HEXUS.bang4buck
HEXUS.bang4buck - Vista suite.
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the 1920x1200 frame rates for the three games, normalised them* and taken account of listed the cards' prices.
But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen three 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 | HIS Radeon HD 3870 X2 1024MiB | ATI Radeon HD 3870 512MiB | MSI NX8800GTS-T2D512E-OC | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1920x1200 | 173.77 | 107.04 | 165.44 | 156.75 | 173.44 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1920x1200 | 127.88 | 82.76 | 124.07 | 124.04 | 139.25 |
| Current price | £290 | £135 | £209 | £235 | £399 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1920x1200 | 0.441 | 0.613 | 0.594 | 0.528 | 0.349 |
| Acceptable frame rate (av. 60fps) at 1920x1200 | No (ET, LP) | No (CoH, QW, LP) | No (ET, LP) | No (ET, LP) | No (LP) |
* 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 bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.
As an example, should a card score 120fps we treat it as 90fps as only half the frame rate above 60fps is counted for the bang4buck - this is the formula: (120-((120-60)/2)). Similarly, should it score 30fps, we count it as only 15fps: (30+((30-60)/2)).
The reasoning behind such calculation lies with playable frame rates.
Should card A score 110fps in a benchmark and card B 160, then card B would otherwise receive an extra 50 marks in our bang4buck assessment, even though both cards produce perfectly playable frame rates and anything above 60fps is a bonus and not a necessity for most.
Similarly, without our adjustments, the aggregated bang4buck total for two very different cards would be identical if, in a further benchmark, card A scored a smooth 70fps and card B an unplayable 20fps. Both would win marks totally 180, yet the games-playing experience would be vastly different.
A more realistic (and useful) assessment would say that card A is better because it ran smoothly in both games - and that view would be accurately reflected in our adjusted aggregation, where card A would receive 150 marks (85+65) and card B 100 (100+0).
In effect, we're including a desired average frame rate, in this case 60, and penalising lower performance while giving frame rates higher than 60fps only half as much credit as those up to 60fps. If this doesn't make sense or you have issue with it, please hit the HEXUS community.
Here's the HEXUS.bang4buck graph at 1920x1200.
The graph divides the normalised score by the price.
The analysis of the graph highlights that whilst the X2 really is two Radeon HD 3870s in CrossFire, the fact that we don't achieve double the performance for more than double the cost - £290 vs. £135 - translates to a lower HEXUS.bang4buck metric.
The GeForce 8800 Ultra is, arguably, just as fast, but its exorbitant retail price of £399 makes its corresponding HEXUS.bang4buck look poor.
Given a choice of declaring a performance-per-pound champion, and basing it entirely on the benchmarks for these three games, the MSI GeForce 8800 GTS 512 seems to be the best bet, providing more-than adequate frame-rate at a lower price-point.
Old suite - Far Cry and Splinter Cell - XP
| Graphics cards | HIS Radeon HD 3870 X2 1024MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra 768MiB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1920x1200 | 243.48 | 213.67 | 239.75 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1920x1200 | 181.74 | 166.84 | 179.88 |
| Current price | £290 | £235 | £399 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1920x1200 | 0.627 | 0.71 | 0.451 |
| Acceptable frame rate (av. 60fps) at 1920x1200 | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Taking just the G80s and R680 for comparison in our two-game older suite, we see that the Ultra is, once again, relegated to last place. The recent price-cutting on the GeForce 8800 GTX makes it a good buy, but the HIS Radeon HD 3870 X2 is close behind.
