Review: PowerColor PCS+ 4850 HD4850 512MB GDDR3

HEXUS.bang4buck

In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,200 frame-rates for the four games, normalised them* 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.

* 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.

Here's the HEXUS.bang4buck graph at 1,920x1,200. The graph divides the normalised score by the price.

The HIS still remains the king of value in this price-range; however the PowerColor isn't far behind. The GTX 260 being the most expensive card here isn't particularly good value, especially when you consider that in two of the games, performance is struggling against even the HIS and PowerColor 4850s cards which are about £80 cheaper.