MSI currently offers two different Radeon R9 270X, the Gaming and the HAWK, and today we are going to have a look at the HAWK. The R9 270X HAWK features the manufacturer's top cooling solution known as Twin Frozr IV Advanced and a beefed up power design/PCB. Other than that the HAWK is the second fastest R9 270X card out of the box.
MSI ships its Radeon R9 270X HAWK card with the core clocked at
1'150 MHz and the memory at 1'400 MHz (5'600 effective). Compared to the R9 270X reference clocks the
HAWK has a
nice factory overclocking with 100 MHz on the core. Unfortunately no factory
overclocking was made on the memory. The HAWK is the second fastest Radeon R9 270X out of the box
at this time after the Toxic from Sapphire.
Although the R9 270X has the PowerTune Boost functionality we never saw it in
action. We mean that, the HAWK has actually a core clock of 1'100 MHz and a boost clock of
1'150 MHz. During our testing, the card was always running at full speed of
1'150 MHz under load, we didn't see the chip reduce its clock speed, even under
Furmark.
AMD themselves are being obscure on that point too, the reference R9 270X has actually a base clock set at
1'000 MHz with a boost clock of 1'050 MHz but AMD just write down "GPU Clock Speed: Up to 1'050
MHz". The latter is not wrong but it's
not exact either.
MSI HAWK
ASUS DirectCU II Top
Radeon R9 270X
Chip
Pitcairn XTL
Curacao XT
Pitcairn XTL
Curacao XT
Pitcairn XTL
Curacao XT
Process
28 nm
28 nm
28 nm
Transistors
2.80
billion
2.80
billion
2.80
billion
GPU
clock
1'150 MHz
1'120 MHz
1'050 MHz
Memory GDDR5
2'048 MB
2'048 MB
2'048 MB
Memory
clock
1'400 (5'600) MHz
1'400 (5'600) MHz
1'400 (5'600) MHz
Memory
interface
256 Bit
256 Bit
256 Bit
Memory
bandwidth
179.2 GB/s
179.2 GB/s
179.2 GB/s
Shader Cores
1'280
1'280
1'280
TMUs
80
80
80
ROPs
32
32
32
TDP
161 Watt
xxx Watt
180 Watt
PCB Type
Custom Design
Custom Design
Reference Design
Lenght (PCB - Total)
25.4 - 26.1 cm
24.3 - 27.3 cm
xx.x - xx.x cm
Height (PCB - Total)
12.1 - 13.0 cm
11.2 - 13.2 cm
11.0 - 11.0 cm
Slots
2
2
2
Cooler
Twin Frozr IV Advanced
DirectCU II
AMD Reference
Launch
Price
$XXX
$XXX
$199
To cool its Radeon R9 270X HAWK MSI makes use of the same Twin Frozr IV cooler
you find on the GeForce GTX 760 HAWK. The cooler is exactly the same. In this case you get
four six millimeter and one eight millimeter heatpipes. The
heatpipes have been nickel-plated and are in contact with the GPU through a
copper base
plate, which is also nickel-plated. Soldered to the heatpipes you find the fin stack
which is being provided with fresh air via two 100mm fans. Both fans are
identical and being manufactured by Power Logic. They carry the model number
PLD10010B12HH.
Overall the cooler is well made and finished. The thermal paste used is of
good quality, soft and hasn't been uselessly spread in large quantity all around
the chip.
The base doesn't have a perfect mirror finish but is finished well enough.
Most memory chips but one are actively cooled by the metal plate that covers a
big part of the PCB. They are in contact with the cooling unit thanks to thermal
pads. There is only one memory chip that hasn't been included to
the loop .
Actually we don't really understand why this is the case. The chip is right next to the
others and we don't see any reason, why it's not been integrated into the
cooling loop.
Like all other HAWKs the PCB has been completely
reworked and the power design beefed-up. The PCB and the power design are
looking similar to what powers the Radeon HD 7870 HAWK, but after a closer look,
we spotted a lot of differences. Here we have a ten phase
power design where the GPU gets eight (there
are five on the reference card) and the memory gets two (there is only one on the ref
card) phases. Going further we see, two additional phases for the PCIe and the PLL.
The same metal plate that covers the memory chips is also providing active
cooling to the MOSFETs via thermal pads. The manufacturer decided to equip its 270X with
a full metal reinforcement (backplate) to prevent bending and it also protects crucial
components from potential damage. Otherwise the card features a BIOS for
extreme overclockers (LN2 BIOS) that can be selected via DIP switch (located
at the top edge of the card). Furthremore virtually everything can be overvolted (GPU, memory
and PLL (VDDCI)) via AfterBurner and to monitor what's happening, there are voltage read-out points (GPU, memory and PLL
(VDDCI), located at the
right edge of the PCB).
Component wise, the HAWK complies with MSI's Military Class 4 Components
standard. It doesn't mean you will find military/NASA class components on the
PCB, otherwise the card would have been so expensive you couldn't afford it.
Still you find high quality components such as
New SFC,
All Hi-c CAPs for GPU and
Dark Solid CAPs.
Checking the
voltage regulation chip we find a digital 8-phase controller IR3563B from
International Rectifier
for the GPU. On the memory side there is a dual phase controller uP1610P from
uPI Semiconductor. Lastly there are two single phase controllers labelled
GS7252. The one closer to the end of the card takes care of PLL (VDDCI) while the
one close to the PCIe connector takes care of the PCIe.
The memory chips used are made by Elpida and carry the model number
W2032BBBG-6A-F. They are specified to run at 1'500 MHz (6'000 MHz effective).
