r9 270 vs r7 370

[Magic Carpet]

Okay, since I can't find any 370 reviews on TPU (my go to for GPUs), I decided to ask here. What is exactly the difference between these two GPUs? How are they compared in speed and power consumption? Thanks.

EDIT: Ideally a head-to-head review or something, I am just not being able to find anything trustworthy. Toms don't have it either or I didn't look hard enough.

 

[crisium]

270 is full Pitcairn (1280 Shaders). 370 is cutdown (1024). 270 is 900MHz default and 370 is 975MHz, and the memory speeds are the same. So the 270 will be faster, especially if you overclock both. They are both 1x6pin so I doubt power consumption difference will be significant.

The 370 is actually a rebranded 265 with a 75Mhz overclock, so 265 comparisons are pretty valid (in turn the 265 is a Radeon 7850 with higher clocks and memory speed). The only major difference is there are 4GB variants of the 370 available while the 265 and 270 max out at 2GB. The 270X though is simply a higher clocked 270 that uses 2x6pins and is available with a 4GB option.

 

[96Firebird]

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviewdb/Graphics-Cards/AMD/R7-370/

 

[Magic Carpet]

Damn it. How they dared to release a slower card with higher numbers?

I just don't get it. What is the successor of 270/270x then? It's not some 380, come on.

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviewdb/Graphics-Cards/AMD/R7-370/

I've checked some of that, and couldn't see any direct, head-to-head comparison to the replaced 270.

 

[crisium]

Damn it. How they dared to release a slower card with higher numbers?

I just don't get it. What is the successor of 270/270x then? It's not some 380, come on.


I've checked some of that, and couldn't see any direct, head-to-head comparison to the replaced 270.

It is silly. I guess even after all these years it's difficult to get fully enabled Pitcairn? There are Radeon 370X's that are the full chip but they are OEM and/or in Asian markets only I believe. The 270 remains the fastest 1x6pin AMD has produced, except in scenarios where a 4GB 370 would pull ahead I suppose. It doesn't have a proper successor.

 

[Magic Carpet]

The 270 remains the fastest 1x6pin AMD has produced, except in scenarios where a 4GB 370 would pull ahead I suppose. It doesn't have a proper successor.

Yeah, I was thinking of upgrading it to another AMD 1x6PIN card (for benchmarking). Things are really bad if they are neglecting this market like this (thinking they could counter 950/960 with the cut down version. I suppose, there's going to be nothing new in this performance/power segment until the next-gen?

 

[Yuriman]

Sadly, the answer here is "GTX 960". AMD isn't as competitive in performance per watt as nV right now.

You could probably safely run a GTX970 on a single 6pin with a splitter, given its TDP, as long as you don't get a factory OC model.

If sticking with AMD, the 270 is your best bet.

^ You can infer that a 270 will be around the performance of a 370, likely a hair higher.

 

[Magic Carpet]

@Yuriman

Yeah, looks like 950/960 are best for 1x6pin configs, probably 970 could fit somewhere in there too, perhaps with a hair bit of under power targeting.

Back in the day, 7870 was the best AMD's performance per watt card, 270 followed suit later on. I don't understand why they dropped the ball here and fitted it with a slower/rebranded 7850 and gave it 4 gigs of ram? Doesn't make sense, all right, maybe we should buy Nvidia instead then.

Really, Nano is the only exciting new AMD card here, especially after the recent price drop. But still it's twice as expensive... at least.

 

[Yuriman]

I have a suspicion that it has a lot to do with AMD spending far less on R&D than NV. They simply don't put as much money into developing new products. How competitive they are in most metrics, despite this is, is actually pretty impressive.

 

[xthetenth]

Back in the day, 7870 was the best AMD's performance per watt card, 270 followed suit later on. I don't understand why they dropped the ball here and fitted it with a slower/rebranded 7850 and gave it 4 gigs of ram? Doesn't make sense, all right, maybe we should buy Nvidia instead then.

Yeah, if you really need to get in under a low power target and don't want to/can't swap PSU, then NV is the right pick even if the difference is generally overstated.

I have a suspicion that it has a lot to do with AMD spending far less on R&D than NV. They simply don't put as much money into developing new products. How competitive they are in most metrics, despite this is, is actually pretty impressive.

Their R&D is still there, HBM and so on, but I bet they left at least one chip designed for 20nm that they didn't redesign at 28nm because of cost. They're coming out with some modern things but they haven't been able to do a top to bottom roll out of new cards.

 

[steelodon]

Glad that I read this. I was considering a 370. I was going from a 7850.

 

[TeknoBug]

I used to have a 7850, briefly 2x of them for crossfire so there's really no reason to get a 370 unless you're looking for a low end budget card that can play Civ V or Rocket League or Planetside 2 or a handful of moderately demanding games. The GTX950 of similar price point would perform a little better in most games (but I don't think there's a 4GB version), and for at least $40 more you can get the R9 380 and GTX960 (2GB).

For me going from the 750Ti to R7 370 would make no sense, if I were still using the GTX560Ti 440 I'd be glad to get the R7 370.

 

[Magic Carpet]

Glad that I read this. I was considering a 370. I was going from a 7850.

Yeah, the names are misleading. Further, there are even 4 gb models of that card. Geez, what they were thinking?

Yeah, looks like if you want 1 six pin power plug, Nvidia is the way to go.