AMD Radeon R9 270 Review: Replacing The Radeon HD 7800s

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AMD packages up another sub-$200 graphics card, this time calling it the Radeon R9 270. We expected a Radeon HD 7850 replacement, but received something quite different. Is it a worthwhile step up, or just a familiar piece of hardware with a paint job?

Results: Metro: Last Light

The Metro series is known for generating taxing graphics loads at its most demanding settings. We dialed Last Light back a bit to facilitate more playable frame rates in the sub-$200 graphics card tier.

We probably could have played it safe and stepped the eye candy back another notch, since our entire collection of cards touches 30 FPS or less in the most demanding passages. Nevertheless, the finishing order is similar to what we already saw in Call of Duty and Battlefield 4.

In general, Metro: Last Light is good for low average frame time variance with occasional big spikes. All of the tested cards suffer equally from this phenomenon.

Don Woligroski
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Don Woligroski was a former senior hardware editor for Tom's Hardware. He has covered a wide range of PC hardware topics, including CPUs, GPUs, system building, and emerging technologies.