Conclusion

Comparing the Radeon R9 280X with the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition can be quite interesting. Despite the fact, that both cards are based on the same chip and architecture, the older card is a little bit quicker than the new one. Looking at the results a bit closer shows, that the R9 280X is about 2.1 percent slower on average than the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, when it comes to ingame performance. The biggest performance differences can be found with Skyrim. In this case, frame rates are about 4 percent higher on a Radeon HD 7970 GHz. On the other side there is the Metro Last Light, where the R9 280X is 1.1 percent quicker.

At this point we also want to have a closer look at power consumption. If we equip our test system with a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition we see that it pulls 60 Watts from the plub, whereas the same setup with a R9 280X only needs 48 Watt. Under load conditions there is also a rather big difference between the two cards. Once we plugged the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition card into the test system power consumption goes up to 360 Watt and with the R9 280X power consumption doesn't go past 320 Watt. On thing appears to be quite obvious: although both cards are based on the same chip, the R9 280X is doing the job in a more energy efficient way. If you ask us why this is so, that is a completely other question and we have to say we're afraid, but we don't have an answer to it.

Since the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition is quicker on average than the R9 280X it simply doesn't make sense at all if you "upgrade" from the older card to the newer one. In the end there is a simple reason why the old card is quicker than the new one. Once we have a closer look at clock speeds we see the reference 7970 GHz Edition clocks with 1100 MHz whereas the R9 280X runs at 1070 MHz. Basically, when looking at our results, we see that the only good reason to buy a Radeon R9 280X over a 7970 GHz Edition or to upgrade to a Radeon R9 280X is power efficiency. In our opinion this is not worth the money, which is why we would stick with the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition.

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