HEXUS.bang4buck and overclocking
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 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.
1,920x1,200
| Graphics cards | HIS Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB | ASUS Radeon HD 5870 MATRIX 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 331.34 | 248.65 | 249.94 | 241.68 | 211.51 | 294.14 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 260.16 | 213.13 |
214.67 |
209.21 |
177.52 |
234.84 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £550 | £400 | £400 | £325 | £230 | £400 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 | 0.473 | 0.533 | 0.537 |
0.644 |
0.772 |
0.587 |
| HEXUS.bang4watt score at 1,920x1,200** | 0.671 |
0.656 | 0.663 | 0.726 | 0.683 |
0.560 |
2,560x1,600
| Graphics cards | HIS Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB | ASUS Radeon HD 5870 MATRIX 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 TOXIC 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 2,560x1,600 | 252.15 |
182.19 |
183.61 | 174.64 | 152 | 199.17 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 2,560x1,600 | 207.5 |
145.02 |
146.46 |
139.89 |
115.65 |
155.66 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £550 |
£400 | £400 | £325 | £230 | £400 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 2,560x1,600 | 0.376 |
0.363 | 0.366 | 0.430 | 0.503 | 0.389 |
* 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. We're using the peak power-draw numbers obtained by running real-world Battlefield: BC2.
The HEXUS.bang4buck score only takes the performance and price into account, of course. As we're using DiRT 2 DX11 as one of the games here the GTX 295 and GTX 285 are omitted.
Evaluation
Our performance-per-pound proposition doesn't take into account noise and operating temperatures. Priced at about the same levels as the cheapest GeForce GTX 480, the ASUS card's performance isn't quite as good, leading to a lower score. Bear in mind that the cooler is much quieter.
Overclocking
We managed to hit 970MHz core and 5,100MHz memory after a bout of overclocking without resorting to changing to voltage. Those frequencies put it line with the better HD 5870s we've tested. Running DiRT 2 again at 2,560x1,600 increased the average frame-rate from 49.11fps to 53.06fps.Increasing the voltage on both the core and memory by 10 per cent provided a final overclock of 1,000MHz core and 5,200MHz memory, albeit with under-load temperatures in BC2 hitting 82°C and the fan speed rising to 2,500rpm.
