HEXUS.bang4buck and overclocking
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 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 | XFX GeForce 8800 GTS XXX Edition 320MiB (580/1800) | XFX GeForce 8800 GTS XXX Edition 640MiB (550/1800) | 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 | 255.6 | 259.26 | 229.49 | 317.22 | 283.14 | 229.9 |
| Average Street Price | £285* | £325 | £252 | £385 | £300 | £225 |
| Acceptable framerate at 1920x1200 4xAA 8xAF | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
* - expected price of the XFX 320MiB GTS XXX card.
And here is the metric in an easy-to-understand graph.
The graph's metric is derived from dividing the aggregate framerate by current price. The 320MiB model offers competitive value for money in this one-dimensional evaluation. The 640MiB pricing is, really, too high and offers 'worse' value for money than a stock-clocked GeForce 8800 GTX.
Overclocking
We managed to overclock the 320MiB XXX version to 608MHz core and 2060MHz memory with decent stability. Using the same methodology, we weren't quite so successful with the 640MiB SKU, reaching 582MHz core and 2000MHz memory. We re-ran the test that's hardest on the cards - Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory 1920x1200 with HDR - to see what kind of effect the increased clock speeds had on performance.
There's a 7.4 per cent and 6.7 per cent increase over stock performance for the 320MiB and 640MiB versions, respectively. A worthwhile increase, yes, but the overclocked XXX editions still fall some way short of default-clocked 8800 GTX performance, as you would expect. We mention the GTX because the XXX's pricing is such that it brings the cheapest GTX models - circa £350 - into consideration.
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