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Introduction:
Hey, this is Lachlan ‘Phoenix’ Leslie - I’m one of SYF GAMING’s Starcraft 2 Australian Zerg players. Recently, I was lucky enough to take a look at MSI's R9 270X from their HAWK overclocking series. The R9 270X is part of AMD’s latest line-up of graphic cards, with the 270X falling within the mid-range GPU performance spectrum. MSI’s HAWK Edition 270X looks to add a little bit of flair and pizazz over the stock variant of the R9 270 card. Cooling is a primary focus of MSI’s HAWK series, and the yellow clad 270X HAWK looks to combine top class cooling from the Twin Frozr IV advanced cooler - as well as extreme overclocking potential from the 1280 stream processors and its 2GB of GDDR5 memory.

At home and on the road competing at LANs, performance is always a significant factor to gameplay. Like any gamer, I always want to try my best to come out on top after a match. The smoother and more consistently my game runs, the easier it is for me to have full focus as I play - helping me to really hone into my fast macro, get into a good rhythm as the match progresses, and calculate my upcoming moves and strategies. In addition to this, there’s nothing worse than having your CPU or graphic card overheat on a hot Australian summer day, thus I was really excited to test out what MSI had to offer from it’s R9 270X HAWK GPU.

Design and Hardware:
Looking at the box, you’re greeted with clean cut yellow surrounds with a spectacular B-2 Spirit stealth bomber featured front and centre - the motif of the HAWK series. Lifting up the front of box tab, we find a basic overview of the dual BIOS switch that offers a mode for LN2 overclockers, as well as basic information about the Military Class 4 components that make up the card. These include the super ferrite choke, highly conductive capacitors, and dark solid capacitors. There’s also two extra treats thrown in for overclockers - voltage check points and the triple overvoltage. Moving down the box we see the main feature of the card - the Twin Frozer IV advanced cooler, with it's dust removal technology, dual 100mm fans, nickel-plated copper base, and superpipe technology. Flipping the R9 270X HAWK box over we have a list of the cards features and specifications as well as a list of minimum system requirements. Opening up the box reveals the card itself - it’s all tucked nicely inside a protective bag and surrounded by foam. Contents of the box include the Driver CD, quick user guide, a manual, as well as two dual molex 6-pin PCIe power connectors, DVI to VGA adaptor, and three cables required to use the voltage check points on the card.

The first thing I noticed when I looked at the R9 270X was the large twin frozr IV advanced cooler that covers basically the entire face of the card with it's two 10cm fans and the heat sinks and pipes protruding out the bottom. Above the twin frozr cooler there is both the two 6 pin PCIe connectors and the switch that facilitates the swap between the two BIOS that are installed. On the other end we see the Crossfire connector, just in-case you’re lucky enough to have two of these cards powering away your gaming rig. Moving through to the input/output end of the card we see two dual link DVI connectors as well as a HDMI port and full size displayport connector. On the opposite side to that we can find the 3 small voltage checkpoints, this feature could be very useful to a hardcore overclocker with the right equipment.

Benchmark System Specifications:

Cpu: i7 920 @2.67GHz
RAM: 12GB Tri-channel DDR3 @532MHz
Mobo: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd. EX58-UD3R (Socket 1366)
Storage: 120GB Samsung SSD 840 Series ATA Device (SSD)
1TB Hitachi HDS5C1010CLA382 ATA Device (SATA)
OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1

Specification list:

Performance:
When looking at the average FPS, I generally want to see at least 60 frames per second in a game. 60 frames per second equates to an extremely smooth, fluid and enjoyable viewing experience. The minimum acceptable frame-rate for gameplay would be around 30fps for me, I always want to and try to play well above this frame rate wherever possible. Frame rates dipping below 30fps are jarring, terribly disjointed, and lack fluidity - creating a visual experience that’s difficult or nearly impossible to enjoy. I tested out and benchmarked a wide assortment of the latest games, as well as some light overclocking with the MSI 270X HAWK.


All benchmarks were performed on the system specifications as listed above, at 1920x1080 resolution. In-game settings were turned up to very high, with full-aliasing enabled when possible.

Benchmark results:
Metro last light:
In-game Graphics “score”: 24665
FPS: Averaging 50
Metro: Last Light takes place one year after the events of Metro 2033, proceeding from the ending where Artyom chose to call down the missile strike on the Dark Ones. The Rangers have since occupied the D6 military facility, with Artyom having become an official member of the group. Khan, the nomad mystic, arrives at D6 to inform Artyom and the Rangers that a single Dark One survived the missile strike. Khan believes the Dark One is the key to humanity's future, and wants to make peace with it, while Ranger leader Colonel Miller wants to kill the creature due to its potential threat. Miller sends Artyom to the surface with a mission to kill the Dark One; he is accompanied by Anna, Miller's sarcastic daughter and the Rangers' best sniper.

Dirt Showdown:
FPS average: 60
DiRT Showdown is the arcade racing game from the team that brought you the award-winning DiRT series, uncaged in 2012. Pick up and play controls combine with electrifying events, frenzied crowds and stunning graphics to deliver high octane, dive in and drive thrills from event one.

Sniper Elite V2:
FPS: Averaging 124
Sniper Elite V2 features detailed sniping simulation with advanced ballistics, taking into account gravity, wind, velocity, bullet penetration, aim stability and more. Guaranteed to provide players with the most realistic simulation of military sharpshooting yet available.

