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 | NVIDIA GTX 580 | NVIDIA GTX 570 | ASUS GTX 480 | ASUS GTX 470 | NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti | KFA2 GTX 460 1GB | EVGA GTX 460 768MB | HIS HD 5970 | HIS HD 6970 | Sapp HD 6950 | XFX HD 5870 | XFX HD 5850 | Sapp HD 6850 | HIS HD 6870 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate FPS (1,920x1,080) |
553.2 |
487.4 |
484.9 |
388.1 |
419.3 |
322 |
298.4 | 586.9 | 468.4 | 425.7 | 409.4 | 351.1 |
325.4 |
370.9 |
| Normalised* FPS (1,920x1,080) |
480.2 | 431.7 | 432.65 | 334.55 | 366.45 | 252.7 | 222 | 503.45 | 428.7 | 386.4 | 369.9 | 300.1 | 266.1 | 323.45 |
| Current pricing | £389 | £265 | £285 | £189 | £199 | £145 | £125 | £425 | £299 | £225 | £210 | £155 | £145 | £180 |
| bang4buck (1,920x1,080) |
1.23 |
1.63 |
1.52 |
1.77 |
1.84 |
1.84 | 1.78 | 1.18 | 1.44 | 1.72 | 1.76 | 1.94 | 1.83 |
1.80 |
| GPU power consumption** | 252 | 196 | 244 | 204 |
154 | 169 | 130 | 257 | 183 | 137 | 139 | 117 | 97 | 126 |
| bang4watt*** (1,920x1,080) |
1.91 | 2.2 | 1.77 | 1.64 |
2.38 |
1.49 |
1.78 | 1.96 |
2.34 | 2.82 | 2.66 | 2.56 |
2.74 |
2.57 |
* 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: Black Ops.
Analysis
Yup, a lot of numbers to chew through here. Look at the aggregate and normalised FPS figures and you will see that the GTX 560 Ti is practically identical to the 17-month-old Radeon HD 5870 GPU, which can still be purchased in XFX form for just over £200. AMD's Radeon HD 6950 is a few per cent faster, and we'd be very intrigued to see how an HD 6950 1GB GPU plays out against a stock-clocked GTX 560 Ti 1GB.
The 560 Ti's initial retail pricing is just about right, going by the HEXUS.bang4buck figures offered by other cards, though we expect it to drop fairly quickly once partners have plentiful stock.
Power-draw figures show that the 560 Ti is almost Radeon-like in its relative frugality.
