MSI R9 270X HAWK Pro Reviews

If you're looking for a high quality R9 270X, don't mind spending a little bit extra, and would like to dabble with Overclocking, there really isn't an option better than the HAWK based version from MSI. It's just a quality video card.

AMD's new Radeon R9 270X is essentially a rebranded HD 7870 GHz Edition running higher clock speeds, but with the same features otherwise. MSI has taken this proven concept and slapped their latest TwinFrozr IV cooler onto it, overclocking the card by an extra 90 MHz. As result, we see the R9 270 HAWK 4% faster than the reference R9 270X, which let the card beat the HD 7950 by 2%. Compared to NVIDIA's offerings, we see the card a tiny bit slower than the GTX 660 Ti (-1%) and a few percent behind the GTX 760 (-7%). It would have been nice if MSI had also overclocked the memory chips for an extra performance boost. Our manual overclocking tests show that this is certainly possible. I really like the thermal solution on the MSI R9 270X HAWK. It is essentially the same cooler as on the R9 280X GAMING, but with slightly smaller fans, which means the cooler has lots of power to spare. For you, this results in absolutely the lowest noise levels at still comfortable temperatures. I can not stress how quiet this card is enough. When installed in a case that has any other actively cooled components, you won't hear the card from the outside, no matter whether you are being productive or gaming heavily. This is the quietest AMD-based card I've seen in a long time—good job MSI! .. and thanks for the nice backplate!

The display flexibility seen on this card is a win for the AMD camp. Hooking up a three-monitor Eyefinity setup was a piece of cake, with the ability to finally use any of the four display outputs to connect to the display panels. In the past, this required special cards or active adapters to have all three panels live and ready for use in a 3x1 configuration. Using any combination of the four display outputs resulted in a single large surface once I configured the Eyefinity panel in the Catalyst Control Center. At the end of the day, you have to figure out if the benefits of the MSI R9 270X are worth the $219 price point. As far as gaming prowess is concerned, it is faster than its direct competitor, the GTX 660, but the price drops recently revealed by the green camp make the comparison more challenging when you are sticking with a 1920x1080 resolution. Compared to the HD 7870 GHz edition, the R9 270X is faster in each and every game, even when comparing factory-overclocked editions head to head. Pricing may be a wash, as you can find an HD 7870 GHz edition for as low as $150 after rebates, so again it's a tough choice to make when we are talking a 5 FPS max margin. When you look at the feature set on MSI's R9 270X, it has an excellent feature set for long term usage by the mainstream user. It is cool running and quiet with good looks to boot. At 1920x1080, it delivers gaming performance at moderately high settings and comes with a warranty should anything go wrong.