Conclusion

Comparing the Radeon R9 290X with the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition shows us a rather clear result. Looking at performance differences a bit closer shows, that the R9 290X is about 36 percent faster on average than the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, when it comes to ingame performance. The biggest performance differences can be found with Far Cry 3, in this case, frame rates are about 57 percent higher on a Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition. On the other side there is the Skyrim, where the R9 290X is 21 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 plug, whereas the same setup with a R9 290X needs 57 Watt. Under load conditions there is 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 380 Watt and with the R9 290X power consumption is at 425 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 45 Watts less than the new one under load conditions.

The new Radeon R9 290X is on average almost 36 percent quicker thatn the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition, which makes this conclusion rather simple. Upgrading from the HD 7970 GHz Edition to a R9 290X makes sense and quite a few games get playable again at higher resolutions. Other than that, you might want to consider, that thanks to the mining hype, Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition cards sell for about 130 Euro on eBay easily. Keeping in mind that a R9 290X card with reference design costs roughly 425 Euro these days will make you invest another 295 Euro to get a seriously 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