in the more recent R9 270X.

Graphics card

The XFX R9-270X-CDFC graphics adapter has a dual-slot design and a unique PCB design using high-quality components. The length of the card is 250 mm, standard for devices of this class, but the width is as much as 115 mm. Thus, this adapter may not fit into non-standard narrow cases.

The card is powered by two 6-pin auxiliary power connectors. This means that in practice its power consumption should not exceed 225 watts. And according to AMD’s official specifications, the R9 270X consumes up to 180 watts, so there’s headroom for further overclocking.

The graphics card’s GPU is cooled by a large aluminum radiator pierced by four heat pipes, as well as two 86mm fans. An aluminum plate is responsible for cooling the video memory and the power subsystem in this video adapter, which should have a positive effect on the overclocking potential of GDDR5 chips and the lifespan of DRMOS assemblies.

Board and power system

The XFX R9-270X-CDFC model received a very good power supply subsystem for the GPU and video memory (especially for a mid-range device). It is built according to the 5 + 2 formula (5 phases for GPU power and 2 phases for GDDR5).

The power circuit uses 5 DrMOS of the DE04AH series, which are controlled by the CHIL CHL8225G PWM controller:

The R9 270X BIOS chip is a 2 Mbit (256 KB) Pm25LD020 CE1309 ROM:

GPU and memory

As for the GPU, the R9 270X received a full version of the 28nm Curacao XT chip in a configuration of 32 render units, 80 texture units and 1280 stream processors.

Specifically, in our case, Curacao XT 215-0848004 is soldered on the board:

Together with the Curacao XT chip, 2048MB of GDDR5 video memory with a 256-bit interface is used, recruited by eight 2-gigabit (256-megabyte) Hynix chips marked H5GQ2H24AFR:

The base frequency of these microcircuits is 6000 MHz, however, in the case of the R9 270X, the manufacturer set the speed at around 5600 MHz, which, in theory, allows you to count on a good overclocking potential of video memory.

According to AMD’s factory specifications, the Radeon R9 270X should run at 1050MHz for the GPU at 1.200V and 5600MHz for the GDDR5 video memory. And the XFX sample presented in this article fully complies with AMD recommendations:

The GPU-z and MSI Afterburner utilities confirm all the above characteristics, adding to them the information about the support of R9 270X technologies such as OpenCL, OpenGL 4.6, as well as DirectX 11. The DirectX 12 API is officially supported, but only in iteration 11_1. Unfortunately, this feature prevents the R9 270X from launching projects like Death Stranding and DiRT 5.

Test setup:

  • Processor — Xeon E5-2620 v3@3200MHz (unlocked Turbo Boost frequency);
  • Graphics card — XFX Radeon R9 270X Double D;
  • Motherboard — Kllisre X99-D8 (AD12) with modified bios to unlock full turbo boost frequency;
  • RAM — G.SKILL DDR4@1866MHz 4 x 4GB F4-2400C15S-4GNT sticks, totaling 16GB (timings: 10-10-10-24);
  • SSD — KINGSTON 120GB SA400S37120G;
  • HDD — Seagate 2TB ST2000DM008-2FR102;
  • Power supply — Chieftec GPS-1250C.

Testing the Radeon R9 270X graphics card in 24 games:

Apex Legends

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

Over six matches, the average FPS in Apex Legends was 60, and rare events did not drop below 45. However, it is worth noting that once we caught a hard drawdown to 30 FPS. But even with that in mind, the R9 270X handles Apex Legends pretty well.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is significantly worse than Apex on the R9 270X, but it’s a single-player game, so 44 FPS is an extremely decent result for an 8-year-old graphics adapter.

By the way, the last part of the Assassin’s Creed franchise with the subtitle “Valhala” never launched on the R9 270X, complaining about the lack of DirectX 12 API support for the video adapter.

Battlefield V

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

For the fifth part of the legendary multiplayer shooter Battlefield, the performance margin of the R9 270X video card is more than enough: the game gives out an average of 66 FPS, and the minimum does not fall below 41. Of course, one cannot help but notice that rare events slightly spoil the overall picture, nevertheless, keep in mind that BF5 is a game with huge open maps, which means that the influence of the test drive on the final result of rare events cannot be completely ruled out.

