HD 78xx and 79xx: to upgrade or not to upgrade. For HD 6950 owners.

[F@32]

May 12, 2012 EDIT: Added gtx 670 and fixed couple wrong avg FPS numbers. Will add shortly charts by resolution as well.

Hi folks. As I can imagine some of you are asking yourself: "Well, sure 78xx and 79xx series perform sweet, but they cost an arm and a leg. I have old trusty 6950 purchased for $300 or below. Should I bother with upgrading it right now?"

I found that most review sites are missing performance/price and performance/power consumption figures. So, I headed to Anand's site, typed FPS figures for cards that are in $350-400 range : 7870, 7950, GTX 580, GTX 670 into a google spreadsheet and came up with the following figures.

Note:
= I only used game benchmarks (37 in total)
= Load watt was from Metro 2033
= I used pricewatch May 12 price quotes for all cards




Note: I reversed price and watt at load numbers to show that less is better.

As you can see,at the current price levels, HD 6950 is the winner in terms of performance/price (while 6950 stock is available). GTX 670 takes the absolute performance and performance/power crown in $350-400 price range.

Cheers!

ChartNumbers.png