Older Video Cards vs New(Performance)

[ibex333]

So I been wondering why some people feel the need to own the latest hardware...

I been considering what would be better... A Radeon 280 or 2x 6950's in Crossfire that I own.

I looked at some benchmarks, and noticed that in many cases performance is very similar.

Lets get a few things out of the way right now:

1)Power consumption is irrelevant. I don't pay for electricity

2)Heat is irrelevant. I never had any major heat issues. (Personally)

3)There is no tearing or weird glitches with Crossfire. I don't know what some people are talking about. Maybe it's because I don't play most games as soon as they come out avoiding most release day driver issues.


I did some more research and noticed that a Radeon 5970 is about the same (sheer gaming performance wise) as a 280. But wait... A used 280 costs about $160, give or take...

But a 5970 can be had for around $100!


So why would anyone get a 280X considering all the things I said? Am I missing something here?

 

[VirtualLarry]

So why would anyone get a 280X considering all the things I said? Am I missing something here?

Newer hardware, supports newer DirectX versions. They generally run faster on compute shader-heavy and tesselation-heavy games.

 

[ibex333]

I don't know about DX12, but the difference between dx10 and dx11 was negligible. I turned it off whenever possible for a boost in performance.

 

[MrTeal]

So I been wondering why some people feel the need to own the latest hardware...

I been considering what would be better... A Radeon 280 or 2x 6950's in Crossfire that I own.

I looked at some benchmarks, and noticed that in many cases performance is very similar.

Lets get a few things out of the way right now:

1)Power consumption is irrelevant. I don't pay for electricity

2)Heat is irrelevant. I never had any major heat issues. (Personally)

3)There is no tearing or weird glitches with Crossfire. I don't know what some people are talking about. Maybe it's because I don't play most games as soon as they come out avoiding most release day driver issues.


I did some more research and noticed that a Radeon 5970 is about the same (sheer gaming performance wise) as a 280. But wait... A used 280 costs about $160, give or take...

But a 5970 can be had for around $100!


So why would anyone get a 280X considering all the things I said? Am I missing something here?

You need to be careful with 5970s, a lot (probably the majority) of them were ridden hard back during the Bitcoin mining days. The power supply circuitry on those cards was under-cooled relative to the 5870, and even at 100% fan it was pretty common to have the VRMs at 120C 24/7. Unless I personally knew it was coming from a friend's gaming rig, I'd avoid them for reliability reasons.

Even if you got a new one though, the 5970 isn't that attractive even at $100. Heat and power might not matter, but that card is LOUD. It also has less RAM and was slower than a 7970 when the latter was launched, and that lead is likely larger today in newer games. VLIW5 is old.

For $100 you'd be a lot better off with a used 7950/7970.

 

[atticus14]

newer single cards with similar performance of 2 older cards will always be better, because not all games use xfire/sli. If you rely on crossfire on older cards for games to be enjoyable (good settings + decent FPS) if multi GPU doesn't work you are left with crap performance. If you have a habit of playing one or two games for a ton of hours and you already know xfire works, than sure, pick up a cheap secondary card, but otherwise best to avoid the headaches. There will also just be games that are near unplayable at high settings on old cards due to lack of VRAM.

 

[LTC8K6]

A 280 massacres a 5870, so a 280 probably beats up on a 5970 pretty good as well.

A 280X even more so.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1062?vs=1332

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1062?vs=1041

 

[tential]

If you're on a conroe system with an old GPU and are ok playing like that, then you're happy.
Personally, I'd toss the GPU (Or place it on a mantle or whatever, that's where all my GPUs are going now), and use the CPU/RAM for a file server, and buy a whole new PC.

So it's a personal preference, if you're happy with your setup you're happy.

 

[3DVagabond]

The biggest issue is anything pre GCN is severely lacking in modern feature set. I wouldn't want a "new" (for me) card that was already becoming obsolete. I wouldn't want anything older than 7970/7950. And even that is stretching it.

