Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory v1.05 and HEXUS.bang4buck
There's little to choose between the performance of the Foxconn and ASUS cards. Both are, for all intents and purposes, the same. The differentiating factor won't be default-clocked performance. Rather, it will be based on price, bundle and warranty considerations.
HEXUS.bang4buck
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the average 1920x1200 4xAA 8xAF framerates for the three games and listed the cards' price. There are more provisos than I care to shake a stick at. We could have chosen three different games, the cards' prices could have been derived from different sources, and pricing is such that it can fluctuate daily. However, to reiterate, the graph below highlights a metric that should only be used as a yardstick for evaluating comparative performance with price factored in. Other architectural or incidental benefits are not covered, obviously, and GeForce 8800 GTX is all about architectural benefits.| Card | Foxconn FV-N88XMAD2-OD 768MiB | ASUS EN8800GTX 768MiB | NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1GiB | NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 512MiB | ATI Radeon X1950 XTX 512MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate FPS at 1920x1200 4xAA 8xAF | 317.22 | 316.55 | 283.14 | 197.42 | 229.9 |
| Average Street Price | £470* | £450 | £335 | £245 | £295 |
| Acceptable framerate at 1920x1200 4xAA 8xAF | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
* - estimated pricing, as provided by Foxconn.
The HEXUS.bang4buck simply divides aggregated FPS by price. We know there's no real question that GeForce 8800 GTX is the fastest graphics card around. However, the high price of entry is reflected in a low-ish bang4buck score. If we tried the same evaluation with, say, three massively shader-limited titles or raised the hurt by increasing resolution to 2560x1600 then I'm sure the results would be different. If there's one aspect to take away from the graph it's that new technology, especially high-end, is aimed towards early adopters were performance is the most important criterion. Speakingly broadly, NVIDIA's GeForce 8800 GTX, frankly, is a little too expensive to be recommended to anyone other than the hardcore gamer with a high-res. display.
