HEXUS.bang4buck and overclocking
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,280x1,024 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 tables 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.
HEXUS.bang4buck at 1,280x1,024
| Graphics cards | AMD Radeon HD 5450 512MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4670 512MB | Sapphire
Radeon HD 4200 IGP 256MB |
Inno3D GeForce GT 240 512MB | BFG
GeForce GT 220 1,024MB |
XFX
GeForce 210 512MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,280x1,024 | 182.86 | 445.42 |
83.65 | 451.86 | 366.13 | 131.52 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,280x1,024 | 125.44 | 366.54 | 12.15 | 375 | 289.03 | 67.7 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £40 |
£53 | N/A, part of motherboard | £70 | £50 | £32 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,280x1,024 | 3.136 | 6.96 | - | 5.36 |
5.78 |
2.12 |
* 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, of course. This will be updated with a new revision which covers non-3D performance in the very near future.
EvaluationThe table makes for simple reading. If the primary concern when purchasing a graphics card is to play games, then do yourself a favour and spent an extra £10-£15 for either a Radeon HD 4670 or GeForce GT 220.
