HEXUS.bang4buck
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,200 frame-rates for the four games, normalised them* and taken account of the cards' prices.
But there are more provisos than we'd 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 tends to fluctuate daily.
Consequently, the table and graph 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 GeForce 9800 GTX+, 512Mib | BFG GeForce 9800 GTX 512MiB | BFG GeForce GTX 280 OC, 1,024MiB | XFX GeForce GTX 260, 896MiB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4870, 512MiB | Sapphire Radeon HD 4850, 512MiB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 210.08 | 192.13 | 309.02 | 253.89 | 225.68 |
180.99 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 149.23 | 134.17 | 224.86 | 184.99 | 162.71 |
126.51 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £149 | £129/£179 | £349 | £219 | £179 | £125 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,9200x1,200 | 1 | 1.04/0.75 | 0.64 | 0.84 | 0.91 |
1.01 |
| Acceptable frame rate (av. 60fps) at 1,920x1,200 | No (ET, Crysis, LP) | No (ET, Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (Crysis, LP) | No (ET, Crysis, LP) |
* 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.
As an example, should a card score 120fps we treat it as 90fps as only half the frame rate above 60fps is counted for the bang4buck - this is the formula: (120-((120-60)/2)). Similarly, should it score 30fps, we count it as only 15fps: (30+((30-60)/2)).
The reasoning behind such calculation lies with playable frame rates.
Should card A score 110fps in a benchmark and card B 160, then card B would otherwise receive an extra 50 marks in our bang4buck assessment, even though both cards produce perfectly playable frame rates and anything above 60fps is a bonus and not a necessity for most.
Similarly, without our adjustments, the aggregated bang4buck total for two very different cards would be identical if, in a further benchmark, card A scored a smooth 70fps and card B an unplayable 20fps. Both would win marks totally 180, yet the games-playing experience would be vastly different.
A more realistic (and useful) assessment would say that card A is better because it ran smoothly in both games - and that view would be accurately reflected in our adjusted aggregation, where card A would receive 150 marks (85+65) and card B 100 (100+0).
In effect, we're including a desired average frame rate, in this case 60, and penalising lower performance while giving frame rates higher than 60fps only half as much credit as those up to 60fps. If this doesn't make sense or you have issue with it, please hit the HEXUS community.
Here's the HEXUS.bang4buck graph at 1,920x1,200.
The graph divides the normalised score by the price.
The important bit
We've based the HEXUS.bang4buck graph on the projected pricing of the GeForce 9800 GTX+. Please, please note that the current GeForce 9800 GTX is generally available for £129 on a pre-order basis only, and that's why we've include the black bar, representing the current price of £179, and thus lowering the HEXUS.bang4buck metric.
We note that the 'GTX is available for $200 in the US, but it's generally more than that in the UK, however, which is galling.
The current state of play is that the Radeon HD 4870 and 4850s offer better value for money than any NVIDIA SKU, but that should change with the introduction of 'GTX+.