MSI R9 270x Gaming Review

[section_title title=Conclusion]

Conclusion

So here we are. once again it’s time for the conclusion. Its time to see how this card got on, against the HIS 270x review that Brendan previously reviewed. Has it got anything more to offer than the HIS offering or will it be relegated to mediocrity? Well lets start with the main aspect of any graphics card, the performance.

As with the HIS 270x, the performance of this card cannot be questioned, more so when you consider it is coming in at around the £150 price tag and now MSI have started to bundle Battlefield 4 with the card, making the card an even better value. In our bench marks the card was able to provide smooth, playable frames in most games. The only time it really started to struggle was when you start to max out the settings. Though, even though it is not in our results, I ran a benchmark on Tomb Raider on Ultra settings and it averaged at 66 FPS.  Admittedly Tomb Raider is optimised for AMD graphics cards, but on a single card, this is still an impressive feat. The imminent release of next-gen titles, such as Watch Dogs, and the improvements to graphics and lighting effects may prove a little too much for this card to handle, as many of us expect PC to take a leap up with the introduction of more powerful consoles, but this remains to be seen, so for now, this card is easily worth its price tag for what is available now.

As with most of the 270x cards currently on the market, it does come voltage locked, which obviously limited the overclocking potential of the card. With that being said. It was still possible to obtain a 100MHz overclock on the GPU core and a 65MHz overclock on the VRAM, almost identical to that obtained by the HIS card so there’s not really that big of a loss unless one was really concerned about bench scores.

Moving on to the cooler. The only word I can use to describe it is superb. Throughout testing and in general use, it was entirely inaudible over the CPU cooler that was running, and even that barely ramped up on the tests. I would go as far as to say that MSI’s design is by far one of the quietest coolers on a graphics card that I have ever had the pleasure of using. Cooling performance was good too. Under benchmarking conditions it ran at just under 60 degrees and the fan speeds were always below 50%. This does make me think what do you actually need to do to make this cooler’s fans ramp up!

The aesthetics of this card are also superb in my eyes. As with a lot of the MSI gaming series, they bear a lot of similarities to each other. Whether this be with the packaging, branding or the cooler design. The vast majority of them use the same revision of the Twin Frozr cooler, and when we see how good it is, its hard to see why MSI would want to try something else. The PCB is not quite black, but isn’t far off, and in general case use, will look black. Along the cooler itself we have the black and red theme, which is naturally going to sit well with ASUS ROG branded motherboards, as well as MSI’s own gaming range. As pointed out earlier in the review. When compared to the PCB of the HIS 270X, the MSI card is totally custom. This may prove to be a stumbling block for people wanting to water cool the graphics card. This also makes the card a lot wider too. Anyone who read my BitFenix Prodigy review will see that the 270X fouled the clip at the top of the hard drive cages by about 3mm so the whole cage had to be removed. This would not have happened with the reference cards as they are ever so slightly less wide than the custom cards. To be fair this is a minor complaint and hardly a concern unless space is very tight.

In conclusion, anyone looking to spend £150 for a graphics card would do well to take a serious look at the offering from MSI. Being one of the cheaper 270X on the market, and performing well, it offers brilliant bang for buck, and whilst it will never out perform the cards above it in the range, mainly due to being voltage locked, its overall performance and cooling power speaks for itself. I feel that this card from MSI is fully deserving of the Design and Value awards.

I would like to thank MSI for sending me the R9 270X Gaming sample for review.