HEXUS bang4buck and HEXUS bang4watt
Putting all the numbers into perspective, let's take a closer look at overall performance.
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,080 frame-rates for seven games, normalised them* and taken account of the single-cards' prices.
But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen seven different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources and pricing tends to fluctuate daily, especially for new-release GPUs.
Consequently, the table below highlight a metric that should only be used as a yardstick for evaluating comparative performance with price factored in. Other architectural benefits are not covered, obviously.
| Aggregate FPS (1,920x1,080) |
Normalised* FPS (1,920x1,080) |
Current pricing | bang4buck (1,920x1,080) |
Power consumption** | bang4watt*** (1,920x1,080) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AMD Radeon HD 6990 OC 4,096MB | 659.00 | 509.50 | £550 | 0.93 | 350 | 1.46 |
| AMD Radeon HD 6990 4,096MB | 638.70 | 499.35 | £550 | 0.91 | 310 | 1.61 |
| HIS Radeon HD 6970 2,048MB | 413.10 | 375.75 | £280 | 1.34 | 183 | 2.05 |
| PowerColor Radeon HD 6950 2,048MB | 371.70 | 337.55 | £225 | 1.50 | 155 | 2.18 |
| AMD Radeon HD 6950 1,024MB | 374.50 | 339.75 | £195 | 1.74 | 150 | 2.27 |
| HIS Radeon HD 6870 1,024MB | 328.40 | 289.70 | £175 | 1.66 | 126 | 2.30 |
| Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1,024MB | 288.40 | 240.60 | £130 | 1.85 | 97 | 2.48 |
| HIS Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB | 524.20 | 442.10 | £500 | 0.88 | 257 | 1.72 |
| XFX Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | 365.00 | 333.30 | £190 | 1.75 | 139 | 2.40 |
| XFX Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | 312.60 | 272.40 | £155 | 1.76 | 117 | 2.33 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 1,536MB | 494.20 | 422.60 | £390 | 1.08 | 252 | 1.68 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 1,280MB | 436.90 | 385.95 | £265 | 1.46 | 196 | 1.97 |
| NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1,024MB | 374.10 | 328.65 | £190 | 1.73 | 154 | 2.13 |
| ASUS GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB | 432.60 | 384.20 | £195 | 1.97 | 244 | 1.57 |
| ASUS GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB | 348.90 | 304.45 | £190 | 1.60 | 204 | 1.49 |
| KFA2 GeForce GTX 460 1,024MB | 286.70 | 229.75 | £140 | 1.64 | 169 | 1.36 |
| EVGA GeForce GTX 460 768MB | 262.40 | 198.00 | £135 | 1.47 | 130 | 1.52 |
* the normalisation refers to taking playable frame rate into account. Should a card benchmark at over 60 frames per second in any one game, the extra fps count as half. Similarly, should a card benchmark lower, say at 40fps, we deduct half the difference from its average frame rate and the desired 60fps, giving it a HEXUS.bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.
** the GPU power consumption is derived from subtracting a flat rate of 100W - indicating system power-draw without a card - from the Call of Duty: Black Ops load figure. While this figure isn't solely indicative of power pulled by the GPU, as the CPU also throttles up, it's a better metric than using peak system-draw alone.
*** the HEXUS.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against GPU power-draw that's shown in the table: the former is divided by the latter. We're using the peak power-draw numbers obtained by running real-world Call of Duty: Black Ops.
Analysis
We're not really stressing the Radeon HD 6990 at the 1,920x1,080 resolution, so while its scores are far and away the best here, the comparatively high street price counts against it. What's more, it doesn't half chew through some watts, thus spanking the HEXUS.bang4watt metric.
