HEXUS.bang4buck and overclocking
Ina rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,200 frame-rates for 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 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.| Graphics cards | Sapphire Radeon HD 5770 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5830 1,024MB | HIS Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | HIS Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | Inno3D GeForce GTX 260 OC 896MB | EVGA GeForce GTX 275 896MB | BFG GeForce GTX 285 OC |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 162.28 | 180.6 | 230.21 | 268.41 | 172.05 | 186.42 | 216.59 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 130.26 | 153.53 |
197.01 | 221.7 | 147.63 | 165.89 |
188.8 |
| Current price, including VAT | £125 | £205** | £225 | £310 | £140 | £195 | £285 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 | 1.042 | 0.749 | 0.876 | 0.715 | 1.054 | 0.851 | 0.662 |
* 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.
** latest pricing indications as at 25/02/10
Evaluation
Look at the aggregate marks shows that, indeed, the HD 5830 performs far closer to the '5770 than the '5850. With the rather large assumption that Sapphire's card will come in at £205, the value proposition is better for the two GPUs that sandwich it.
Radeon HD 5830 really needs to be priced at £150-£160, excluding any games, to make sense, giving it a HEXUS.bang4buck closer to the magical '1'.
Overclocking
Click to enlarge
Default DiRT 2 performance at 1,920x1,200 is 55.5fps. The overclocked card produces a score of 63.35fps - a 14.4 per cent increase. Why so comparatively low? The answer probably lies with the low ROP count.
