HEXUS.bang4buck
HEXUS.bang4buck
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' value for money,
HEXUS.bang4buck metric, we've
aggregated the 1,920x1,200 frame-rates for the four games,
normalised them* and taken account of listed the cards' prices.
But, even so, 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 | AMD Radeon HD 4870 X2 1,024MiB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 XF | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 512MiB | PowerColor Radeon HD 4850 | Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 X2 1024MiB | BFG GeForce GTX 280 1024MiB | XFX GeForce GTX 260 896MiB | ZOTAC GeForce 9800 GX2 1024MiB | BFG GeForce 9800 GTX SLI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 327.96 | 330.47 | 225.68 | 180.99 | 202.02 | 309.02 | 253.92 | 306.75 | 321.41 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 237.41 | 238.22 | 162.71 | 126.51 | 151.29 | 224.86 |
185.04 | 228.33 |
238.63 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £349 (estimated) |
£350 |
£175 |
£117 | £229 |
£349 |
£219 | £299 |
£258** |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 | 0.68 | 0.68 | 0.93 | 1.08 | 0.66 | 0.64 |
0.84 | 0.76 |
0.92 |
| Acceptable frame rate (av. 60fps) at 1,920x1,200 | No (Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (ET, Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, 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 HEXUS.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 HEXUS.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 HEXUS.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.
** assuming a single-card price of £129, which should be rolled in next week.
Here's the HEXUS.bang4buck graph at 1,920x1,200.
The actual and aggregated scores show the Radeon HD 4870 X2 to be the
fastest single-board graphics card around, very narrowly falling behind
the dual-card HD 4870 setup.
Now, at the projected price of £349, value for money will
never be deemed as fantastic, simply because a single Radeon HD 4870,
costing half as much, provides more than half the performance.
Still, taking into account NVIDIA large price-drops on high-end SKUs -
GTX 280 has dropped from £399 to £349 last week -
ATI's twin-GPU monster looks good enough.
And Radeon HD 4870 X2 picture might look even get better when AMD
finalises pricing.
In the meantime, our pick of the bunch would be either the Radeon HD
4870 or GeForce GTX
260; they both produce decent frame-rates at 1,920x1,200+ and don't
cost the earth.
