So i was wandering... how would the R9 270 Boost would handle outerra nearly maxed out or at medium - high settings? as i'm currently saving up to get one.
I have an HIS ICEQX² Radeon R9 270 (2Gb DDR5), running with an Intel Core I3-4130. It's a really good GPU, giving great performance compared to it's price. Metro Last Light was running almost running full detail (exept physX of course), Far Cry 3 full detail, Battlefield 3 full detail too (all in 1920*1080, 40~60 fps). The only game I must be cautious with the settings is Arma 3, but it's a very specific case.
Outerra run really well, no matter what level of detail you choose. However, I keep a lower terrain and texture quality (terrain: 960p, texture: high), to avoid any "pop up" effect when you move fast ; or experiencing small framerate loss in an area with a lot of very detailed models (Levi's GTA IV buildings for example). To give a more precise answer to your question, yes, the engine will run smoothly, in it's current state, with medium -high settings
Due to the sometimes clunky Open-GL support with ATI, there are some artifacts (large shadows dissapearing depending of the direction you are looking at) with Catalist drivers 14.2, but the engine is still in Alpha, so nothing surprising since they are working on this topic. To quote Cameni : "In Catalyst 13.12 AMD has implemented the OpenGL extension we needed to be able to handle planetary distances more efficiently, and ultimately allowing us to implement better solution especially for the multiple lights rendering. The upcoming update will automatically switch to the new mode if it finds the extension, and people with AMD cards are advised to update to the latest driver version."
Hope it helps you