HEXUS.bang4buck
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the 1,280x1,024 frame-rates for the three 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 | ATI Radeon HD 4550 512MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 3450 512MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 512MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB | XFX GeForce 9400 GT 512MB | XFX GeForce 9500 GT 256MB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate marks at 1,280x1,024 | 59.83 |
18.11 |
58.74 |
154.66 | 45.12 | 79.19 |
|
| Current pricing, including VAT | £30-35* | £29 | £39 | £55 | £40 | £53 | |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,280x1,024 | 1.84 |
0.62 |
1.51 |
2.812 |
1.12 | 1.49 |
|
| Acceptable frame rate (av. 30fps) at 1,280x1,024 | No (CoH, ET, CoD4) | No (CoH, ET, CoD4) | No (CoH, ET, CoD4) | Yes | No (CoH, ET, CoD4) | No (CoH, CoD4) |
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 4670 512MB | ATI HD 4550 512MB | XFX 9500 GT 256MB | XFX 9400 GT 512MB | Sapphire HD 3650 512MB | Sapphire HD 3450 512MB |
| 2.81 | 1.84 | 1.49 | 1.12 | 1.51 | 0.62 |
What we see here is that whilst the Radeon HD 4550 is considerably cheaper than the HD 4670, the latter's performance is markedly better, and it's worth spending more because you gain so much more performance: the increase is considerably better than linear.
Indeed, the HD 4550 is pretty similar to the outgoing HD 3650, apart from a better-performing video-acceleration block (UVD 2.0).
