A gamer simply can't get enough graphics power in their rig, which makes the upgrade question omnipresent. To show you whether it makes sense to upgrade from one generation to another we created this series of articles, where we will compare graphics cards from different generations. Today we're having a close look at the differences between the Radeon HD 6970 and the R9 280X.
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.
A gamer simply can't get enough graphics power in their rig, which makes the upgrade question omnipresent. To show you whether it makes sense to upgrade from one generation to another we created this series of articles, where we will compare graphics cards from different generations. Today we're having a close look at the differences between the Radeon HD 6970 and the R9 280X. 
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