MSI R9 270 TwinFrozr Gaming OC Edition 2GB Graphics Card Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

Sometimes I wonder how MSI manage such aggressive pricing because they’ve done it once again. In the UK the MSI R9 270 TwinFrozr Gaming OC Edition graphics card is coming in at just £135 making it more or less the cheapest R9 270 as it sticks to reference pricing. In the USA it also sticks to reference pricing costing $179.99 on Newegg.

Edit: MSI Have now made a Battlefield 4 SKU available in the UK for £148.

Overview 

Having already tested quite a few AMD R9 270 based graphics cards I’m not reviewing the AMD R9 270 GPU per-sé, but instead what MSI have actually done with the GPU. Quite frankly MSI’s performance with this card is nothing short of exceptional. In terms of temperatures they were fantastic, this card consistently runs well below 65 at maximum sustained synthetic (read:torturous) load and below 60~ at typical gaming loads. As if that wasn’t impressive enough this card does it while being the single quietest graphics card we have tested, EVER. It was quite literally hard to tell if this graphics card was even on it was that quiet. If that isn’t a tribute to the immense effectiveness of the MSI TwinFrozr IV cooling solution then I don’t know what is. Furthermore, MSI have gone for one of the highest overclocks currently available on the market with 975MHz core and considering it sticks to reference pricing that really is something to behold. I doubt we’ll see versions of the R9 270 coming out with higher clocks than 975MHz because otherwise it will be encroaching too much on R9 270X territory and AMD wouldn’t be happy about that. What that means is this is pretty much as good as you’ll get in terms of out-the-box performance for an R9 270. So it has got the value, it has got the performance, it has got cooling covered, and it hasn’t got any noise! So far so good. The last point to cover is overclocking and again we saw a solid performance. Managing 1060MHz on the core and 1625MHz on the memory it did very well indeed. Sadly it couldn’t match the 1154MHz provided by the ASUS OC model but that costs over 10% more so you win some and you lose some, it did beat the equivalently priced Sapphire Dual-X version of the same GPU which only managed 1030MHz. However, as always its worth noting the silicon lottery is involved to an extent so your final overclock is never guaranteed. This being a cost-effective solution means MSI haven’t been speed-binning the GPUs but most R9 270 GPUs will do at least 1025MHz so that is more or less guaranteed.

In terms of the negatives….well I don’t really have anything about the card itself, though I would like to see this graphics card made available as part of an AMD game promotion – the Battlefield 4 one or the Never Settle bundle. If MSI released an additional Battlefield 4 SKU that comes with a higher price tag, I think a lot of gamers would still be really interested.

Pros

• Sizeable factory overclock
• Overclocks to solid levels
• Totally silent
• Runs cool
• 3 year warranty
• Excellent price – sticks to reference pricing

Cons

• No game bundles or promotions at the current time

“MSI’s Gaming series of graphics cards never cease to impress me with their excellent combination of value, performance, overclockability, silence and low temperatures. This MSI R9 270 TwinFrozr Gaming OC Edition is certainly no exception. It ticks every box you could ask of it and is pretty much the cheapest solution on the market. MSI have really hit the nail on the head with this one and I can see this being a true favourite among gamers and system builders alike.”

Thank you to MSI for providing this review sample.