How to Perform FPS Benchtest?-RESOLVED

[Fern]

EDIT: Google ultimatly came through. Must have used the "magic words". Found links to benchie demo's free for the d/l. Thanks

Like the title says, I wanna do some benchies on PC games showing FSP with different hardware configs. I would like to perform these as "professionally" as possible. I.e., be able to substantiate/validate my results.

Some of you have performed and posted benchies on FSP in various games with different vid cards. I wanna do the same, but with different amounts of ram (instead of diff vid cards).

Must I go out and buy these games? Or, are there benchies based on games I can d/l?

Can someone help me with integrating the results into a snappy graph (like I have seen others do)? Is there software for d/l'ing?

Any other tips? For example, perform on a clean install to avoid anomolies from conflicting app or drivers. Should the bench be run several times and results averaged? If so, is 3 times good? etc.

Thanks,

 

[PowderBB3D]

Some programs have built-in methods (-timedemo ie) that can be accessed through console or other means. You can also run synthetic tests with programs provided by futuremark (www.futuremark.com) but it will produce a number and not fps average - plus the usefulness of such a test is oft debated. I think the UT2004 demo can be used but I'm not exactly sure in terms of free demos; the doom 3 beta was used at some point a while ago too.

In terms of tips, a clean install wouldn't hurt. Make sure that all your variables are documented and that you change only one at a time. You need to document all the important settings that your game or program is using at the time of the tests and it is helpful to close all your other background applications - AIM, IE/FireFox, etc.

For a cheap way to make graphs you can use MSWORD or MSEXCELL.

 

[Fern]

Thanks PowderBB3d,

I've got ut2k4, so I'll look for the timedemo thingy on it (although I skimmed through the game manual last weekend and found no reference to it).

I don't have many other new titles that would seem appropriate to benchmarking. If someone would confirm/deny that these game benchmarks/timedemo's are only included if you buy the game, it would be helpful. Conversly, if they can be d/l, that would be great.

Thanks,