Control

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

The Radeon R9 270X will allow its owner to pass Control without any problems. Sam Lake’s creation is perfectly optimized: 57FPS on average and even rare events do not fall below 46.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Maximum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080, anti-aliasing MSAA X2.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive impresses with its optimization. The R9 270X averages 117 FPS at max settings, which is an amazing result!

Cyberpunk 2077 [1.23]

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1280×720.

But in order to get the minimum comfortable level of performance in Cyberpunk 2077 on the R9 270X, we had to reduce the resolution to 720p. However, even so, the card still could not render above 35 frames.

These are not particularly impressive figures, however, at such a frame rate, playing Cyberpunk 2077 on a gamepad is quite realistic, but with classic PC manipulators, the control suffers from poor responsiveness, and one might even say it seems “jelly”.

Days Gone

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

What can not be said about Days Gone. The R9 270X handles this game with almost no problems. The only thing worth noting is the extremely poor texture quality at low graphics settings.

Destiny 2: Beyond Light

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

Tracking all the behaviors of the player in the MMOFPS Destiny 2: Beyond Light is almost impossible, however, in our test segment, the R9 270X had no problems with the game. On average, the AMD card was able to show 72 FPS with rare drops to 67.

Destroy All Humans

High graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

In Destroy All Humans R9 270X feels like a “fish in the water” Moreover, the graphics card was able to master the high settings!

DiRT 4

High graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

Unfortunately, the R9 270X was unable to run the latest version of the racing simulator “DiRT 5”. As we wrote earlier, this graphics adapter lacks full support for the DirectX 12 API, which is necessary for the fifth part of the racing franchise to work. As for the previous part of “DiRT 4”, the Radeon R9 270X handles this game at high graphics settings and averages 69 frames per second.

Dota 2

High graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

At high settings, the R9 270X handles Dota 2 without much difficulty, but if for some reason you need more than 87 FPS, then moving the slider to medium settings can get you a little less than 150 FPS.

Far Cry 5

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

Far Cry 5 is one of the most optimized games of the last generation. Here the R9 270X has an average FPS of around 55, and that’s about the same rate that will haunt you throughout the game. Which is a good result and will allow a non-choosy gamer to go through the game from start to finish.

Far Cry New Dawn

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

Here the R9 270X also does its job very well.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1280×720.

Next in line is the second game from the test package in which the R9 270X could not provide a decent frame rate at 1080p and we had to go down to 720p. In such a situation, the bench card is able to draw an average of 50 frames per second.

Mafia: Definitive Edition

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

The R9 270X handles Mafia: Definitive Edition a little worse. Here the card managed to demonstrate only 39 FPS with rare drops to 27.

Nioh 2

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

If you are the owner or potential buyer of the R9 270X, then you don’t have to worry – you can effectively fight monsters and humanoids in the soul-like action game Nioh 2 without any problems. But, only at the minimum graphics quality settings.

OUTRIDERS

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1280×720.

The third game that the R9 270X couldn’t handle in FullHD is OUTRIDERS. This MMOTPS will have to settle for 720p resolution and low graphics settings. However, the FPS is quite high: the average frame rate is 63, the minimum FPS is around 37, and rare events did not fall below 19 frames.

eFootball PES 2021

High graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

eFootball PES 2021 shows the opposite picture. Here the R9 270X was able to hit an impressive 80 fps at high graphics settings. This is an amazing result!

Red Dead Redemption 2

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1600×900.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is completely unplayable at 1080p, however, to get a more or less acceptable frame rate this time, we did not have to reduce the resolution to 720p. We limited ourselves to 900p and the average FPS reached 42, while the rare events did not drop below 33.