 

[iiiankiii]

Simple, GCN continues to get driver support while the 5970 won't. Expect to get improved performance in newer games while the 5970 declines. Plus, that 2GB is a bottleneck in some newer games. The 3GB VRAM of the 280 will not. The 280 is a known overclocking beast. It can easily reach 1050 mhz.

As for crossfire, you might have to wait a long time to get proper crossfire support in some games. Why chance it when a single card won't have to deal with it?

Overall, pay the extra money and grab a R9 280. You'll continue to get support going forward, be less bottlenecked by VRAM and avoid those crossfire woes.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

1) most people pay for electricity

2) most people also pay for air conditioning

3) Who wants a computer the size of refrigerator because it's got a bunch of video cards stacked up inside?

That's why a lot of people feel a need to upgrade, anyway.

 

[Headfoot]

5970 isn't getting driver attention, and crossfire depends heavily on drivers. a 280 is a million times better buy than the 5970. Also you can get 280's (or 7950 Boost) for $100 used. Don't compare new prices to used prices, compare used 280 to used 5970. Dont forget the 280 overclocks significantly better, most chips can hit 1150-1200 core. Anything faster than that will be pretty hard CPU bottlenecked by the age of the rest of the system.

 

[Red Hawk]

So why would anyone get a 280X considering all the things I said? Am I missing something here?

Yes, you're missing a ton of things, some of them willfully. Why would anyone buy a 280 or 280X instead of a 5970 (since that's the one you made a price comparison for)? Here are the reasons:

First, power consumption and heat. You may not care about those things, but don't be obtuse about it and assume that everyone is like you and doesn't care.

Second, feature support. The 5970 is old and out of date. It doesn't support Virtual Super Resolution, or AMD's higher quality EQAA. It doesn't have the VCE video processor or support video accelerated decoding for some more recent formats. Its anisotropic filtering isn't as good. It doesn't support Mantle. It won't support DirectX 12 or Vulkan. People who want those features can get them with a 280/280X, they can't with a 5970.

Third, problems with Crossfire compatibility, scaling, stuttering, and latency. You have to rely on AMD to release drivers that enable Crossfire in every new game, and sometimes AMD takes a long time to come out with these drivers, even for popular games -- it took AMD months to enable Crossfire with Skyrim. Even once AMD does enable Crossfire, it may not work perfectly. You may only get 50% better performance than a single 5870, or worse. Microstuttering and runt frames has always been a problem with dual GPU setups. Recently AMD tried remedying the issue with optional frame pacing -- it's optional though because it trades the stuttering for control latency issues. The whole thing is just a potential headache that you never have to worry about with a single GPU.

Fourth, new vs used. The 280/280X is available for purchase new, while the 5970 isn't, so if you're looking for something new, the 5970 isn't even an option. This is an especially important concern like MrTeal said because the 5970s were used a lot in the bitcoin mining days and are likely to be worn out and broken, or near to it, if bought used now.

Fifth, performance. The 5970 is not going to match the 280/280X in sheer gaming performance. Its tessellation sucks, to start with. The 280/280X will be much better at compute tasks. The 5970 is stuck with effectively 1 GB of memory, which is completely unacceptable for modern graphics cards to the point that even the Radeon 260X or the Geforce 750 Ti come with 2 GB of memory standard.

Sixth, driver support. Something as old as the 5970 will not get the driver performance improvements and bug fixes that more recent graphics cards get.

So yeah, a litany of reasons, you'd have to be rather thick to not see why people buy new graphics cards over old, out of date ones.

 

[ibex333]

First, power consumption and heat. You may not care about those things, but don't be obtuse about it and assume that everyone is like you and doesn't care.

I am not assuming that. I was only talking about myself, and asking my questions like: "Given I don't care for x and y, does it make sense for me... etc etc..."

Second, feature support. The 5970 is old and out of date. It doesn't support Virtual Super Resolution, or AMD's higher quality EQAA. It doesn't have the VCE video processor or support video accelerated decoding for some more recent formats. Its anisotropic filtering isn't as good. It doesn't support Mantle. It won't support DirectX 12 or Vulkan. People who want those features can get them with a 280/280X, they can't with a 5970.

