Gigabyte R9 270X WindForce OC 2GB Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

AMD’s R9 270X has an MSRP of $199 which compares favourably against the GTX 660 ($179) and the GTX 760 ($249). The Gigabyte WindForce OC model will be sticking very close to that reference pricing. In the UK it will hit the market at £164.96 from Scan and £164.99 from Overclockers UK. In the USA this graphics card sells for $210 on Amazon. This means about €195 in Europe.

Final Thoughts

Gigabyte’s WindForce OC variant of the R9 270X is certainly a very interesting proposition. It has by far the best R9 270X cooling performance we’ve ever seen mainly due to the mighty triple fan cooler it uses, most other vendors use only one or two fans. This gives some seriously impressive temperatures as our results showed. However, it wasn’t exactly the quietest under load but it was by no means noisy either. Inside a case you’d barely hear it during intense gaming session but it can be noticeable. Yet for the price, the fact you get such an impressive cooler and a factory overclock is really quite surprising and I commend Gigabyte for offering such a great value for money card. I found overclocking to be pretty good too and the WindForce OC cooler really helped us push the card to its limit which was actually a very respectable 1200MHz on the core – sure some other speed binned SKUs out there will do 1250MHz+ but for such an affordable card this did really well.

On a few minor negative notes the card did have higher power consumption than other overclocked R9 270X graphics cards and I can maybe put this down to Gigabyte using less efficient power componentry than some rival solutions (maybe they used the reference power circuitry) but at the end of the day they’ve had to save some costs somewhere to offer such a great price and that is probably where it was done. Another thing to note is that the cooler isn’t small, measuring in at 11.5 inches you’ve got to be careful if you have a compact case because for an AMD R9 270X GPU this card is really big.

Pros

• Extremely affordable
• Factory overclock
• Epic cooling performance
• 3 year warranty

Cons

• Only marginally quieter than the reference cooler under load
• Power consumption is a bit high for an R9 270X
• A very long card at 11.5 inches – potential case compatibility issues

“If you’re looking for an AMD R9 270X with a solid cooler and a decent overclock, but are still looking to stick to a strict budget, then the Gigabyte R9 270X WindForce OC graphics card is a great option for you to choose from. You’ve got all the benefits of AMD’s R9 270X GPU, overclocked, with a fantastic performing triple fan cooler and a stylish design for barely any additional cost over a reference solution. Gigabyte have produced a real wallet friendly champion with their WindForce OC R9 270X. The only thing to watch out for is the noise at load, but this can be easily tamed with a custom fan profile as the cooling solution has bags of headroom to keep things running cool even at lower fan speeds.”

Thank you to Gigabyte for providing this review sample.