HEXUS bang4buck and bang4watt
Putting all the numbers into perspective, let's take a closer look at overall performance, efficiency and value for money.
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the frame-rates for all our gaming benchmarks, normalised them1 and taken account of today's pricing.
But there are more provisos than we'd care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen 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 and efficiency factored in.
Value analysis at 1,920x1,080 |
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Graphics card | Aggregate FPS | Normalised FPS1 | Approx. price | Bang4buck | Power consumption | Bang4watt2 | HEXUS Efficiency Score3 | ||
| AMD HD 7970 (3,072MB) | 360.20 | 325.20 | £400 | 0.81 | 254 | 1.28 | 2.09 | ||
| AMD HD 7950 (3,072MB) | 311.20 | 267.50 | £330 | 0.81 | 207 | 1.29 | 2.10 | ||
| Gigabyte HD 7870 OC (2,048MB) | 283.10 | 232.05 | £290 | 0.80 | 214 | 1.08 | 1.88 | ||
| PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+ (2,048MB) | 285.80 | 234.90 | £285 | 0.82 | 221 | 1.06 | 1.88 | ||
| XFX HD 7870 Black Edition (2,048MB) | 281.90 | 230.35 | £300 | 0.77 | 220 | 1.05 | 1.82 | ||
| AMD HD 7870 (2,048MB) | 272.80 | 219.80 | £265 | 0.83 | 182 | 1.21 | 2.04 | ||
| AMD HD 7850 (2,048MB) | 235.50 | 173.05 | £190 | 0.91 | 162 | 1.07 | 1.98 | ||
| AMD HD 7770 (1,024MB) | 155.10 | 52.65 | £110 | 0.48 | 137 | 0.38 | 0.86 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 680 (2,048MB) | 430.33 | 390.67 | £400 | 0.98 | 242 | 1.61 | 2.59 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 580 (1,536MB) | 304.90 | 257.55 | £290 | 0.89 | 285 | 0.90 | 1.79 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 570 (1,280MB) | 261.40 | 204.10 | £210 | 0.97 | 245 | 0.70 | 1.67 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti 448 (1,280MB) | 248.80 | 187.90 | £185 | 1.02 | 271 | 0.69 | 1.71 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti (1,024MB) | 215.40 | 143.10 | £155 | 0.92 | 225 | 0.64 | 1.56 | ||
Value analysis at 2,560x1,600 |
|||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Graphics card | Aggregate FPS | Normalised FPS1 | Approx. price | Bang4buck | Power consumption | Bang4watt2 | HEXUS Efficiency Score3 | ||
| AMD HD 7970 (3,072MB) | 218.50 | 147.75 | £400 | 0.37 | 254 | 0.58 | 0.95 | ||
| AMD HD 7950 (3,072MB) | 187.30 | 100.95 | £330 | 0.31 | 207 | 0.49 | 0.80 | ||
| Gigabyte HD 7870 OC (2,048MB) | 165.60 | 68.40 | £290 | 0.24 | 214 | 0.32 | 0.56 | ||
| PowerColor HD 7870 PCS+ (2,048MB) | 167.00 | 70.50 | £285 | 0.25 | 221 | 0.32 | 0.57 | ||
| XFX HD 7870 Black Edition (2,048MB) | 165.40 | 68.10 | £300 | 0.23 | 220 | 0.31 | 0.54 | ||
| AMD HD 7870 (2,048MB) | 160.20 | 60.30 | £265 | 0.23 | 182 | 0.33 | 0.56 | ||
| AMD HD 7850 (2,048MB) | 138.00 | 31.65 | £190 | 0.17 | 162 | 0.20 | 0.37 | ||
| AMD HD 7770 (1,024MB) | 72.20 | 1.80 | £110 | 0.02 | 137 | 0.01 | 0.03 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 680 (2,048MB) | 244.31 | 182.16 | £400 | 0.46 | 242 | 0.75 | 1.21 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 580 (1,536MB) | 175.30 | 82.95 | £290 | 0.29 | 285 | 0.29 | 0.58 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 570 (1,280MB) | 139.50 | 39.15 | £210 | 0.19 | 245 | 0.15 | 0.34 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti 448 (1,280MB) | 133.60 | 32.55 | £185 | 0.18 | 271 | 0.12 | 0.30 | ||
| NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti (1,024MB) | 96.40 | 18.00 | £155 | 0.12 | 225 | 0.08 | 0.20 | ||
1 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 bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.
2 the bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against system-wide 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 Crysis 2.
3 the HEXUS Efficiency Score is a combination of bang4buck and bang4watt, we simply add the two to rate combined value for money and power efficiency.
Summary
The HEXUS Efficiency Score takes our popular bang4buck and bang4watt metrics, and combines them to create an overall score that takes into account FPS performance, price and power consumption.
In this unique metric, the pre-overclocked Radeon HD 7870s don't fare particularly well - they all deliver a little extra in terms of aggregate frames per second, but that advantage is negated by higher power consumption and an increased price tag. The XFX Black Edition card is the worst offender as a result of its £300 asking price.