Resident Evil Village

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

The last part of Resident Evil subtitled “Village”, is extremely unstable on the R9 270X. In general, the game demonstrates about 36 FPS, however, during a half-hour test it turned out that in some places (the hall of Lady Dimitrescu’s castle), the number of frames per second can drop below 25.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

What can not be said about The Division 2. In the creation of Ubisoft, the R9 270X graphics card does not experience any problems: 65 PFS on average and 50 rare events – an excellent result!

Watch_Dogs 2

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

Watch_Dogs 2 also runs great on the R9 270X, averaging 58 frames per second.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Minimum graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

The results of the R9 270X in the third part of The Witcher actually completely repeat the results of Watch_Dogs 2. Here, too, the average FPS was 58.

World of Tanks

A pre-prepared replay was used as a benchmark: Erlenberg map, Assault mode. High graphics settings, resolution 1920×1080.

The Radeon R9 270X shows even more impressive results in World of Tanks. The Wargaming project is stable, and the average frame rate is at around 112 FPS.

Overclocking Radeon R9 270X

Unfortunately, XFX R9-270X-CDFC does not support soft volt-mod. Thus, in experiments with overclocking, we had to be content with the base voltage, which is set at around 1.200 volts.

We managed to overclock our copy of the XFX R9-270X-CDFC graphics card to a modest 1156 MHz on the GPU (most cards take ~ 1200 MHz) and to a solid 6216 MHz on the GDDR5 video memory:

10% increase in GPU frequencies and 11% increase in GDDR5 frequencies.

Considering that the supply voltage remained at base values, the temperature of the video card practically did not increase.

Now let’s check how much the performance of the Radeon R9 270X will increase after a relatively good overclock.

Radeon R9 270X at base and overclocked

Destiny 2

Average FPSMin FPSVery rare events
Radeon R9 270X7267
Radeon R9 270X OC7571

In Destiny 2, overclocking the R9 270X resulted in a performance gain of only 4%.

DiRT 4

Average FPSMin FPSVery rare events
Radeon R9 270X 69 5757
Radeon R9 270X OC796261

But DiRT 4 reacted to the overclocking of the card with a 15% increase in frame rate. An extremely good increase in performance, especially considering that all the voltages of the graphics adapter remained at factory levels.

Far Cry 5

Average FPSMin FPSVery rare events
Radeon R9 270X554747
Radeon R9 270X OC595050

In Far Cry 5, the increase in FPS from overclocking was a modest 7%. This is certainly more than in Destiny 2, but frankly, not very impressive.

Far Cry New Dawn

Average FPSMin FPSVery rare events
Radeon R9 270X574746
Radeon R9 270X OC605150

Far Cry New Dawn responded with only a 5% increase in FPS. Not much.

Horizon Zero Dawn

Average FPSMin FPSVery rare events
Radeon R9 270X504039
Radeon R9 270X OC554544

Horizon Zero Dawn has somewhat restored faith in the effective overclocking of the R9 270X card. Here, overclocking brought a significant 10% of the final performance.

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2

Average FPSMin FPSVery rare events
Radeon R9 270X655450
Radeon R9 270X OC715754

Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 reacted approximately the same way to forcing the graphics adapter: 9% increase in frame rate.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Average FPSMin FPSVery rare events
Radeon R9 270X585347
Radeon R9 270X OC635850

And a slightly smaller, 8% increase was noted by The Witcher 3. Not bad enough, although far from what we expected.

Conclusion

The 8-year-old AMD Radeon R9 270X graphics adapter is still capable of delivering acceptable FPS in native 1080p resolution in the vast majority of games. But this is not all the achievement of the hero of today’s material. Even in the recent Cyberpunk 2077 hit, the R9 270X was able to squeeze into the minimally comfortable FPS and handled the game at 720p.

However, we hasten to warn you again that graphics adapters like the Radeon R9 270X (the same HD 7850/7870) are quite difficult to find in really working condition. In the vast majority, these cards have already been warmed up or restored, which does not allow us to seriously recommend them for purchase.

If you still decide to buy, then carefully check the graphics card for flux leaking from under the GPU / GDDR5 and other traces of warming up or repair.

However, remember that we only provided food for thought, and decide whether it is worth it.

Thank you for your attention!

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