HEXUS.bang4buck, and thoughts
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the 1,680x1,050 and 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, below, highlights 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 | Gigabyte Radeon HD 4870 1,024MB (Vista) | Gigabyte Radeon HD 4870 1,024MB (Win7) | BFG GeForce GTX 260 896MB (Vista) | BFG GeForce GTX 260 896MB (Win7) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate marks at 1,680x1,050 | 370.27 |
378.53 |
386.33 |
372.58 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,680x1,050 | 330.56 |
335.34 |
337.65 |
317.35 |
| Aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 318.63 |
323.15 |
326.75 |
310.31 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 291.71 |
296.12 |
301.27 |
280.38 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £185 | £185 | £165 | £165 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,680x1,050 | 1.787 |
1.813 |
2.046 |
1.923 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 | 1.577 |
1.6 |
1.826 |
1.7 |
* 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.
Radeon HD 4870 1GB performance is up a touch on Windows 7 when compared to Vista results, for both 1,680x1,050 and 1,920x1,200 resolutions. That's why the two corresponding HEXUS.bang4buck scores are a smidge higher for Windows 7. There's no major drop-off in performance anywhere and slight gains help boost the score.
Looking across to the GeForce GTX 260 896MB, Vista performance is strong. Not only does the card aggregate higher normalised scores at both resolutions, the cheaper etail price ensures that its Vista HEXUS.bang4buck is simply better than the Radeon's. Move across to Windows 7 and the card does well in every gaming benchmark other than Far Cry 2, but poor performance on that front drags aggregate and normalised scores down. However, even with the handicap of substandard Far Cry 2 frame-rates, the GeForce GTX 260's excellent £165 etail pricing means that it's still a winner in the overall analysis. Still, it's worrying when a single game's results can take such a nosedive.
Windows 7 is still some way off from being released to the public in retail form, but ATI has come in early and is building Windows 7 (WDDM v1.1) support right into all subsequent Catalyst sets, intimating that a WHQL driver will be ready on the day of Microsoft's official launch. NVIDIA, too, isn't standing still, but, as far as our results are concerned, needs to do a little more optimisation work, especially in Far Cry 2 until the Windows 7 driver is consistently better than Vista's.
