The PowerColor 270X PCS+ Review
The PowerColor R9 270X PCS+
PowerColor’s main differentiation from other AMD partners is the company that stands behind it with a 2-year warranty, excellent customer service, and technical support should you need it. The PowerColor 270 PCS+ itself is mildly overclocked and has excellent characteristics which may indicate that the GPU was binned.
There is nothing fancy to see from the outside of the box. The card arrives in a PowerColor box that advertises the card without its specifications. It emphasizes overclocking, 2GB of GDDR5 memory, support for Eyefinity and 4K resolutions, and it also mentions DX11.2 and PCIe 3.0.
On the back of the box, we see the card’s features as well as the power and system requirements.
The PowerColor 270X PCS+ video card comes well-protected by padding and also protected from static electricity.
Inside the box, besides the new 270X PCS+, we find a driver CD, manual and a VGA to DVI adapter. The PowerColor R9 270X PCS has a good-looking design and it uses a dual-cooling blower-style fan much like our PowerColor HD 7970. The R9 270X PCS+ is setup for pairing with another 270X, but a CrossFire bridge is not included. Just like with Nvidia cards, you can mix cards from different vendors with different clock speeds. In addition, unlike with Nvidia cards, there is much more flexibility to mix cards with different amounts of cores and different framebuffers.
The Turbo Timer
We also see a new exclusive to PowerColor feature – featured first on this PowerColor R9 270X PCS+ but not included in box, it is optional. It safely cools down the hot GPU. It’s a great idea for extending the life of an an extremely hot-running GPU like Hawaii, but Pitcarin really runs cool and we never saw it hit over 68C, even after extended benching under maximum load and overclocking.
As we turn the card over, we note a very nice backplate and the connector for the optional Turbo Timer. We can also see the the 6-pin+6-pin connectors for the PCIe cables.
Display connections include two DVI ports, one 1.4a HDMI port, and one DisplayPort. Eyefinity triple-display surround gaming is possible with one card.
The R9 270X PCS+ also includes sound for HD audio and Blu-ray 3D movies.
Let’s check out the PowerColor R9 270X specifications from their website:
Specifications
The PCS+ R9 270X uses Digital PWM, Ferrite Conducting Power (FCP), and Multi Phase Design to ensure power efficiency and stability. The patented PowerColor Double Blades fan design of the PCS+ R9 270X igive 20% more airflow over the reference blower. The design is intended to prevent dust from depositing at the bearings and at the bottom of fan, thus prolonging the life of the video card.
Here are some of the specifications:
Here are some of the features:
GCN Architecture
A new design for AMD’s unified graphics processing and compute cores that allows them to achieve higher utilization for improved performance and efficiency.
AMD Eyefinty Technology
Run multiple displays from a single graphics board and expand your gaming field of view across all displays.
AMD App Acceleration
AMD App Accelerator creates a “co-processing” environment in which the compute processing potential in your AMD Radeon™ Graphics processor works together with the system central processor, to accelerate enabled applications.
AMD HD3D Technology
Supports the latest stereoscopic 3D content and display technologies. Play 3D games, watch Blu-ray 3D videos, and edit 3D photos on your 3D Monitors, TV, or projector.
AMD CrossFire™ Technology
Multi-GPU support offers superior scalability. Increase your gaming performance up to 2x with AMD CrossFire™ technology, 2.75x for TriFire configurations, or 3.75x with QuadFire configs.
Microsoft DirextX® 11.2
Get intense gaming performance and unrivalled image quality with stunning 3D visual effects, realistic lighting and lifelike imagery.
AMD HD Media Accelerator
Assumes rendering responsibility for HD encode (VCE)/decode (MPEG-4 ASP, H.264. MVC, MPEG2, etc.) and conclusively enable superior video playback quality with advanced hardware post-processing algorithms.
AMD PowerPlay™ Technology
AMD PowerPlay™ Technology dynamically adjusts clockspeeds in response to GPU load, saving power for just when you need it.
AMD PowerTune Technology
Maximizes performance under load conditions by dynamically increasing the GPU engine clock to take advantage of unused TDP headroom. Also allows users to configure their own TDP limit, within a provided range, for even higher performance or more power efficiency.
Advanced GDDR5 Memory Technology
GDDR5 memory provides the highest available memory bandwidth of any memory technology today, enabling higher GPU performance.
Intelligent Overclocking Control
AMD latest Boost State technology automatically allows Radeon Graphic to run higher than the base core speed if it’s operating below power, current, and temperature specification limits.
Add support for Windows 7, 8, and 8.1 and we see a well-rounded and fully-featured video card.
Here are a few more pictures of the card:
We can’t wait to test the PowerColor 270X PCS+, but before we begin the testing, head over to our testing configuration.