Didn't know that. Thank you. But in the case of Mantle, it's not enough for a card to support it. The game must be coded for it too, and there are very few games overall that do. Doesn't look like that's changing all that much either.

Third, problems with Crossfire compatibility, scaling, stuttering, and latency. You have to rely on AMD to release drivers that enable Crossfire in every new game, and sometimes AMD takes a long time to come out with these drivers, even for popular games -- it took AMD months to enable Crossfire with Skyrim. Even once AMD does enable Crossfire, it may not work perfectly. You may only get 50% better performance than a single 5870, or worse. Microstuttering and runt frames has always been a problem with dual GPU setups. Recently AMD tried remedying the issue with optional frame pacing -- it's optional though because it trades the stuttering for control latency issues. The whole thing is just a potential headache that you never have to worry about with a single GPU.

Never really noticed such stuttering issues myself, but thanks. I didst know much of this either.



Overall, thanks for lots of great insight everyone. I really appreciate it. I didn't know much of these things.

I based all my assumptions on a google search. Check out this link: http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-280-vs-Radeon-HD-5970

According to this, a 5970 seems to be better.

 

[SPBHM]

a 6970 can be clearly beaten by a 260X in some games like http://pclab.pl/zdjecia/artykuly/chaostheory/2015/05/pcars/charts4/pcars_c_1920h.png
most games are not this bad, but it seems like the 260X manages to beat a 6970 on most current games,

the older cards are obviously less efficient compared to their theoretical numbers and I think they are not really the priority of AMD and game devs when optimizing performance.

at this point, I would just skip cards older than Kepler and GCN as much as possible


also, 3GB is really something worth considering over anything with 2GB.
280X seems like a winner

 

[tential]

I am not assuming that. I was only talking about myself, and asking my questions like: "Given I don't care for x and y, does it make sense for me... etc etc..."



Didn't know that. Thank you. But in the case of Mantle, it's not enough for a card to support it. The game must be coded for it too, and there are very few games overall that do. Doesn't look like that's changing all that much either.



Never really noticed such stuttering issues myself, but thanks. I didst know much of this either.



Overall, thanks for lots of great insight everyone. I really appreciate it. I didn't know much of these things.

I based all my assumptions on a google search. Check out this link: http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-R9-280-vs-Radeon-HD-5970

According to this, a 5970 seems to be better.

If you're using gpu boss to make your decision you're pretty screwed in making this decision....

 

[Paul98]

280 is going to give you much higher frame rates vs the 5970.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If you're using gpu boss to make your decision you're pretty screwed in making this decision....

Yeah, very much so.

Whoever put up GPUBoss and CPUBoss should be criminally charged.

 

[RussianSensation]

But wait... A used 280 costs about $160, give or take...

That sounds way too expensive because a new R9 280X with a free racing game and lifetime warranty is $200. A new R9 290 is $220. So of course it makes no sense to pay $160 for a used R9 280. No wonder you think it's a bad deal.

In modern games, a single R9 280X is 84% faster at 1080P vs. a 6970 and since you don't care about noise levels, heat etc. a stock R9 290 would be 122% faster. Instead of considering an R9 280/280X, maybe hunt down an R9 290 and sell your 6950s. You'd be much happier.

According to this, a 5970 seems to be better.

Why would you use some random site with synthetic measurements to gauge GPU performance?

To start with, HD5970 only has 1GB of aggregate VRAM vs. 3GB on the 280X. In a lot of games that means slide-show and vastly reduced level of texture quality. If you intend to keep this card for modern 2015-2017 games, going with a 1GB card is not smart. Even with 2GB of VRAM, it's already not enough in some games.

5970 would be crippled hard. Fallout 4 would destroy a 1GB card.

Secondly, you are not accounting for DX11 performance. HD5870 and thus 5970 has a very weak tessellation/geometry unit. Many modern games from Fallout 4 to The Witcher 3 to Civilization games use tessellation. The combination of 1GB of VRAM + weak tessellation performance means that in modern games HD7970Ghz (~ 280X) is going to be 2.25-3X faster than the HD5870. Since HD5970 doesn't have 100% scaling, it guarantees that a 280X will be MUCH faster than the 5970, while displaying HQ textures too.

