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Which card is better? Radeon 7970, or the R9280X?

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Mantrousse

Member
Joined
Aug 5, 2013
Location
London, UK
Hi, all!

I just won a graphics card, and was hoping you guys could compare it to my 'old'/current card, and tell me if the new one is better. I.e. Is there any point in my switching the cards over, or should I just sell the new one?

Current card:
XFX Radeon HD 7970 DD Edition 3GB GDDR5

New Card:
Gigabyte Radeon R9 280X 3GB GDDR5 (picture of the box below to avoid any confusion)

Bwrmw8IIgAAR5Ah.jpg

Rest of my rig:
RAM: Corsair Memory XMS3 8GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 Dual Channel
CPU: Intel CPU i5 4670K Socket 1150 Quad Core Haswell
MB: Asus Z87-A Intel Z87 Socket 1150
PSU: Corsair 600M

If you need to know my screen or anything else, then let me know. Any input is hugely valuable to me!


Thanks.

P.s. In which case you know one is better than the other, any advice on how much I can sell either for would be awesome (£s, as I'm from the UK). The old card is like 11 months old, the new one is factory new.
 
The 7970 and 280X are literally the same GPU.
If can grab a better PSU you could Crossfire them, if your 7970 by itself isn't performing as well as you want.
 
Haha, no way? Ok, so it's either Crossfire or sell?

How much performance increase would I see if I Crossfire'd these? And what kind of PSU would I be looking at to do that?

Honestly, I'm not sure it'd be worth it for me, as I'm not playing any hugely-demanding games, and my current card does a good job. So, if I did sell the new card, how much would that be for? I think it's around £240?
 
Yeah, Crossfire or sell.

Depending on the game anywhere from 0-90% increase. Realistically, somewhere between 70-80% for the majority of games.
I'd look at grabbing an EVGA SuperNova G2 750W or 850W. One of the best PSUs on the market, great prices.

I'm not sure how much they sell for in the UK, sorry.
 
Would Crossfiring these cards, say, stop me from having to buy a new card a year/two years on from now? Or will the chips be too old to run any new games?
 
It will definitely keep you from having to buy a new card as soon.

The 280X uses the newest version of DirectX, and it'll support the upcoming DirectX 12.
It'll be compatible for years to come. The limiting factor will be what resolution/settings/framerate requirements you have.
 
Ok, and so, how would I actually Crossfire these cards? How does it work?

And re: what you said about DX12, does that mean if I were to Crossfire, I would have to put my new card in the current slot taken by my old card? Like, does that make it the 'primary' card? Or can it just be in the second slot and everything runs off it?

Sorry, Crossfire is completely new to me.
 
The primary card is whichever one your monitor is plugged in to. Doesnt matter if its the top card or the bottom card. To crossfire them you just need a motherboard that supports two x16 pcie slots so you can physically plug in both cards, and the power supply to run them. After you install the second card you put on a crossfire bridge that runs from card 1 to card 2 (little ribbon cable about 3/4 inch wide by 2-3 long comes with all crossfire capable amd cards) and boot into windows. The catalyst control center should see you have crossfire capability at this point and ask you to enable it.

Edit: crossfire has a few kinks, for example it does not work on games played in windowed mode, even borderless windowed mode that looks full screen.
 
Ah, ok, thank you, that helps a lot!

That might be a problem if I can't play games in windowed mode, as sometimes I need to do that to record gameplays/possibly stream. Crossfire doesn't allow windowed or 'fullscreen windowed' at all?
 
280X is a re-branded 7970, might be a bit better but you can just crossfire the two and you should get pretty good performance from the pair, I myself would probably sell the 280X while it's new and wait for the Nvidia 900 series to upgrade.
 
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