It is easy to get carried away with the euphoria and excitement when a new family of graphics cards are unleashed to the public. Mindful of this fact we set out to give you, the reader, an honest and objective appraisal of this particular graphics card. Suffice to say, it has its good and not so good points.

The R9 270X is aimed squarely at the mid-range sector. AMD themselves are comparing the R9 270X to the NVIDIA GTX660 which weighs in at the same price. In that comparison the AMD card is a clear winner. Compare it against the NVIDIA mid range card, the GTX760 and the results are less than favourable towards AMD. The GTX760 is however more expensive so if we are comparing on a price vs. price and not simply the equivalent card, we would herald the AMD R9 270X a success. As far as release date prices go, the R9 270X is something of a bargain. At the time of going to press we had not got a definite price other than $199 which as history tells us, cannot directly be converted to pounds. We estimate however that you can expect to pay between £135 and £150 for a reference model and around £180 for a custom cooled model making the R9 270X great value for money.

It would however, be foolish to compare release date prices without taking into consideration current market prices. The recent price drops to the HD79XX series have made them the current 'bang per buck' card of choice. Specifically the outgoing HD7950 which is priced very aggressively. Couple this with some extra ordinary deals available for the GTX670 at the moment. These deals will however only last as long as supplies allow so once they are depleted, the R9 270X will appear much better value for money against say a GTX760 if prices hold at today's level. For now though, if you can stretch a to little more than the estimated asking price of between £135-£150 there are some great deals to be had on 'older' hardware.


This may all sound a little negative towards the R9 270X. In fairness, it isn't a bad card, far from it however we cannot escape the fact it is based on two year old technology with it's Pitcairn (or Curacao as it is now renamed) core, just tweaked a little. NVIDIA are also guilty of re-badging cards to use up excess silicon so neither can take the morale high ground here. We can only hope that the high end graphics cards from AMD (which we have in store for the 10th October) offer more a intuitive design and the ground breaking performance we have come to expect from a new AMD product.

To summarise:
The R9 270X is a good mid-range graphics card that can outstrip the competition at the same price point. Sadly this is due to an increase in clockspeed and new drivers rather than new technological advances.