AMD Radeon R9 270X & Sapphire TOXIC R9 270X Video Card Reviews
Final Thoughts and Conclusions
The AMD Radeon R9 270X is a solid gaming graphics card and we were very impressed by how it performed at 1920×1080 and even at 2560×1600. The AMD Radeon R9 270X is priced at $199 and we found this card made short work of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 that just had its price slashed from $199 to $179 this very week. It is a good thing that NVIDIA reduced the price of that card as the AMD Radeon R9 270X really did mop the floor with it. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 was slightly ahead of the AMD Radeon R9 270X reference card in our testing, but it retails for $249. NVIDIA has no card to fill the gap between the GeForce GTX 660 at $179 and the GeForce GTX 760 at $249, so there really is no direct competition at the $199 price point for the AMD Radeon R9 270X. There are rumors of NVIDIA releasing new mid-range cards called the GeForce GTX 760 Ti and GeForce GTX 765, but for now those are just rumors.
At the end of the day the ‘new’ AMD Radeon R9 270X behaves and performs pretty much how the ‘old’ AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz edition cards did. They are essentially the same cards, so that was expected and predicted by many in the gaming community. The Sapphire Toxic R9 270X is a great example of a fully decked out Radeon R9 270X and shows the cards full potential. At $239 you are getting all the bells and whistles and an epic video card that performs great, runs cool and is nearly silent. Sapphire did a great job on the Toxic R9 270X 2GB video card. The only issue that we can see with any Radeon R9 270X cards in $239 price range is that for $249 you are starting to get into the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760cards and they do perform better. If you aren’t brand loyal, you have a tough choice to make as you can go with a top-of-the-line Radeon R9 270X or a GeForce GTX 760 that is likely based off the reference design. The Sapphire Toxic R9 270X is one of those cards that have you purchasing a custom designed video card with less performance in order to have the low temperatures and silent operation.
At the end of the day the AMD Radeon R9 270X is the best $199 graphics card on the market today. This is known as the gamer’s sweet spot and a huge victory for AMD and for the gaming community. Keep in mind that the AMD Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition used to run $349 when it was released in 2012 and now you can pick up the Radeon R9 270X with higher clock speeds for just $199! Not a bad price for a card that can easily run most game titles at 1920×1080 with smooth frames and the image quality maxed out!
Legit Bottom Line: The AMD Radeon R9 270X is the best performing video card for under $200!