Why does Anandtech ignore popular games in benchmarks?

[noryb]

Why doesn't Anantech test more games in their video card benchmarks?

I know, it's very time consuming to add another title because it has to be tested at multiple resolutions, etc.

But still - even though Counter Strike may be built on an aging engine, it is a VERY popular game and it would be nice to know how current hardware performs.

I would mention Tribes 2 as an important game worth benchmarking, but in T2's case, Dynamix continues to make radical changes, affecting framerate with each patch they release.

I guess the idea behind which titles are tested is to provide the best comparison between the cards, and ideally the information presented would apply to games not mentioned in the tests...

 

[GrumpyMan]

I have noticed a site or two using Serious Sam for some benches too.

 

[pidge]

Does Tribes 2 have a way to benchmark? How do you benchmark tribes 2?

 

[AmazonRasta]

The reason they don't use Counterstrike (or any game based on the Half-Life engine) is simply because of the systems they are benchmarking. They are testing a whole crapload of powerful systems mostly. They FPS would be at it's max with each system. Also, the new hardware coming out is too powerful to be tested on old game engines.

 

[Patgod]

benchmark for me in tribes 2:

all the gfx options are at max, and its running above 32fps(because it isnt jittering)


though i do not know of a time demo or fps counter, sorry.

 

[Deeko]

Yea cstrike is way too old...who cares if one card gets 150 fps and the other gets 170?

 

[Finality]

Another problem is the way the game engine does fps.

Take the Unreal engine. Across 75% of the cards you get the same fps regardless of video card its more reliant on CPU power. The same goes for a variety of games.

The reason Q3 is so popular as a benchmark is that it scales well both on the processor front as well as the Graphics front. It is not totally reliant on one or the other.

For one thing it is not optimized specifically for a certain processor or certain video card.