ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II OC 2 GB Video Card Review

Videocards/VGA Reviews by stefan @ 2014-08-04

The ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II VGA card shares the hardware with the more expensive 270X variant, but has lower stock clocks; from our experiences regarding overclocking with this card, we could say that it can easy surpass the R9 270X clocks or ever surpass it. Those who search the best bang for the buck VGA cards and won’t game on higher resolutions than Full-HD should put this card on their short list.

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Packaging, A Closer Look

Back in 2013 we have checked out the R9 270X IceQ X2 Turbo Boost 2GB card from HIS which performed quite well, trading punches with the GTX 760. We were expecting to see the ASUS R9 270 to sport a different core architecture but in fact it is the same core (probably binned differently), while sporting lower core speeds. Again, back in 2013, the Curacao GPU code name was thought to be used for the 270/270X cards but this didn’t materialize in the end since the architecture is a rebrand of the Pitcairn core and to be more exact the Radeon HD 7870. Again, we are dealing with 1280 shader units, 32ROPs, 2800M transistors and 2GB of memory on a 256bit memory bus.

 

The card is shipped inside a medium-sized box, which advertises the innovative cooling system from ASUS but some other features, which are represented as small pictograms:

 

 

 

The Recommended System Requirements are posted on one of the laterals, in multiple languages:

 

 

 

If we want to find out more details regarding the product features (DirectCU II, Supper Alloy Power, GPU Tweak), but also regarding the outputs, we will have to look on the bottom side:

 

 

 

The card, along with its bundle is stored in molded foam for additional protection:

 

 

 

We will receive one DVI-to-VGA adapter but also one CrossFire bridge:

 

 

 

The driver and utility disk along with the documentation are also supplied:

 

 

 

 

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Comment from Casecutter @ 2014/08/14
Great review! Nice detail in pictures and overview, always like to see what you’d be getting. While nice to see this level of card ran on a i5 system. Sure an i7 (Hyper Threading) doesn’t make a huge difference, it’s just nice for mainstream folks builds running mainstream cards. Not sure I find the noise result all that beneficial as you don’t state the idle or gameplay dBA, so not sure if that translates to useful information. Perhaps provide that you never notice the fan speed above XXX. Have a look a the text in the noise it says “GPU fan was controlled by the latest version of the HIS iTurbo utility”.

Great that you give the B-M results with varying settings and resolutions, doing so does shows how perhaps spending more for a card can prove advantageous, while might not depending on titles someone plays. Could say the title list is a little Nvidia intrinsic, and some not all that relevant. Would like to see BF4, Assassin's Creed, and COH2. Honestly I was surprised of the 270 in many cases at 1080p the gap when the AA levels where brought up didn’t skew super out of bounds. I would’ve though the processing of the GTX 760 should’ve really been an advantage.

One thing folks should be made thoroughly conscious of… is the Inno3D GeForce GTX 760 iChill HerculeZ 3000 Edition, is no slouch of a card it’s a 3-slot, 3-fan beast. OC’d at 1059Mhz, a Boost clock of 1124 Mhz (9%), while the memory is a little tweaked as well at 6210 Mhz. It’s is the Top-Shelf purchase for the utmost mainstream buyer, calling for 50% more cash (verse the Asus) to step-up to a card of such “class”. Be mindful this modestly OC (5-6%) Asus 270, which is ranked two entire reductions in “class” for both price and power (1x 6-pin); to even “stay close” to such a card is a huge accomplishment. An R9 270 is more often reliable step up from “entry” into mainstream. Would’ve like to have seen a GTX750 Ti in the results, because that’s what Nvidia has in the mix as more the rival to that R9 270.

I would’ve enjoyed seeing the Asus B-M with the OC of 1100Mhz and 6000mhz, that’s where the bang-for-buck is truly the narrative. The other would’ve been power numbers, nothing extra ordinary just even a kill-o-watt showing idle, while gaming of one or two titles (even OC’d), and perhaps run in “long-idle monitor-off state” to see what AMD’s Zerocore delivers.

Edit: Have been waiting for the forums account to get validated to post this. I see you have the Gigabyte 750Ti Ultra Durable BLACK review up now that should make a great assessment..
Comment from Stefan Mileschin @ 2014/08/15
I would like to respond to the request regarding BF4 & Co benchmarks: I do not use such games since they do not offer official benchmarking tools and I find user-made time-demos non-conclusive.

Also, re-benching the card for over 23 hours in Overclocking mode seems a little bit inconclusive also because there is no guarantee that all retails cards get to the same frequencies.
Comment from Casecutter @ 2014/08/15
True and reasonable Thanks'
Cc

 

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