Why is the partition gold as good as a bonded bullet ?...It's just a partiton with a metal cup in the rear partition to retain the lead and the partition is moved up a little and that "little" counts as more retained weight.
The reason the Partition Gold is as good as a bonded bullet is the fact that the steel core allows the bullet to penetrate practically anything that it encounters. Bonded bullets are designed to do the same, penetrate no matter what they hit, and still retain bullet weight. The Partition Gold will do that with no problem, and even a good bonded bullet will have hard time staying together after hitting a heavy bone at high velocities.
I am perfectly content with the current partition design... the point of my post was many people are not even considering it a premium bullet anymore since it doesn't retain x amount of weight after it penetrates an animal...
Another point why Nosler has not made the Partition a bonded bullet is because when it was designed, few big game hunting calibers pushed a bullet fast enough to cause it to blow up when it hit something solid. The Partition still works for these calibers quite well. Move into the magnum and ultra magnum class and it is a whole new ball game. That is why it seems that people are not considering using the Partition because a lot of people are on the velocity high. Talk to a lot of people who shoot .270's and .30-06 and a bonded core bullet is really not necessary to achieve plenty of penetration because the velocities are kept low enough.
The Partition has better BC then the A frame and is lower priced
The reason the partition has a higher BC, is because it is simply a longer bullet per weight. This only comes into account when taking extremely long shots (400 yds +). Inside that, a person will not be able to reasonably tell the difference between a bullet with a BC of .390 vs 490 unless he has a target grade rifle and can hold at exactly the same place on a distant animal every time. Most hunting rifles can't shoot a 3" group at 400 yds anyway and that is about what the difference is between the two. If Nosler were to start bonding the cores on the Partition Bullet (and they obviously have the technology to do it), more time and money would have to be spent to make the same bullet as the A-Frame, therefore raising the cost of each individual bullet on the market.
To prove this point, I just did a little research. I plugged four popular hunting bullets into a balistic calculator.
I used the Sierra Gameking, the Speer Grand Slam, the Nosler Partition and the Swift A-Frame as examples with balistic coeficients of .404, .393, .410, and .367 for the A-Frame. I currently have a load with the gamekings in my Savage 110 that will shoot 165 grain at 2640 FPS. This is at 5000 feet elevation, zero of 200 yds.
here are the results for 100 yd intervals out to 500 yds to line of sight.
Gamekings: 2.1" @ 100yds, then 0 at 200, -8.9" at 300, -25.8, and finally -51.9 @ 500yds.
Speer: 2.2, 0, -9.0, -26.0, -52.5 respectively
Nosler: 2.2, 0, -8.9, -25.6, -51.6"
Swift: 2.2, 0, -9.2, -26.7, and finnaly -54.2 @ 500 yds.
That is a total difference of 2.6" at 500 yds!! the difference in energy figures was within 100 ftlbs!!
I don't know of ANYONE that can be accurate to within 2.6" at 500 yds so no normal person would even notice the difference. I think a lot of people put way too much thought into BC, when it really has no affect on where the bullet will hit in the field.