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.
At first we would like to thank AMD Canada for offering a sample of the ASUS R9 270 Direct CU II OC 2GB video card for testing and reviewing.
“ASUS takes its name from Pegasus, the winged horse in Greek mythology that symbolizes wisdom and knowledge. ASUS embodies the strength, purity, and adventurous spirit of this fantastic creature, and soars to new heights with each new product it creates.
Taiwan’s Information Technology industry has grown enormously over the last few decades and the country is now a dominant force in the global market. ASUS has long been at the forefront of this growth and while the company started life as a humble motherboard manufacturer with just a handful of employees, it is now the leading technology company in Taiwan with over 12,500 employees worldwide. ASUS makes products in almost every area of Information Technology too, including PC components, peripherals, notebooks, tablets, servers and smartphones.
Innovation is key to the success of ASUS. Having unveiled the PadFone to a rapturous audience at Computex 2011, this year, ASUS chairman Jonney Shih raised the bar once more by announcing the TAICHI™ and Transformer Book dual-purpose ultraportables.
ASUS TAICHI™ is an Ultrabook™ with a unique double-sided multi-touch display that allows it to switch between a tablet and notebook in an instant, simply by lifting its lid. Transformer Book is a convertible Ultrabook that is both a notebook with hard drive and storage and a multi-touch SSD tablet, thanks to its backlit keyboard dock.
Together with its exciting new range of Windows RT and Windows 8 tablets, ASUS has a dazzling array of innovative products that will surpass users’ imaginations as the world enters a new era of cloud computing.
This visionary approach is the reason ASUS is able to bring high-quality innovation and design to all, and the reason for its widespread acclaim. ASUS products won 4,256 international awards and accolades in 2013 – that’s over 11 a day, every day. ASUS has consistently achieved significant year-on-year growth in terms of consumer notebook units shipped too, and closed 2011 on a high with revenues hitting US$11.9 billion.”
DirectCU II
20% cooler and 3X quieter
Flattened copper heatpipes make direct contact with GPU surfaces so heat is dissipated more efficiently, delivering 20% cooler, 3X quieter performance and 6X greater airflow than reference.
975 MHz Boost Clock
975 MHz Boost clock for better performance and outstanding gaming experience.
Super Alloy Power
Enhanced durability and cooling
Exclusively-formulated alloy components boost performance by reducing power loss, enhancing durability, and achieving cooler operation. Choke concrete cores eliminate buzzing sound under full load while capacitors assure a 50,000-hour lifespan: equivalent to 2.5 times longer than traditional capacitors.
ASUS GPU Tweak Utility
Real-time Graphics Tuning and Live Streaming
Shows detailed specs and actual card status with GPU-Z
Sync GPU clocks and voltages for easier overclocking
Monitoring widget provides real-time detailed multi-parameter info
Automatically checks and updates drivers and BIOS versions
Stream on-screen action to the web in full HD, with just a click
Set your own headline for the streaming window
2GB GDDR5 Memory
On-board memory for the best gaming experience & the best resolution 2GB GDDR5 Memory
Graphics GPU Features
Powered by AMD Radeon™ R9 270
AMD Eyefinity™Technology
Extend the view across up to 6displays to immerse yourself ingameplay and entertainment
CrossFire X Support
Multi-GPU technology for extreme performance.
AMD HD3D
Immerse in stereoscopic 3D gaming and get up close and personal with your favorite stars while watching Blu-ray 3D. AMD HD3D is also designed for professionals who create complex visual effects and detailed data visualizations.
PCI Express 3.0
Delivers double the bandwidth per lane of PCIe 2.0 for faster GPU-CPU communication.
Microsoft DirectX 11.2
Brings new levels of visual realism to gaming on the PC and get top-notch performance.
