HEXUS.bang4buck and HEXUS.bang4watt
Putting all the numbers into perspective, let's take a closer look at overall performance.
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,080 frame-rates for seven games, normalised them* and taken account of the single-cards' prices.
But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen seven different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from other sources and pricing tends to fluctuate daily, especially for new-release GPUs.
Consequently, the table 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 HD 5870 | HIS HD 5850 | HIS Radeon HD 6850 | HIS Radeon HD 6870 | HIS Radeon HD 5970 | NVIDIA GTX 580 1,536MB | NVIDIA GTX 570 1,280MB | ASUS GTX 480 1,536MB | ASUS GTX 470 1,280MB | KFA2 GTX 460 1,024MB | EVGA GTX 460 768MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate FPS (1,920x1,080) |
444.3 | 381.2 |
357.6 |
377.3 | 613.2 | 595.2 |
528.5 |
527.4 |
431.4 |
356.3 |
329.8 |
| Normalised* FPS (1,920x1,080) |
392.25 | 315.3 | 283.9 | 351.4 | 513.9 | 513.2 | 463.35 | 466.4 | 369.5 | 273.85 | 239.1 |
| Current pricing | £235 | £180 | £145 | £175 | £425 | £399 | £289 | £320 | £189 | £145 | £125 |
| bang4buck (1,920x1,080) |
1.67 | 1.75 | 1.95 |
2 | 1.21 | 1.29 |
1.60 |
1.46 |
1.96 |
1.89 |
1.91 |
| GPU power consumption** | 134 | 109 | 104 | 117 | 238 | 244 | 196 | 229 | 188 |
150 | 134 |
| bang4watt*** (1,920x1,080) |
2.92 | 2.89 |
2.73 |
2.89 |
2.16 |
2.1 | 2.36 | 2.04 | 1.97 |
1.82 |
1.78 |
* 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 GPU power consumption is derived from subtracting a flat rate of 100W - indicating system power-draw without a card - from the Call of Duty: Black Ops load figure. While this figure isn't solely indicative of power pulled by the GPU, as the CPU also throttles up, it's a better metric than using peak system-draw alone.
*** the HEXUS.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against GPU power-draw that's shown in the table: the former is divided by the latter. We're using the peak power-draw numbers obtained by running real-world Call of Duty: MW2.
Analysis
We've seen the GeForce GTX 570 trade blows with the GTX 480 throughout the benchmarks. This is exemplified by the aggreggate and normalised scores in the table, above. The keener retail price of £289 means the card's HEXUS.bang4buck is obviously better, as is the HEXUS.bang4watt. Further, the GTX 570's two metrics are also better than GTX 580's.Looking across to the AMD camp, the price-reduced HD 5870 is a slightly better bet, if you can accept the lower frame-rates. Not shown in the table is the current pricing of XFX Radeon HD 5870, which currently retails from £190, and would provide a more-handsome bang4buck.
