HEXUS.bang4buck, temps, and overclocking
In a rough-and-ready assessment of bang4buck, 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.
| Graphics cards | POV GeForce GTX 260 (216 cores) | Palit GeForce GTX 260 (216 cores) |
Force3D Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 273.31 |
257.49 |
266.67 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 256.65 |
248.10 |
243.34 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £218 |
£205 |
£200 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,9200x1,200 | 1.18 | 1.21 |
1.22 |
| Acceptable frame rate (av. 60fps) at 1,920x1,200 | Yes | Yes |
No (CoH) |
* 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.
| HEXUS.bang4buck (graphics) 1,920x1,200 | ||
|---|---|---|
| POV GeForce GTX 260 Premium | Force3D Radeon HD 4870 1GB | Palit GeForce GTX 260 |
| 1.18 | 1.22 | 1.21 |
Pure performance is pretty similar across the boards and so is pricing, gravitating around £200. That's why the HEXUS.bang4buck is almost identical amongst our trio.
Temperature musings
We perform our testing on an open test-bed with a 120mm fan simulating case airflow.
| Graphics cards | POV GeForce GTX 260 (216 cores) | Palit GeForce GTX 260 (216 cores) | Force3D Radeon HD 4870 (1GB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ambient temperature | 21°C | 21°C | 23.5°C |
| Idle temperature | 44°C | 42°C | 78°C |
| Load temperature | 67°C | 64°C | 90°C |
| Ambient-to-load delta | 46°C | 43°C | 67°C |
Overclocking
Cranking it up some more from the base 576MHz/1,242/1,998MHz clocks, we managed really push the card to decent levels, topping out at 704MHz core/1,414MHz shaders/2,450MHz memory. Seeing this, we wonder if the same base binning is used on EXO samples, too.
Looking back at the ET:QW test at 1,920x1,200 we see that card, at its shipping clocks, scored an average 75.93fps. When overclocked this rose to an impressive 89.7 fps when overclocked, which is the kind of benchmark result a Radeon HD 4850 X2 returns.