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:
The card comes with a well-built two-slot and dual-fan cooling solution; the top plastic shroud has a red/black color scheme and the two large heatpipes travel from the GPU plate to the top heatsink fins for a more efficient heat dissipation:
Extra power needs to be supplied from a single 6-pin PCI-Express slot:
For pairing with a second card, we have available one CrossFire finger:
On the bottom side we will get to see some factory stickers; the cooling system exceeds the length of the PCB only by a little bit:
The I/O includes two DVI ports, one HDMI but also one DisplayPort:
Unlike all the cards we have checked out in the past, in the vicinity of the PCI-Express connector there are two LEDs, the green one lighting up if the card operates in good conditions:
In order to uninstall the cooling system, we will have to remove the four screws around the GPU, which are provided with screws and washers:
The GPU plate on this board features a direct heatpipe contact design so it will make use of more thermal compound in order to fill the gap between the two pipes:
The Pitcairn GPU is surrounded by 8 memory chips but also by the main VRM component on the left side:
ASUS has used choke concrete cores which eliminate buzzing sound under full load, while the capacitors are rated for a 50000-hour lifespan:
The GPU is produced on the 28nm lithography by TSMC, while the transistor count is 2.8 billion:
The VRM controller is rebranded by ASUS as Hybrid Digi+ VRM:
The memory chips are manufactured by Elpida and come with the model number W2032BBBG-6A-F. The rated speed of this product code is 1500MHz (6000MHz effective):
Both fans take up juice and are controlled via a 4-pin connector which is located on the lower right portion of the PCB:
A closer look on the bottom side of the cooling system is revealing its complexity; an additional thermal pad is used in order for the memory chips not to make direct contact with the heatpipes:
CPU: Intel I5 3570K Retail @ 4.7GHz
CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14
Motherboard: ASRock Z77 OC
RAM: GeIL Black Dragon 2x4GB DDR2133 (@1600)
Video: Currently reviewed card
Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W
SSD: OCZ Vertex 3 240GB
Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840
With the help of the GPU-Z 0.7.8 utility, we could extract lots of information regarding the video card clocks,memory type, pixel and texture fill rate and so on:
To receive more in-depth information regarding the GPU, we have used the AIDA64 utility:
From the manufacturers’ website we will be able to download the latest verison of ASUS GPU Tweak monitoring and overclocking utility. The software has multiple sections like Tuning, Live Update, Settings or GPU Info. Multiple profiles can be also defined as preferred:
The monitoring window will show us the current GPU Temperature, GPU Usage, GPU Fan Duty, GPU Fan Speed but also current GPU Clock:
If needed, we can access the Live Update section in order to check if newer software is available for download:
The Settings tab contains multiple options which we can set:
A skinned GPU-Z is also available, bundled with GPU Tweak, which allows us to see if the overclocking settings have been correctly applied:
For finding out the temperatures in both IDLE and Full Load with the fan set on Auto, we left the computer IDLE for about 25 minutes and then started monitoring with HWINFO64 and logged the values obtained while running Heaven 4.0 at the 2560x1440 (system) resolution for an additional 40 to 50 minutes, with details at Maximum and Tesselation set to Extreme. During this time, the ambient temperature was held steady at 23.7 degrees Celsius:
Before measuring out the noise the video card was producing, we have first measured the noise inside the room the tests took place and we found out it was 28.7 dBA (with everything turned off).
At all times, the sound meter was placed 20cm near the video card.
The GPU fan was controlled by the latest version of the HIS iTurbo utility:
As expected, the card has given us a good impression, beginning with the build quality, cooler efficiency and ending with the overclocking potential. The ASUS R9 270 features overclocked speeds from the factory (however, only the GPU speeds are modified, while memory remains at stock) and considering that the hardware is pretty much identical to the 270X, we should expect similar performances. While using GPU Tweak, we were able to max-out the sliders and at the reached speeds there were no signs of instability or memory artifacts:
This is our first experience with an ASUS card and their DirectCU II cooling system and after the Unigine Heaven stress tests we have only seen a maximum temperature of 67 degrees Celsius, which was recorded over 30 minutes of full load. The fans have reached 2204RPM at this load level which means about 34.3 dBA, still acceptable inside a gaming case.
With the obtained results during testing, we would recommend this card for resolutions up to Full-HD; when at 1920x1080, in some cases we may need to adjust the detail levels in order to receive a fluent gaming experience.
The ASUS R9 270 DirectCU II VGA card can be found online for about 141 Euros.
We would like to thank AMD Canada for making this review possible!