Sleeping Dogs:
FPS: Average 32
The core gameplay of Sleeping Dogs consists of giving the player an open world environment in which to move around freely. Sleeping Dogs is played as an over-the-shoulder, third-person perspective action-adventure game with roleplaying elements. The player controls Wei Shen, a Chinese-American police officer, as he goes undercover to infiltrate the Sun On Yee Triad organization. On foot, the player character has the ability to walk, run, jump, climb over obstacles and swim, as well as use weapons and martial arts in combat. Players also drive a variety of vehicles including cars, boats, and motorcycles.

Battlefield 4:
FPS: 41
Battlefield 4 (also known as BF4) is an upcoming first-person shooter video game developed by EA Digital Illusions CE and published by Electronic Arts. The game is a sequel to 2011's Battlefield 3. Battlefield 4 features several changes compared to its predecessor. The game's heads-up display is much the same, composed of two compact rectangles. The lower left-hand corner features a mini-map and compass for navigation, and a simplified objective notice above it; the lower right includes a compact ammo counter and health meter. The mini-map, as well as the main game screen, shows symbols marking three kinds of entities: blue for allies, green for squadmates, and red/orange for enemies.

After all the benchmarking was done and dusted, I took a look at the cards temperatures and fan speeds to assess how the physicalities of the card held up. With the card maxing out at only 78 degrees and the fan only hitting 40% at it’s peak, it was clearly evident to me that the MSI 270X HAWK easily handles all of these games without even making the actual card itself break into a sweat. With extreme overclocking, your framerates have the potential to be improved further from my above results. What was most impressive throughout all of my testing - was just how quietly and efficiently the cards fans kept everything running. A fitting description for the 270X HAWK is that it’s silent, and is without question the quietest fan cooled GPU I’ve ever encountered. It’s a seriously impressive achievement on MSI’s behalf - I honestly wasn’t expecting the Twin Frozr cooling solution to perform as well as it did. For people who are looking for an extremely quiet gaming PC build (that’s not water-cooled) - I’d highly recommend giving the MSI 270X HAWK a shot, it’s perfectly fit for the task.

On the performance end everything was up to snuff. You’ll see that Sleeping Dogs really threw the card into the deep end of the pool, as cranking the anti-aliasing settings up in game to the maximum had the engine averaging just above 32fps. Still playable - but just remember that most people aren’t going to be needing to turn the anti-aliasing up so high, unless you’re running a low resolution monitor. The R9 270X HAWK was an excellent performer all around, and is more than adequate for running all the latest games available on the market today at very high settings. As new game engines continue being worked on and developed for the latest hardware, this card will last you a few good years of gaming action. MSI’s treat on top of it all this performance is their exceptional cooling - I cannot stress enough how impressed I was by the fan system implemented into this card.

Overclocking:
I’m not the biggest overclocker myself but, I’ve done a bit of tinkering in the past with CPU’s - but have never delved into the world of GPU clocking at all. Thus, it’s a relatively new area too me - but it was exciting to explore nonetheless! I decided to stick well within the confines of a ‘safe’ zone, I wasn’t intent on trying to break the limits of card. After a bit of reading up on everything - I decided to fire up MSI's Afterburner software, which assists new overclockers in adjusting a whole host of memory speeds on their GPU. MSI Afterburner is amatuer friendly, and with a bit of Google searching for specific terms - you’ll be off on your journey to maximise performance in no time. I opted for some basic overclocking, and with some trial and error I was able to push the 270X HAWK to an impressive 1300MHz Core clock and 1500MHz memory clock with 1.3V for power while still running at a cool 74 degrees through all the tests - with the fan running at 55% speed. Somehow on top of all this - the card still remained ludicrously quiet.

Wrap-up:
At the time of writing, the MSI R9 270X HAWK comes at a price tag of $265 from Australian online retailers. The reference version of the card can be found for around the $215 mark. The question that arises from this price differential is simple; are the R9’s HAWK alterations worth an extra $50 over the stock reference card? With the combination of silent and extremely effective fan cooling, voltage check checkpoints as well as ease of and use of overclocking - I think it’s more than worth it the higher price tag.The MSI R9 270X HAWK runs at a near silent audio level. In addition to this, even after small overclocking, the temperatures stayed well within acceptable limits without making the fan spin at anything higher than 55% under load. The only con that comes from the higher price point is if you’re unwilling to delve into overclocking - as the card ripe for it. At the 270X HAWK’s stock settings, you can attain similar performance from cheaper variants of the 270X - thus, I’d highly recommend paying that little bit extra in order to have excellent overhead for overclocking potential.

On the whole, the MSI 270X HAWK is a great choice for any gamer out there today who’s looking for robust performance without breaking the bank. The $265AU price tag falls well within the confines of mid-range GPU pricing, and from that you’re greeted with a card that wants to be pushed just that little bit further out of the box. MSI’s cooling solution is superb, I doubt anyone would be disappointed with it’s highly efficient cooling as well as silent noise levels. It’s quite obvious that MSI takes a lot of care and pride with the build of their cards, the packaging is great - and the card itself is solid and doesn’t feel flimsy or fragile. For those looking to pump up the performance, the OC KITS with triple overvoltage should really help with the excellent overclocking potential in the 270X HAWK.

If you're going to pay that little bit extra money up from the stock reference card - it’s well worth your time doing even just a little research into overclocking. The simple MSI Afterburner program is there to help you out with a lot of it, and will keep you out of trouble.

All in all - the MSI 270X HAWK may not be the worlds fastest graphics card on the market - but it has all the necessary grunt to play any current games on very high settings. If you put a little time into tinkering with the card, you’ll get strong performance results in return. The R9 270X HAWK is an excellent choice for those who aren’t looking to shell out $600 for the latest and greatest but are still after solid performance. The 270X HAWK, coupled with it’s wonderful build quality and cooling is a downright treat to run in any gamers system.