AMD’s R9 270 graphics card is arguably the single most important GPU release of this year from AMD. It offers a never before seen level of performance at its $179 price point, more or less totally beating Nvidia’s GTX 660 – especially when overclocking comes into play. The reason it is so important is because, despite all the media hype, the sub $200 price point is where the vast majority of graphics cards are bought – the R9 270 is going to be very important for AMD’s competitiveness.Today we have another one of those important R9 270 GPUs and the one we have is from renowned AMD partner Sapphire Technology. This is only the second AMD R9 270 to come through the doors here at eTeknix, for those who follow our reviews you may have already read the launch-day review of the ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II OC graphics card we produced. Sapphire’s R9 270 variant is quite different to the ASUS model we reviewed in that this will be hitting the UK shelves at £135, 10% less than the ASUS model which fetches £150. That said we can see what Sapphire are doing – producing a super-aggressively priced R9 270 to target the masses. Yet this graphics card doesn’t skimp on a lot because for its highly affordable pricing you still get a custom cooler and a factory overclock of 945MHz core, up from 925MHz stock.



Link: eTeknix