Gigabyte Intros R9 270X OC 4GB with WindForce 3X Cooler

News
By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

Gigabyte has announced its R9 270X OC 4 GB, which carries a WindForce 3X cooler.

It seems that many manufacturers are releasing R9 270X graphics cards with 4 GB of graphics memory rather than 2 GB, and Gigabyte is one more manufacturer to join the crowd. Its latest graphics card, the R9 270X OC, with codename GV-R927XOC-4GD, features something the competitors don't – a triple-fan cooler.

The card is built on a non-reference PCB design. The triple-fan cooler is known as the WindForce 3X cooler, and is also featured on various high-end graphics cards from Gigabyte. It is built with three fans, two aluminum fin stacks, as well as a number of heat pipes and a plastic shroud.

Gigabyte has clocked its R9 270X OC 4 GB at 1050 MHz base with a 1100 MHz GPU boost frequency. The memory on the card is clocked at an effective speed of 5.6 GHz.

There was no word on pricing or availability yet.

Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

See more GPUs News
14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • jd_w98
    Before anyone complains about the 4gb being unnecessary, it does have a practical use. Think about people wanting to do crossfire and end up with more performance then an R9 290x, wouldn't be much use to crossfire without all the Vram otherwise you would end up with 2gb of vram.
    Reply
  • mpdugas
    And where does all that heat go?
    Reply
  • Cryio
    As next-gen is on our doorsteps, I think the better future proofed you are right now, the better. 1-2 GB video for today will be TINY in the following 1-2 years, as texture quality will explode.
    Reply
  • Morbus
    Don't fool yourselves. Consoles won't be pushing VRAM in the next 10 years, just like the last generation of consoles did not. By the time we're playing games that require more than 2GB of VRAM, the current gen 2GB cards will be so underpowered you'll need to reduce the settings way down anyway. And chances are, if you're buying gaming video cards now, by that time you'll already have bought something new. SPECIALLY if you're going with the "low end" of gaming cards.

    I bought a 2GB GTX760 and I'm very happy with it, it performs awesome on 1080p for all games I own, including Crysis 3, Battlefield 4 and Company of Heroes 2. But in two years? I'll have bought something new and sold my current 760 for the change... It's the only sensible thing to do.

    YOU CANNOT FUTURE PROOF ON THE GRAPHICS DEPARTMENT!
    Reply
  • iam2thecrowe
    12282302 said:
    Before anyone complains about the 4gb being unnecessary, it does have a practical use. Think about people wanting to do crossfire and end up with more performance then an R9 290x, wouldn't be much use to crossfire without all the Vram otherwise you would end up with 2gb of vram.

    to bad crossfire is completely useless for any triple monitor setup or 4k monitor requiring 4gb vram. May have a use for 1440p dx 11 games i guess.....
    Reply
  • anatomyofme
    If the price is right then why not? I guess this would add 270x as cards out of stock due to mining tho..
    Reply
  • s3anister
    This card has been available on newegg for at least a week or two now, I didn't even know this was news.
    Reply
  • rantoc
    4 GB sounds like overkill atleast until the day you try tri monitor over the old and outdated 1080p or high res 1600p+ gaming with all features on, especially triple buffering in case you like vsync and still don't want bad input lag. Yes its overkill for most but so are a card of this caliber anyway... Now where is that 1600p+ monitor with gsync....
    Reply
  • Cryio
    12282898 said:
    Don't fool yourselves. Consoles won't be pushing VRAM in the next 10 years, just like the last generation of consoles did not. By the time we're playing games that require more than 2GB of VRAM, the current gen 2GB cards will be so underpowered you'll need to reduce the settings way down anyway. And chances are, if you're buying gaming video cards now, by that time you'll already have bought something new. SPECIALLY if you're going with the "low end" of gaming cards.

    Consoles won't be pushing VRAM? When PS3/X360 consoles launched the usual game required 256 MB of VRAM. Now games to be run in 1080p, maxed out WITH FXAA require 1.5 GB or so. Not all games of course, still. Seing how proper PC games like Battlefield 3/4, Crysis 2 with MaldoHD and Metro games push VRAM easily with their amazing textures, (and that's now) think how will it be in a few years time.

    You said PCs built now will be underpowered? If you bought a new PC at the end of 2006, 3-4 GB of ram, and 8800 GTX 512-1GB (SLI or not) and an Intel Q6600 you could play ALL games today (sans the 2-3 or so DX11 only games) no problem, even in 1080, on medium-high.

    If you would've bought something with 256 MB, by the end of 2007 you were already out of luck. Even 512 MB by the end of 2010 was pushing it.

    See where I'm going?
    Reply
  • photonboy
    While VRAM usage in general has gone up over the years, much of the reason is inefficient coding. Game developers have discussed the reasons why VRAM may stay the same or even be REDUCED over the coming years.

    Better anti-aliasing methods, tessellation, and paged streaming from the System RAM are all reasons why VRAM usage could be reduced.

    Mantle in particular, once optimized in several years, can get away with a FRACTION of the video memory for a similar experience to now.

    The new consoles will influence things of course, but keep in mind a game might have access to a SHARED 5GB (say 2GB of "VRAM" and 3GB of "SYSRAM") which on PC can easily be done already with a 2GB card and 8GB of System RAM.
    Reply