Should i trade my r9 270 for two hd 6970 in crossfire?

Solution
Save money and upgrade to a stronger single card later. Less heat, less noise, less power draw, less issues with microstuttering and game support. than with 2 cards.
Not.
You may win a synthetic fps benchmark, but gameplay will be better with a single stronger card.
CF will expose you to stuttering and screen tearing.
That is caused by small differences in the performance of each card as they render their half of a screen.
Lastly, not all games support dual cards well, or even at all.
 

need4speeds

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The pair of HD-6970's are faster than a single 270 but they are not double the power, maybe about 1.6x faster. If they are willing to swap power supplies with you for a for a little cash it could be worth it.
You will need at least a quality 750watt or other 850 watt to run two HD-6970's while two HD-7850's are ok with a quality 550watt or most 650watt power supplies.
If you have enough power supply, the HD-6970's are faster. They will make more noise and heat.

It's not worth doing if you have to buy a power supply and extra case fans. Looking for a second used 270 would be a better choice.

-look up the wattage online or in tom's charts. Two 270's are about the same wattage as a single HD-6970. Look up some gaming benchmarks too, you will see the HD-6970 is not too bad, but it does use a huge amount of power to get the job done.
 

need4speeds

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AMD fixed the stuttering issue with framerate pacing. There is still screen tearing at times. It works well with my pair of HD-7850's. I think the HD-6970 uses the same driver so it too should have this new feature. The drivers have improved so the HD-6970's are faster and smoother than when they were new.
(The 270 is basically a updated HD-7850) In newer benchmarks they may use the HD-6990, it's basically two HD-6970's.

The two HD-4870's it replaced were about as fast as a single HD-7850. Two HD-4870's are a bit faster than a HD-6970 but not by much. Two HD-7850's or 270's are twice as fast as two HD-4870's.
Tri-fire HD-4870's used to compete with two HD-6950's back in the day with the pair of HD-6970's being a bit faster.

A pair of HD-6970's is still over 3,000shaders. Like my HD-4870's it's the insane wattage needs that make them maybe no longer worth using.
 
the raw power might be attractive but remember the 6k series is very old. they don't even have support for DX12. so if he ever thinking playing those game (DX12 exclusive title) the 6k series is definitely no go while his current 270 supports DX12 just fine. and AMD was supposed to drop 5k and 6k series from the main driver. the first ever crimson was supposed to be the last driver for these two series but with several of crimson problems it seems AMD postpone that plan for now. even so in the near future AMD will drop them. and when that happen that CF setup will be useless because you can no longer get CF profiles that only offered by new drivers.