FCAT benchmarking an article introduction [Guru3D.com]

Discussion in 'Frontpage news' started by Hilbert Hagedoorn, Apr 4, 2013.

  1. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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    In this article we will introduce you towards FCAT benchmarking. The past couple of months we have seen a some new dynamics in measuring the framerate of your games. Basically the framerate of your ...

    FCAT benchmarking an article introduction
     
  2. hallryu

    hallryu Don Altobello

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    Excellent read. Explains the new benchmarking methodology rather nicely.
     
  3. Phuncz

    Phuncz Active Member

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    Excellent write-up, I'm very pleased you are going to incorporate FCAT testing into your reviews ! This needs to be known, so the manufacturers (AMD more than NVIDIA at this point) can make constant frame-times a priority and eliminate micro-stutter.

    One point I'd like to make is that it would benefit all if you would include the same scaling for all your graphs and include zoomed-in versions indented or offset enough that it's clear it isn't the same. Because some aren't really comparable when they use different scaling like these two:

    [​IMG]
    22-44ms scaling (22ms range)

    [​IMG]
    0-30ms scaling (30ms range)

    It would have been more helpful if the charts were 0-50ms, which is basically with a broad margin the lowest-highest we'd ever want to see anyway.
     
  4. k1net1cs

    k1net1cs Ancient Guru

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    Hilbert, please don't use the term 'quickie introduction'...just 'quick introduction' would be enough without having the readers being rendered into wild imaginings. :p
     

  5. Hilbert Hagedoorn

    Hilbert Hagedoorn Don Vito Corleone Staff Member

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    Yeah I know and actually mention that a couple of times in the article. Over time you'll see charts with fixed scaling. Percentile charts will range from 0 to 100% and the plots we need to figure out some sort of fixed y-axis for (likely ~60ms).
     
  6. hallryu

    hallryu Don Altobello

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    How much time will this add to your reviews? The cost itself is eye-watering!
     
  7. xafier

    xafier Guest

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    Hilbert,

    I've read your description a couple of times now and I'm not really sure why you need to store all the frame data? If all you care about is the differing colours couldn't you just store the 1 pixel from bottom left?

    The only reason I can see for not doing that is that it the video capture device can only store the full frame and instead you'd require CPU to pull out just the 1 pixel? But I cannot imagine that would be at all taxing as extracting a value from a known location in a frame is very simple.

    Just throwing out my opinion as a software developer, that thats the road I would have gone down to avoid that storage problem. It would also most likely simplify the data analysis later too.
     
  8. mohiuddin

    mohiuddin Maha Guru

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    Thanks.
    And explanation of every graph helped me (noob) a lot.
    Again thanks.
     
  9. Osamar

    Osamar Guest

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    If I am not wrong, you will need at least one pixel thick bar, becuase you could have mixed frames (tearing ???), so multiple colors in the bar.
     
  10. xafier

    xafier Guest

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    Good point! But that still reduces the amount of storage by a very large amount.
     

  11. Ven0m

    Ven0m Ancient Guru

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    Hilbert, thank you for this article. I do hope such analysis will be added to the new card reviews, especially when compering the performance of multi-GPU solutions.

    However, the question arises - how reliable and jitter-free is the capture device? :D
     
  12. Pete J

    Pete J Master Guru

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    Just wanted to say thank you for an excellent article! Nice to see microstutter examined in such detail rather than subjective 'by eye' comments as has seemed to be the case up until now.
     
  13. yasamoka

    yasamoka Ancient Guru

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    That question can probably be answered by feeding the capture card a VSynced signal. If the results turn out flat, there you go, no jitter (oversimplifying it, but oh well).

    Thank you Hilbert for a very interesting read!
     
  14. BLEH!

    BLEH! Ancient Guru

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    Ow, my head. Makes a bit more sense, but owwwww.
     
  15. rsnubje

    rsnubje New Member

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    Basicly, as it is an analysis tool, you also would like to see the frame that comes with the time. So if the graph says all the frames are for example 30ms and one or more are outstanding with let's say 60ms, you want to be able to look back at that specific frame to see what it looks like, is it or is it not a tearing or stuttering. This way you can tell if it's really giving you a bad gaming experience or not.
     

  16. Stukov

    Stukov Ancient Guru

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    And Vsync eliminates these issues, correct?
     
  17. Norvekh

    Norvekh Guest

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    More data, when it is applicable to increasing understanding, is always a good thing. This FCAT testing most certainly provides that. That's a ton of work, and expense, but it will provide better and more accurate performance analysis and that is absolutely to be commended. Great job, Hilbert and team. You're showing exactly why this is one top notch site to be kept on the short list that I always check for reviews come new hardware.

    On a sidenote, I took the FCAT of an entirely different nature while I lived in Florida. I just thought that was somewhat amusing, even if irrelevent.
     
  18. tsunami231

    tsunami231 Ancient Guru

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    And so it begins the race for who can render things with the lowest and most stable frame latency, Who will win Nvidia or AMD/ATI. Obviously Nvidia is better at this atm, but who knows what will happen.

    Personal it dont mater to if it make all GPU better and smooth as a result its becomes win win situation for all of us
     
  19. h0d

    h0d Guest

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    Amazing review thank you :)
     
  20. BrainDedd

    BrainDedd Guest

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    So ... nVidia says they've released the scripts so people can use them, but I can't find a download anywhere?
     

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