I have this Winchestor Lawenforcment catalogue that has a table that shows the penetration of various sorts of their bullets through various media.  The thing that suprises me is how their 50 ballistic silver tip (same bullet as the varmit rounda they sell to us lowly civilians) is rated as penetrating:
10% Bare gelatin = 12"
heavy cloth = 13"
steel = 6"
wallboard = 8"
plywood =  11.75"
auto glass = 5"

Now, I thout that a BST (comparable to a nosler ballistic tip and others) was supposed to explode violently immediately on impact.  What is the deal with this?  

Does anyone have any termanal ballistic data on the performance of various brands of ballistic tipped bullets?  I would like to know what type of performance these things offer for self defense.  

I would seriously question the accuracy of the data presented in this catalog. For a 50 gr varmint bullet, that is considerable penetration. Does it happen to specify the barrel length of the weapon it was fired from, the velocity or the distance to the target? If not I would be highly suspicious of this claim. The Winchester Ballistic Silvertip is nothing more than a Nosler Ballistic Tip. Nearly every ammo company has a load using this design. From everything I have seen before it would seem much more reasonable for this round to have penetration in the 6" to 9" range. Perhaps they fired it from a very short barrel weapon such as an H&K with 8.5" barrel and the ammo didn't exhibit it's normal "explosive" character. That would be a huge difference in penetration/fragmentation performance compared to a 16" or 20" barrel.

-Charging Handle

SYMBOL BULLET WT BULLET TYPE BARE GELATIN HEAVY CLOTH STEEL WALLBOARD PLYWOOD AUTO GLASS GELATIN %
RA223R 55 PSP 9.75 9.8 7.7 8.05 8.90 3.5 10%
RA223BST 50 BST 12 13 6 8 13.5 9.5 10%
Q3131A 55 FMJ 12 15 9 6 6 2.5 10%
USA2232 45 JHP 4.5 4.5 3 4.25 4.5 1.75 10%
RA223M 69 HPBT 9 10.25 6.75 6.5 9.5 2 10%
RA223R2 64 PP 13 13.25 12.5 11.25 11.75 5 10%
RA556JF 45 JF 10.8 11.0 3.4 4.2 Failed to Penetrate Failed to Penetrate 10%
SC556NT 55 JSP 15.6 14.3 11.5 13.3 15.1 9.4 10%
SBST308A 168 SBST 14.3 17 9.6 11.7 13.2 9 20%
S308XA 150 FS 27.4 29 19.4 20.2 21.6 22 20%
S308J 168 BTHP 17 20 9 12.5 14 10 20%

So Q3131A can go through 9 inches of steel?

Damn! Sign me up. Glad I have 2000 rounds of Q3131.
I think we need to contact Winchester for more accurate information on their products.

Well said Austrian, if it can penetrate that deep it can't be doing much damage. Keep in mind this is Winchester's "own" figures. I would compare this to what independent researchers such as Dr. Gary Roberts have found out about it before betting my life on it. Many times the manufacturer's results look much better than what they do when tested by others who have no financial stake in the company selling it. I'm not trying to badmouth Winchester alone, as I have seen similar things from other companies as well....including Remington and Speer.

-Charging Handle

Those ballistic charts are supposed to be derived from a 24" barrel moving at well over 3000fps.