Conclusion

Comparing the Radeon R9 280X with the Radeon HD 5870 shows us a rather clear result. Looking at performance differences a bit closer shows, that the R9 280X is about 106 percent faster on average than the Radeon HD 5870, when it comes to ingame performance. The biggest performance differences can be found with Metro: Last Light, in this case, frame rates are about 153 percent higher on a Radeon HD 5870. On the other side there is the Call of Duty Black Ops 2, where the R9 280X is "only" 59 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 5870 we see that it pulls 53 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 5870 card into the test system power consumption goes up to 232 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 98 Watts less than the new one under load conditions.

The new Radeon R9 280X is on average more than 153 percent quicker than the Radeon HD 5870, which makes this conclusion a no-brainer. Upgrading from the HD 5870 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 5870 cards still go for about 100 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 170 Euro to get a really quick, new card.

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