Gaming results and HEXUS.bang4buck
We see that whilst the HIS Radeon X1650 XT IceQ has marginally higher clocks than a reference Radeon X1650 Pro (628/1458 vs. 594/1386), the extra processing power sees it pull out a 56% lead at the 16x12 resolution. More importantly, however, the game becomes perceivably smoother. HIS' card keeps ahead of a stock-clocked GeForce 7600 GT, too.
A similar story in Quake 4, where the overclocked HIS card is in a different league to its X1650 Pro brother. It should be, though, as its expected RRP of £117 is around £30 higher than a regular X1650 Pro and, perhaps even more importantly, around £15 more than a GeForce 7600 GT.
The 16x12 HDR test brings these midrange cards down a peg or two, with the minimum framerate dropping to a sticky 17FPS for the HIS card. Radeon X1950 Pro and GeForce 7900 GS show the benefits of superior shading power and, to a lesser degree, the use of a 256-bit memory bus.
Performance summary
Gaming performance is far greater than X1650 Pro's but RV530 was hardly a stellar performer, so we expected the HIS card to outshine it. Even in its overclocked state it falls in comfortably behind its bigger brother, the X1950 Pro, and NVIDIA's attractively priced GeForce 7900 GS.HEXUS.bang4buck?
In a rough-and-ready assessment of the cards' bang per buck, we've aggregated the average 1280x1024 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 than SCAN.co.uk 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 or incidental benefits are not covered, obviously.Pricing is correct as at 20/11/2006.
* - Expected RRP, as provided by HIS.
We appreciate the extra effort HIS has put into the design of its Radeon X1650 XT card and take due note of the architecture that beats ATI's Radeon X1650 Pro comfortably.
Having said that, it's hard to get away from the fact that the pricing is actually higher than the more powerful NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GS and in the vicinity of the equally potent Radeon X1950 Pro, from which this card is derived. That's why its HEXUS.bang4buck, a simple metric that divides aggregated framerates by price, is substantially lower than the two faster cards'.
We feel as if this SKU needs to be priced at the magical £99.99 inc. VAT mark to prize readers away from looking at GeForce 7900 GS and Radeon X1950 Pro.
