FPS per US Dollar

Paying the Price

Note that the X axis is mislabeled. Check out the cost of the graphic cards found on Pricewatch compared to their corresponding FPS performances. The Radeon 9600 PRO is the best value while the GeForce FX 5600 Ultra is the most expensive per FPS.

Benchmark Issues

There are many issues that rise when perform benchmarks such as visual quality tradeoffs (ie. eye candy maximized), screen-grab specific image rendering, lower rendering precision, benchmark-specific drivers that never see the light of day and unstable optimizations. Given that the consumer would purchase hardware based on such benchmarks in the past, present conditions where benchmarking are engineered in a certain way, actual frame rates on Joe's home computer is not necessarily going to be the same as the chart he just read in a popular magazine (or website).