HEXUS.bang4buck and overclocking
HEXUS.bang4buck
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the card's 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 other 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 benefits are not covered, obviously.| Card | Foxconn FV-N88SMCD2-ONOC 320MiB (575/1800) | XFX GeForce 8800 GTS XXX Edition 320MiB (580/1800) | ASUS EN8800GTS/HTDP/640M 640MiB (513/1600) | Foxconn FV-N88XMAD2-OD 768MiB (575/1800) | NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GX2 1GiB (500/1200) | Sapphire Radeon X1950 XTX 512MiB (650/2000) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aggregate FPS at 1920x1200 4xAA 8xAF | 241.57 | 255.6 | 229.49 | 317.22 | 283.14 | 229.9 |
| Average Street Price, inc. VAT | £250 | £285* | £252 | £385 | £300 | £225 |
| Acceptable framerate at 1920x1200 4xAA 8xAF | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
* - expected price of XFX card.
And here is the metric in an easy-to-understand graph.
The graph highlights aggregate framerate divided by price (at the time of writing). The HEXUS.bang4buck graph doesn't take of the potential limitations imposed by the 320MiB framebuffer but, on first glance, it makes for encouraging viewing for Foxconn.
Overclocking
Overclocking results have more disclaimers than the bang4buck metric. We've tested a sample of just one, and it's not unknown for manufacturers to indulge in cherry-picking review models. Should you purchase this card your results may vary considerably. etc.Raising frequencies from the default core and memory clocks of 575/1800 and using no extra cooling, we managed to increase speeds to 658.5MHz core and 2070MHz memory. These are the fastest clocks we've had on any GeForce 8800-series card. Indeed, this particular sample could have been released at 625/2000 without any problems. We then re-ran Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory at 1920x1200 0xAA 8xAF + HDR, to see how much extra performance the elevated clocks gave.
The default performance for the Foxconn card is 63.74FPS. The overclock gives a further 13.5 per cent boost to the average framerate but it's still barely any faster than the XFX model. That's simply down to the extra shader speed paying dividends on the XXX Edition. In the future we'd like all 8800-series cards to list the shader clock; it's an important determinant of overall performance.
[advert]
