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 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 5970 2,048MB | ASUS Radeon HD 5870 MATRIX 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 480 AMP! 1,536MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB | ASUS GeForce GTX 465 1,024MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 387.66 | 286.85 | 278.78 | 242.71 | 356.55 | 339.28 | 272.06 | 221.41 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 315.65 | 239.84 |
234.86 |
197.97 |
278.7 |
265.64 |
211.31 | 157.86 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £550 | £400 | £325 | £235 | £450? | £400 | £300 | £235 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 | 0.574 |
0.6 |
0.723 |
0.842 |
0.619 |
0.664 |
0.704 |
0.672 |
| HEXUS.bang4watt score at 1,920x1,200** | 0.818 |
0.738 |
0.815 |
0.761 |
0.686 | 0.667 |
0.614 |
0.495 |
2,560x1,600
| Graphics cards | HIS Radeon HD 5970 2,048MB | ASUS Radeon HD 5870 MATRIX 2,048MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 480 AMP! 1,536MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1,536MB | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 470 1,280MB | ASUS GeForce GTX 465 1,024MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 2,560x1,600 | 288.2 |
205.48 |
197.54 | 171 | 238.01 | 224.89 | 180.36 | 142.24 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 2,560x1,600 | 230.75 |
149.79 |
144.24 |
115.65 |
176.71 |
163.15 |
119.07 |
87.53 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £550 |
£400 | £325 | £235 | £450 | £400 | £300 | £235 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 2,560x1,600 | 0.420 |
0.374 |
0.444 |
0.492 |
0.393 |
0.408 |
0.397 |
0.372 |
* 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
On average the ZOTAC AMP! is five per cent faster at 1,920x1,200 and almost six per cent faster than a default GTX 480 at 2,560x1,600. The numbers reinforce its position as the fastest single-GPU card in the line-up.The value proposition, too, is reasonable for a pre-overclocked card, but both the Radeon HD 5870 and HD 5850 produce much better numbers at 1,920x1,200.
Overclocking
We ran the five games again and noticed an average frame-rate increase of 6.9 per cent at the highest resolution of 2,560x1,600. Not enough to topple the twin-GPU Radeon HD 5970, naturally, but we'll be surprised if we see higher air-cooled frequencies from a GeForce GTX 480 anytime soon.
