Did I make a mistake? Ordered some R9 270X cards off of ebay (BB).

VirtualLarry

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Well, I figured since the R7 260X cards on ebay through BestBuy were apparently sold out, that I would spring for a pair of R9 270X cards. I already have a pair of 7950 HIS cards, that I got for the same price ($130 ea). So not quite as good a value there on the 270X. Both take two 6-pin PCI-E connectors for power, but the 7950 cards have 3GB VRAM. Problem is, I haven't found 7950 or R9 280 / 280X cards new for $130 again, and GPU prices appear to be creeping up.

The alternative, I suppose, for the same price would have been a GTX950. How does performance compare between an R9 270X and a GTX950? 960? 7950?
 

Burpo

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Sep 10, 2013
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GTX 950 smokes the other two, and does it with 1X 6 pin connector @ half the power.
 
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Burpo

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I don't know.. Larry says " Both take two 6-pin PCI-E connectors for power"
 

VirtualLarry

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What 270x requires 2x pin connectors? I have only a single pin on mine.

AFAIK, ALL R9 270X cards have two 6-pins. It's the 270 non-X that only has one 6-pin. At least, that I've seen.

Burpo, you are saying that the GTX950 is faster than a 270X? Got benchmarks?

Edit: Found some. Apparently, OCed GTX950 cards are a little faster, stock GTX950 cards are a little slower. (Edit: I was looking at the 4K numbers. Apparently, at 1080P, they are equal, according to TPU.)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Gigabyte/GTX_950_Xtreme_Gaming/30.html

perfrel_1920.gif


All things considered, given that Nvidia is going to require e-mail addresses to download drivers in the near future, and that performance between the GTX950 and 270X is basically equal at 1080P, with the advantage going to the 270X at higher resolutions (probably due to greater memory bandwidth), and slightly more power consumption, I'm glad to choose AMD this time around. (I'm not worried about power consumption, my PSUs have enough plugs.)

Edit: On the other hand, I forgot that the GTX950 and GTX960 has HDMI 2.0 support. Oh well. I wasn't planning on using these rigs for HTPC anyways.
 
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VirtualLarry

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GTX 950, PCIe 3.0 x16, Core Clock(s): 1024 MHz, Memory Clock(s): 1653 MHz, Graphics API Support: DirectX 12 OpenGL 4.5 Max TDP: 90 W.
Score 5295
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=GeForce+GTX+950&id=3295

Radeon R9 270X, PCIe 3.0 x16, Core Clock(s): 1000 MHz, Memory Clock(s): 5600 MHz, Graphics API Support: DirectX 12 OpenGL 4.4 Max TDP: 180 W
Score 4553
http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/gpu.php?gpu=Radeon+R9+270X

You're not seriously quoting (P)AssMark video card numbers, are you? When I quoted TPU?

Might as well quote GPUBoss. LOL.

Edit: Sorry, perhaps I was a little harsh. You did post benchmarks, which is what I asked for. I just figured you might post actual game benchmarks, rather than (what I consider to be a half-assed) synthetic.

I mean, does Passmark test rendering, texture loads, compute, what? It's not even clear what it does. At least with FutureMark, you get to watch what it's rendering.
 
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Azix

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Apr 18, 2014
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270x is generally faster. power consumption is between 115W and 140W average.
 

Magic Carpet

Diamond Member
Oct 2, 2011
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Larry,

270x are geared towards overclocking and that is why they "require" two power cables. If you are not going to overclock them, by undervolting Pitcairn, you could easily save 20-40W from each card under load. That is if you care at all. And when crossfire'd the second card gets shut down to save power. Clever.
 

VirtualLarry

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One more question, since it wasn't in the TPU graphs - how does the 270X compare to a 2GB GTX460 card? Is it twice as fast? The GTX460 had 256-bit GDDR5 too, I think. But only 336 Cuda Cores. My friend has a GTX460 2GB that might be having issues. If he needs a GPU, I was wondering about selling him one of my 270X 2GB cards, when they come in.
 

SPBHM

Diamond Member
Sep 12, 2012
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One more question, since it wasn't in the TPU graphs - how does the 270X compare to a 2GB GTX460 card? Is it twice as fast? The GTX460 had 256-bit GDDR5 too, I think. But only 336 Cuda Cores. My friend has a GTX460 2GB that might be having issues. If he needs a GPU, I was wondering about selling him one of my 270X 2GB cards, when they come in.

