HEXUS.bang4buck and HEXUS.bang4watt
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang for buck, we've aggregated the 1,680x1,050 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 table 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 | ZOTAC GeForce GTX 460 768MB | ASUS GeForce GTS TOP 450 1,024MB | NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1,024MB SLI | NVIDIA GeForce GTS 450 1,024MB | HIS Radeon HD 5770 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 1,024MB XF | Sapphire Radeon HD 5750 1,024MB | Sapphire Radeon HD 5670 1,024MB |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Actual aggregate marks at 1,680x1,050 | 328.7 | 265.6 | 396 | 231.9 | 259.7 | 368.2 | 226.4 | 168.7 |
| Aggregate marks, normalised* at 1,680x1,050 | 280.15 | 227.2 |
329.9 | 186.25 |
225.85 |
316.1 |
183.5 |
109.05 |
| Current pricing, including VAT | £130 | £115 | £198 | £99 | £115 |
£210 |
£105 | £85 |
| HEXUS.bang4buck score at 1,680x1,050 | 2.155 | 1.976 |
1.666 | 1.881 | 1.964 | 1.505 |
1.748 |
1.283 |
| Crysis peak power consumption | 204 | 208 | 272 | 181 | 163 | 225 | 155 | 126 |
| HEXUS.bang4watt** score at 1,680x1,050 | 1.373 | 1.092 |
1.213 | 1.029 | 1.386 | 1.405 |
1.184 |
0.865 |
* 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.bang4watt score is a crude measurement of how much normalised performance the GPU provides when evaluated against peak system-wide power-draw that's shown on the previous page: the former is divided by the latter. We're using the peak power-draw numbers obtained by running real-world Crysis Warhead.
Evaluation
Take a look at the actual aggregate marks for the GeForce GTS 450 SLI and Radeon HD 5750 XF and you will see gains of 71 per cent and 63 per cent, respectively, at 1,680x1,050. The GeForce cards win out with respect to overall performance, helped by high numbers in Call of Duty 2, and their HEXUS.bang4buck is consequently higher. However, the pick of the bunch remains the GeForce GTX 460 768MB, which is rumoured to be made end of life soon.