HEXUS.bang4buck and HEXUS.bang4watt
Get ready for a lot of numbers.In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,200 and 2,560x1,600 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.
1,920x1,200
| Graphics cards | HIS Radeon HD 5850 XF 2,048MB | HIS Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 XF 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 SLI 1,280MB | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB | BFG GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB | BFG GeForce GTX 285 1,024MB | EVGA GeForce GTX 275 896MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 481.63 | 479.12 | 355.58 | 563.62 | 342.43 | 295.68 | 432.89 | 566.47 | 345.82 | 363.16 |
259.49 |
234.23 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 364.78 |
364.02 | 297.49 |
411.80 |
289.59 |
254.29 |
334.22 | 414.57 |
277.4 |
295.16 |
224.23 |
202.39 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £450 | £550 | £360 | £620 | £310 | £225 | £440 | £620 | £310 | £350 | £275 | £199 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 | 0.811 | 0.662 | 0.826 | 0.664 | 0.934 | 1.13 | 0.759 |
0.669 |
0.894 |
0.843 |
0.815 | 1.017 |
| HEXUS.bang4watt score at 1,920x1,200** | 0.812 | 0.793 | 0.8 | 0.832 | 0.905 | 0.892 |
0.704 |
0.710 |
0.699 |
0.584 |
0.598 |
0.552 |
2,560x1,600
| Graphics cards | HIS Radeon HD 5850 XF 2,048MB | HIS Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 XF 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 SLI 1,280MB | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB | BFG GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB | BFG GeForce GTX 285 1,024MB | EVGA GeForce GTX 275 896MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 2,560x1,600 | 343.42 |
346.21 |
258.93 | 402.14 | 244.84 | 209.08 | 290.29 | 401.15 | 229.71 | 264.78 |
NA |
NA |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 2,560x1,600 | 288.72 |
284.53 |
224.47 |
318.77 |
216.92 |
175.2 |
240.53 | 311.23 |
199.2 |
233.2 |
NA |
NA |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £450 | £550 | £360 | £620 | £310 | £225 | £440 | £620 | £310 | £350 | £275 | £199 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 2,560x1,600 | 0.642 | 0.517 | 0.623 | 0.514 | 0.7 | 0.779 | 0.547 | 0.502 | 0.643 | 0.666 | NA | NA |
* 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.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against peak system-wide power-draw that's shown on the previous page: the former is divided by the latter. Bear in mind that FurMark, the application used, tends to load up NVIDIA cards a touch more than AMD's.
The HEXUS.bang4buck score only takes the performance and price into account, of course.
Evaluation
The performance of two cards is undeniably impressive in SLI. Look at the 1,920x1,200 numbers and we see that the aggregate results increase by 63.8 per cent. At 2,560x1,600 the scaling hits 75 per cent. Coincidentally enough, the aggregate results are very similar to two Radeon HD 5870s, and, given that they're identical in price, this is why the HEXUS.bang4bucks are also similar.
Overclocking
We increased the single card's fan-speed to 80 per cent (<4,000rpm, but still loud) and then forced up the clocks. From the default 607MHz/1,215MHz/3,348MHz clockings for core, shader and memory, respectively, we hit 698MHz/1,396MHz/ 3,870MHz, representing decent increases over stock. System-wide power-draw increases from a peak 397W to 439W, however.
Looking at the 2,560x1,600 results, Far Cry 2 (8x AA) performance rose from 42.18fps to 47.8fps and DiRT 2 DX11 from 40.48fps to 45.05fps.
