HEXUS.bang4buck and analysis
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,200 frame-rates for five 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 five 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 | eVGA
GeForce GTS 250 SC 1,024MB |
Scan GeForce 9800 GTX+ 512MB | Inno3D
GeForce GTX 260 896MB |
ASUS
Radeon HD 4850 512MB |
Sapphire
Radeon HD 4870 512MB |
XFX Radeon HD
4870 XXX 1,024MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 263.46 | 254.44 | 326.5 | 244.91 | 310.72 | 327.66 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 245.19 | 231.51 | 301.27 | 215.95 | 280.56 |
299.17 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £139
(estimated) |
£114.99 |
£215.51 | £112.99 |
£149.49 | £213.32 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 | 1.764 | 2.013 | 1.398 | 2.103 | 1.877 | 1.402 |
* 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.
The HEXUS.bang4buck score only takes the performance and price into account.Analysis
Knowing that the GeForce GTS 250 is based on 9800 GTX+ technology and factoring in the keen pricing on the older-generation card, the HEXUS.bang4buck, taking normalised pricing into account and with the 1,920x1,200 resolution analysed, shows that the Superclocked card is a reasonable value proposition. The best-performing card on test, GeForce GTX 260, is also the most expensive, leading to the lowest score, closely followed by the XFX Radeon HD 4870 1GB card.
Overclocking
Shipping with stock frequencies of 770/1,890/2,246MHz, we had trouble in getting the card's core and shaders to overclock at all, topping out at 772MHz core and 1,894MHz shaders. The GDDR3 memory, however, scaled from 2,246MHz to 2,620MHz. Rerunning ET: QW at 1,920x1,200 4xAA 16xAF, scoring an average 58.9fps at stock speeds, performance rose to 64.37fps.
