Conclusion

Although it still can hold its ground in many games, at higher quality settings of course, the HD 5870 definitely shows its age, as after all it is now already three generations behind. When compared to previous generation, Radeon HD 7970 Tahiti-based graphics card, it definitely becomes an unfair battle, as Tahiti-based HD 7970 is not only more efficient but it definitely packs much better performance per buck punch and thanks to AMD's Never Settle bundle, it certainly is a viable upgrade.

While it is still can pull playable framerates in games like the Call of Duty Black Ops 2, the HD 5870 is definitely is definitely not enough when it comes to titles like Crysis 3. Of course, not even the Radeon HD 7970 can pull playable framerate on High Preset, 1920x1080, 8xMSAA, Very High settings with an average 18.4FPS, but it is 130 percent faster than the HD 5870 that managed to pull a rather modest 8FPS. Same things go for most of the other recent game titles and while the Radeon HD 5870 barely pulls playable framerate in Battlefield 3 with 32,6FPS, the Radeon HD 7970 has much more breathing room with an average of 71.2FPS.

Although the performance gain translates to higher power consumption under load, the overall power consumption is much lower on the Radeon HD 7970 when compared to the HD 5870. To be precise, the HD 7970 uses up to 47W in idle while the HD 5870 draws around 53W. Under load, the HD 5870 does draw less at 232W compared to the HD 7970 which needs 323W but overall power consumption makes the HD 7970 around 54% better than the HD 5870, especially if you consider the performance gains.

The price is a whole different story, as, although it is currently not available, the HD 5870 is listed with a lowest price set at €224,09 but was selling at around €249 back in its glory days, which is pretty much what you have to pay for the HD 7970 today, and we are talking about factory-overclocked HD 7970 GHz Edition based on Tahiti XT2 GPU.

The upgrade is certainly a good way to go in case you are running the HD 5870 and looking at the Radeon HD 7970. The HD 7970 definitely has a decent performance-per-buck score, especially considering that it is still eligible for AMD's Never Settle bundle which could give you a total of three free games that you can choose since the HD 7970 gets you Radeon Gold Reward. Of course there is always the new R9/R7 series of graphics cards that will probably get some sort of bundle as well (R9 series already gets Battlefield 4), but bear in mind that some of these R9/R7 are pretty much rebranded HD 7000 series graphics cards. The Radeon R9 280X which is pretty much based on the same chip as the HD 7970 GHz Edition is around 20-30€ more expensive so the HD 7970 certainly is a better choice, at least if you can find it available.

Page 1 - Introduction	Page 10 - DIRT Showdownn
Page 2 - Test Setup	Page 11 - Far Cry 3
Page 3 - 3DMark Fire Strike	Page 12 - Sleeping Dogs
Page 4 - Unigine Heaven 4.0	Page 13 - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Page 5 - BattleField 3	Page 14 - Metro: Last Light
Page 6 - Borderlands 2	Page 15 - GTA V
Page 7 - Bioshock Infinite	Page 16 - Power Consumption
Page 8 - Crysis 3	Page 17 - Performance Index, price
Page 9 - Call of Duty Black Ops 2	Page 18 - Conclusion