GPU benchmarking is moving past frames per second - kinda

Here is a pretty good article talking about how video cards are measured.

In gaming, frame rate — measured in frames per second, or fps– is king. That’s been true for the 12 years I’ve been reviewing computer hardware and then some. Frames per second has ruled the roost, virtually unchallenged. Some sites now incorporate minimum frame rates or display the frame rate at each second to give gamers a better sense of what the range is — but the metric hasn’t really changed. We’re still talking about the number of frames produced in one second.

The interesting thing about this article is how granular our testing methods have become.  Traditionally we have measured video card performance based on FPS (Frames Per Second) and it has worked well since its inception back in the days of 3DFX.  Now that systems have become overpowered it is hard to determine if card A is better than card B unless you start really digging down into the raw performance numbers and the performance at the sub-second timeframe.

The new metric brings up a number of questions/comments

• Speed is determined at the sub-second level so at what point does that time no longer matter?
• Video cards at a higher teir will not have the same performance profile so their metrics may not matter
• Personally, I see "inside the second" only applying to ultra low-end cards where price-per-performance matter more and at this price point you have less educated consumers who may not understand what they are looking at, much less read a lengthy review trying to explain why milliseconds matter

I still review video cards using FRAPs and rely on the FPS metric,  FRAPs does has a frametime metric that could be included however from what i have seen that number rarely changes and given that zealots will likely complain that the numbers don't match sites using FCAT I figured it wasn't worth the trouble. 

Of course things may change in the future and as they say, its better to have too much data than not enough.

Related Web URL: http://www.extremetech.com/gaming/154089-after-alm...