The card ships well bolstered in a foam made mold.
Bundled with the graphics card there is a software CD, an installation manual,
three V-Check cables, a DVI to VGA converter and two power adapters (2x Molex to
PCIe-6pin).
Idle, temperature is
taken after 15 minutes @ lowest, 40 %, 50 %, 70 % and 100 % fan speed.
Room Temperature: 25°C
Temperature under
Furmark
For FurMark, temperature is taken
after 15 minutes of GPU Burn test at lowest, 40 %, 50 %, 70 % and 100 % fan speed.
We stopped the test when the GPU temperature hit 90°C.
Room Temperature: 25°C
Temperature and
fan speed under BattleField 3
For BattleField 3, temperature and fan speed
values taken, are the highest achieved after 1 hour gaming @ auto fan
speed.
The "Performance Index" value is calculated as the sum of all
benchmarks results divided by the amount of games (3DMark and Ungine not
included into the calculation).
Performance/Price
Graphics Cards
Performance Index
Price
(€)*
Performance/€*10
nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost
40.87
110
3.72
nVidia GeForce GTX 660
47.37
137
3.46
AMD Radeon HD 7870
50.03
145
3.45
AMD Radeon HD 7790
32.75
97
3.38
AMD Radeon HD 7850
40.04
121
3.31
AMD Radeon R9 270X
53.39
165
3.24
nVidia GeForce GTX 660 Ti
53.55
177
3.03
nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti
30.80
102
3.02
MSI Radeon R9 270X HAWK
56.95
191
2.98
nVidia GeForce GTX 760
56.63
192
2.95
ASUS Radeon R9 270X DirectCU II Top
55.81
191
2.92
AMD Radeon HD 6870
31.88
111
2.87
AMD Radeon R9 280X
68.40
245
2.79
AMD Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition
69.99
260
2.69
AMD Radeon HD 7970
63.41
236
2.69
nVidia GeForce GTX 680
68.36
283
2.42
nVidia GeForce GTX 580
50.49
215
2.35
nVidia GeForce GTX 770
70.92
319
2.22
nVidia GeForce GTX 670
62.00
320
1.94
AMD Radeon HD 6950
36.83
204
1.81
nVidia GeForce GTX 780
81.66
511
1.60
AMD Radeon HD 6970
41.32
281
1.47
AMD Radeon HD 5870
35.98
246
1.46
AMD Radeon HD
5850
30.05
221
1.36
AMD Radeon HD 6990
73.96
656
1.13
nVidia GeForce GTX TITAN
85.05
800
1.06
* 18/10/2013
More is better
Less is better
More is better
For the price we took the lowest price available on geizhals.eu.
The Radeon R9 270X HAWK from MSI is a
really nice piece of hardware. It features a very strong power design, a
great cooling solution
and some nice overclocking features. But the card isn't perfect, since it comes
with a very high price tag and MSI could have easily pushed the factory overclocking
further. 100 MHz on the core is good but equipping the card with memory chips
rated at 1'500 MHz but actually clocking them at 1'400 MHz makes us cry.
Also we have to point out that the Radeon 200 series is not currently
part of the Never Settle Forever program. This may change in the future
but at the moment you don't get any game for free buying a Radeon 200
series card unless the manufacturer specifies otherwise.
- Performance
- Cooling
- Design
- Power Design
- GPU Clock
- Overclocking features
- Price
- Memory Clock
Cooling / Noise
Level
+
-
For its Radeon R9 270X HAWK MSI makes use of the
same cooler you can find on the GeForce GTX 770 Lightning and 760 HAWK. This Twin
Frozr IV Advanced is powerful, the cooling performance is
great, the build quality is very good and it is extremely silent under load
conditions, almost noiseless. In idle it is.
- Cooling performance
- Noise levels
Performance
+
-
The Radeon R9 270X HAWK is a fast card.
In the games tested it is on average 6.7 % faster than a
Radeon R9 270X with reference clocks , 14 % faster than a reference clocked
Radeon HD 7870 and as fast as a GeForce GTX 760.
A closer look at power consumption shows, that our test system, equipped
with the HAWK, burns 45 Watts under idle conditions and 257
Watts under load. In idle that's a very good result but under load we
think the power consumption is a bit high compared to stock clocked R9
270X and HD 7870. The HAWK draws as much as a reference GTX 680 for
example and there is a 20% performance gap between the two cards.
- Performance
- Performance/Watt
- Power consumption under load
Recommendation / Price
+
-
The Radeon R9 270X prices are much better than last
week. At the time of the review, the HAWK can be found with a starting
price of 191 Euro and the cheapest offer for a R9 270X starts at 165
Euros excluding shipping costs accross the EU.
Its price is good and bad at the same time. On one side the HAWK costs
as much as the DirectCU II Top, for example, is faster, better and more
silent. It also costs as much as the cheapest GTX 760 that offers same
performance. On the other side we think 26 Euro is a bit too much on
top even for what you get. Furthermore the Rx 200 series is not
currently part of the Never Settle Forever program.
The graphics card itself is a beast but unfortunately manufacturers
can't do magic with a two years old chip. Especially when its new
release doesn't come with the game bundle the old release still comes
with.
All things considered, we would recommend R9 270X HAWK, or any other
R9 270X for that matter, only if you are not interested in the game
bundle. If you are interested in the game bundle, you're better off with a
custom Radeon HD 7950 that comes with it, offers better or same
performance and is cheaper or as expensive.
- Gaming
- Overclocking
- Price
We gave the Radeon R9 270X
HAWK from MSI 4.5 out of 5 stars.