Source

You also didn't consider micro-stutter. At lower FPS, 5970 will feel far worse in smoothness vs. a single 280X. Usually for a lot of games, SLI/CF requires higher fps to achieve smoothness than a single card. Ironically that means 50 fps on a 280X might feel better than 55 fps on a 5970. But this scenario isn't going to happen since 280X will almost always be faster to begin with.

If your motherboard support CF and you have a good CPU (at least an i5 2500K OC or faster), you could consider 2 used HD7950 card for $70 a piece if you can find them. That would be a better deal than a $160 R9 280X. However, with prices of after-market R9 290 cards dropping below $200, it might be worth hunting one of those down instead of a $160 R9 280X.

 

[Zodiark1593]

I wouldn't think running into a RAM limit would hamstring 128-bit cards like the 960 so greatly, though I'd wager latency probably plays a greater role than bandwidth.

 

[Headfoot]

Yeah GPUBoss is basically a load of crap and isn't worth any consideration when making a purchasing decision.

$160 for a used 280x is a bad deal for sure. I just got a used 290 for $175, and that's 50% faster.

 

[crisium]

Having a pre-GCN AMD card in this day and age is a bad idea. There's still reasons to get GCN 1.0 if you don't have Freesync and aren't interested in VSR, etc. At least those cards are still optimized for. But VLIW and older are long, long dead. And expecting Crossfire performance out of them is futile.

 

[ibex333]

Just want to update:

With the latest drivers(released as of June, 2015) I am getting average fps in the lower 50's @ 1080p with everything set to lowest setting. I can even go up on some settings and still remain in the same fps range.

The lowest fps I got was on top of the Corvega Factory(may be misspelling it) overlooking the area around. I got about 27fps there. (which is still very playable IMO and it's not like the whole game takes place in such places)

So this Crossfire setup is not complete garbage considering that it's able to "somewhat" handle a newest game.



Also, since we are on the topic, I have a question.


I have a 270x, and I bought a 2nd 270x for very, very cheap. (coming in the mail).


Will that Crossfire setup result in a significant boost? (ignore my sig. This is with a 2500k @ 4.5GHz)

 

[VirtualLarry]

If you're using gpu boss to make your decision you're pretty screwed in making this decision....

This. 1000x.

 

[crisium]

ibex333, as far as I know Crossfire doesn't even work in Fallout 4. You are getting 50 fps average at 1080 at low on a single 6950. And yes, that is arguably garbage relative to where the 6950 used to stand in tiers; that is a testament to using the newest architecture. The 6950 used to be only 5% slower than a 7850 at the latter's launch (naturally, VLIW was still mostly optimized for back then).

https://tpucdn.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7850_HD_7870/images/perfrel_1920.gif

Just from reading experiences on other forums, a 7850 gets 60fps (except in the dips you mentioned that everyone gets) no problem at around Medium or even some High Settings (Godrays on Low or off, naturally). This guy claims he can do High with Ultra Textures and Low Godrays for 1080p 60fps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6bXsaGrE4bg

So a 270X should be a large improvement over the 6950 in modern games, even if in older games optimized for VLIW it might only be around 25%-30% faster.

 

[Elixer]

2) most people also pay for air conditioning

It is snowing outside, and is 66F in the room... I think some heat would be good, and much cheaper than running the central furnace.

Just want to update:

With the latest drivers(released as of June, 2015) I am getting average fps in the lower 50's @ 1080p with everything set to lowest setting. I can even go up on some settings and still remain in the same fps range.

The latest drivers were released a few days ago...

I have a 270x, and I bought a 2nd 270x for very, very cheap. (coming in the mail).

Will that Crossfire setup result in a significant boost? (ignore my sig. This is with a 2500k @ 4.5GHz)

Significant boost in what game? It can help, yes, but other times, just like SLI, it is a PITA full of bugs/errors depending on the game.