HEXUS.bang4buck and overclocking
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,920x1,200 and 2,560x1,600 frame-rates for five 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 five 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 factored in. Other architectural benefits are not covered, obviously.
HEXUS.bang4buck at 1,920x1,200
| Graphics cards | ATI
Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB |
ATI
Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB |
Sapphire Radeon
HD 4870 X2 2,048MB |
Sapphire Radeon
HD 4890 OC 1,024MB |
BFG
GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB |
BFG GeForce GTX
285 1,024MB |
XFX GeForce GTX
275 896MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,920x1,200 | 524.80 | 439.41 | 550.42 | 393.90 | 578.90 | 404.15 | 377.17 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 1,920x1,200 | 412.40 | 369.73 |
425.21 | 345.66 | 439.45 | 342.71 | 325.25 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £299 |
£200 |
£242.97 | £177.10 | £346.00 |
£240 | £159.26 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,920x1,200 | 1.380 | 1.849 | 1.750 |
1.952 |
1.270 |
1.428 | 2.042 |
HEXUS.bang4buck at 2,560x1,600, including multi-GPU
| Graphics cards | ATI
Radeon HD 5870 1,024MB |
ATI
Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB |
ATI
Radeon HD 5850 1,024MB XF |
Sapphire Radeon
HD 4870 X2 2,048MB |
Sapphire Radeon
HD 4890 OC 1,024MB |
BFG
GeForce GTX 295 1,792MB |
BFG GeForce GTX
285 1,024MB |
BFG GeForce GTX
285 1,024MB SLI |
XFX GeForce GTX
275 896MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 2,560x1,600 | 360.16 | 305.97 | 532.17 | 373.41 | 257.90 | 403.27 | 268.97 | 490.45 | 246.62 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised*, at 2,560x1,600 | 330.08 | 279.02 | 416.09 | 336.70 | 258.18 | 351.64 | 241.58 | 395.23 | 226.91 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £299 |
£200 |
£400 |
£242.97 | £177.10 | £346.00 |
£240 | £480 |
£159.26 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 2,560x1,600 | 1.104 | 1.395 | 1.04 | 1.386 | 1.459 | 1.016 | 1.007 | 0.823 | 1.425 |
* 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 HEXUS.bang4buck score of 30 marks. The minimum allowable frame rate is 20fps but that scores zero.
The HEXUS.bang4buck score only takes the performance and price into account, of course.Analysis
The Radeon HD 5850 scores a much higher HEXUS.bang4buck rating than the HD 5870 at 1,920x1,200 because the lack of comparative performance is more than offset by a street price that's over 30 per cent lower.
The same is true, although not to the same extent, when viewing the 2,560x1,600 numbers. The HEXUS.bang4buck confirms that the ATI Radeon HD 5850 is a good, solid card at the £200 price point.
Overclocking
Cranking up the frequencies, we reached a maximum 775MHz core and 4,500MHz memory, which represent clocks that are noticeably lower than a standard Radeon HD 5870's (850/4,800). Taken as an average over our games, the boosted clocks provided an extra 6.6 per cent on top of default-clocked scores.