Conclusion

Comparing the Radeon R9 280X with the Radeon HD 6970 shows us a rather clear result. Looking at performance differences a bit closer shows, that the R9 280X is about 67 percent faster on average than the Radeon HD 6970, when it comes to ingame performance. The biggest performance differences can be found with Battlefield 3, in this case, frame rates are about 114 percent higher on a Radeon HD 6970. On the other side there is the Crysis 3, where the R9 280X is 32.9 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 6970 we see that it pulls 57 Watts from the plug, 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 6970 card into the test system power consumption goes up to 244 Watt and with the R9 280X power consumption is at 320 Watt. In this case it looks like the new card is more energy efficient in idle but on the other hand the old card, needs 76 Watts less than the new one under load conditions.

The new Radeon R9 280X is on average almost 70 percent quicker thatn the Radeon HD 6970, which makes this conclusion a no-brainer. Upgrading from the HD 6970 to a R9 280X definitely makes sense and quite a few games get playable again at high resolutions. Other than that you might want to consider, that thanks to the mining hype, Radeon HD 6970 cards go for about 130 Euro on eBay easily. Keeping in mind that an R9 280X card with reference design costs roughly 270 Euro these days will make you invest another 140 Euro to get a really quick, new card.

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