270x is better than a 580 most of the time, and the 580 had the same architecture as the 460 but 384bit memory, and 512 cores (and higher clocks)... so, there is a decent advantage...

even going by just memory the 460 had sub 4GHz memory, so the 270X have a decent advantage even if both have 256bit memory,

I think 270x for the price you mentioned was a good buy... it's a card that can handle current games well, normally a little above the PS4 quality.
 

Magic Carpet

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Oct 2, 2011
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Larry, the performance will depend on many factors. On paper 270x is looking real good but in reality it may be a different story. Particularly, if your friend likes to run things like Borderlands 2 and the like. Performance varies, from title to title. I've tried to find some recent numbers but couldn't. But yeah, 270x should be faster and more power efficient than 460, by how much, I don't know. I don't have one at hand to test it for you.

If you like synthetics, then according to this:

http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/geforce-gtx-460-se-review,18.html
http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/asus-radeon-r9-380-strix-review,20.html

270x is ~2.5x faster than GTX 460.
 

Burpo

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Sep 10, 2013
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I just figured you might post actual game benchmarks, rather than (what I consider to be a half-assed) synthetic.

I mean, does Passmark test rendering, texture loads, compute, what? It's not even clear what it does. At least with FutureMark, you get to watch what it's rendering.

And you do with Passmark also. a thorough testing of
Simple Vectors
Complex Vectors
Fonts & Text
Windows Interface
Image Filters
Image Rendering
Direct 2D
------------
DirectX 9 Simple
DirectX 9 Complex
DirectX 10
DirectX 11
Direct Compute

Yes, I'd much rather rely on a staple benchmark that's been around forever, is not skewed in any way, and reflects an average of all the users that have submitted their scores for a particular card.

It's easy, it's a free download , and you can test YOUR cards YOUR self, and not rely on what tech sites say..

YOU consider it to be a "half-assed synthetic" but have never downloaded or used it?
 
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tential

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I've got a long list of mistakes you've made Larry if you want to hear them lol =D.
 

VirtualLarry

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And you do with Passmark also. a thorough testing of

Yes, I'd much rather rely on a staple benchmark that's been around forever, is not skewed in any way, and reflects an average of all the users that have submitted their scores for a particular card.

It's easy, it's a free download , and you can test YOUR cards YOUR self, and not rely on what tech sites say..

YOU consider it to be a "half-assed synthetic" but have never downloaded or used it?

After I learned that Passmark's CPU benchmark, doesn't differentiate between overclocked or stock CPUs, and just lumps them all in together, I kind of wrote off that benchmark site.

Maybe the benchmark is useful, if you manually run it on all of your cards, as you say, but referring to the scores on their web site is essentially worthless.
 

VirtualLarry

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I've got a long list of mistakes you've made Larry if you want to hear them lol =D.

LOL. So you're going to set my computer part purchases straight, are you?

Edit: Other than opinion hit pieces, have I made any technical mistakes? If I have, please point them out, I'm quite willing to be corrected if I have my tech wrong.
 
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alexruiz

Platinum Member
Sep 21, 2001
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What are the clocks of the R9 270Xs you got?
1050MHz?

Let's keep in mind that the stock clock of the R9 270X is still 1GHz, and most R9 270Xs are still 1GHz. I assume most of the benchmarks on the web are with those stock R9 270X at 1GHz. Without knowing exactly what r9 270X the sites are using, it is hard to assign a value of "slightly faster" or "clearly faster" because the R9 270X is faster than the GTX950. Someone doesn't agree? Then bring number, real numbers, or is it going to be claimed that the gTX950 is faster because its clock in Mhz is faster?

A hot clocked R9 270X out of the box is 1100MHz (Powercolor PCs+) so the numbers will be aprox 10% higher. There are even 1150MHz out of the box R9 270X. The 1.1GHz R9 270X are those that should be compared to the OC GTX950s. Some other R9 270X are at 1050MHz.
 
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VirtualLarry

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http://www.bestbuy.com/site/xfx-rad...lver/2091002.p?id=1219068840893&skuId=2091002

GPU Clock Speed
1000 megahertz

Edit: Search on that model number, found the Newegg listing:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150686

Newegg listing lists Core Clock 1000Mhz Boost Clock 1050Mhz, so I think that you're right. It does boost! Newegg wants $179.99 before rebate, so $129.99 on ebay isn't too bad, I guess.

And in comparison to my HIS 7950, that one clocks at 800Mhz, with no Boost. So given the clock differential, the 270X isn't all that much slower than it, it seems.
 
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