14 DAY TRIAL // The past week was really confusing, with reports about the latest AMD Radeon R9 often banging heads instead of corroborating information. Fortunately, Advanced Micro Devices has finally dispelled all dilemmas.
The Sunnyvale, California-based company has launched the Radeon R9 270 graphics card. Some reports said the R9 270X would come out today, which was strange because said board had been around since October.
And even so, you could find at least one new Radeon R9 270X released today. Don't be fooled though, it's the non-X version that really takes the first steps today.
And it's a pretty odd card too. Some people expected an overclocked Radeon HD 7850, and recently, it was said that the card would be an overclocked HD 7870 instead.
The truth is a bit in-between. The card is an HD 7870 of sorts, but it's both overclocked and underclocked.
Which is to say, while the 2 GB of GDDR5 VRAM work 200 MHz faster than before (at 1.4 GHz, 5.6 GHz effective), the GPU is 75 MHz slower (at 900 MHz Base / 925 MHz Boost).
Fortunately, there is a clear advantage to buying this Curacao Pro-based card: the TDP is 25W lower (150W).
Add to that the price of $180 / €180 ($20 / €20 less than the Radeon R9 270X) and the product becomes quite attractive, especially when it has the same number of stream processors as its stronger sibling (1280 SPs).
On that note, the AMD Radeon R9 270 boasts 80 TMUs, 32 ROPs, a 256-bit memory interface, a bandwidth of 179.2 GB/s and one 6-pin power plug.
Finally, connections to monitors and TVs are established through Dual-DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort outputs.
Stay tuned for all the custom-cooled and/or overclocked video boards from AMD's OEMs. Unlike with the R9 290/290X, they have free reign when it comes to cooler and spec modifications.