About GPU

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What's a Ati video card reference design? Is it card bought directly from AMD?
Is the board black..etc?

"Reference design" means the card strictly adheres the original engineering specifications as designed by the upstream manufacturer (AMD or Nvidia in this case.)

"OEM design" means the vendor is only using the upstream manufacturer's chips, and have designed their own card around that chip.

The reason why we strongly recommend reference design cards is that they are over-engineered with the intention of building a high-quality card that can safely accomodate a wide range of workloads. Reference design cards receive a high level of R&D, testing, and quality assurance. They are rock-solid, and because all reference design cards adhere to this specification, all reference design cards, regardless of manufacturer, are created equal.

The reason why we strongly condemn OEM design cards is that they do not receive anywhere near the same level of R&D or testing as reference design cards. OEMs typically do anything they can to lower the manufacturing costs of these cards, such as using cheaper materials and cutting corners in the design and manufacturing process. They will then add extremely cheap yet visually attractive cooling solutions to their cards, enabling them to attach marketing names to their products such as "Lightning", "Tri-X", "Frozr", "IceQ", which allows them to sell the card at a higher price and thus maximize their profits. However, while these cooling solutions may appear to be superior (three fans are far greater than one!), in reality they are purely superficial and cannot cope with the kind of punishment oclHashcat will dish out.

Always buy reference design cards. Period. If you are unsure if a card is reference design or OEM design, go to the upstream manufacturer's website (amd.com or nvidia.com) and look at the product photo. If the card you want to buy does not look exactly like the product photo on the upstream manufacturer's website, then it is not a reference design card.

I got a MSI R9 270 gaming @ 950-1050 clock, but i can over clock it to 1150. Is it a reference design?

It has "Gaming" in its name, so no, it's not reference design.

Photograph of your GPU:




Photograph of reference R9 270 from amd.com: