HEXUS.bang4buck, power-draw, and overclocking
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the 1,280x1,024 frame-rates for the four games and taken account of the cards' prices.
But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen four different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources and pricing tends to fluctuate daily.
Consequently, the table and graph 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.
| Graphics cards | Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 | Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 256MB | XFX GeForce 9500 GT 256MB | ZOTAC GeForce 9600 GT 512MB | XFX GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate marks at 1,280x1,024 | 201.65 |
78.74 |
138.18* |
96.89 |
232.24 | 186.2 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £50 | £35 | £65 | £45 | £70 | £68 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,280x1,024 | 4.03 |
2.25 |
2.13 |
2.15 |
3.32 | 2.74 |
| Acceptable frame rate (av. 30fps) at 1,280x1,024 | Yes | No (CoH, ET, CoD4, GRID) | No (ET*) | No (CoH, CoD4, ) | Yes |
Yes |
* the Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 256MB failed to complete any testing in Enemy Territory: Quake Wars. Knowing this, its HEXUS.bang4buck is artificially low.
Here's the HEXUS.bang4buck graph at 1,280x1,024. The graph divides the aggregate score by the price.
| HEXUS.bang4buck at 1,280x1,024 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sapphire HD 3650 512 | XFX 9500 GT 256 | XFX 9600 GSO | ZOTAC 9600GT | Sapphire HD 3850 256 | Sapphire HD 4670 512 |
| 2.25 | 2.15 | 2.74 | 3.32 | 2.13 | 4.03 |
High comparative performance and a low estimated street price means that the Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB wins the HEXUS.bang4buck metric with consummate ease.
Power-draw
| Graphics cards | Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB GDDR3 | Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 3850 256MB | XFX GeForce 9500 GT 256MB | ZOTAC GeForce 9600 GT 512MB | XFX GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| System power-draw (idle) | 64W |
68W |
91W |
73W |
84W | 88W |
| System power-draw (load) | 110W | 111W | 150W | 101W | 133W | 133W |
The card's pretty frugal with respect to power, drawing around the same wattage as a Radeon HD 3650 512MB, according to our numbers.
Overclocking
Ramping up clocks past the 750MHz/2,000MHz default speed, we managed to hit 800MHz core/engine and 2,100MHz for the GDDR3 memory. Looking back at the Enemy Territory: Quake Wars test run at 1,680x1,050, the default-clocked card scored an average of 49.97fps. This rose to 52.3fps with the elevated clocks. There's only so much clock-speed can do for an architecture.
