Benchmarking the Benchmarks 126
apoppin writes "HardOCP put video card benchmarking on trial and comes back with some pretty incredible verdicts. They show one video returning benchmark scores much better than another compared to what you get when you actually play the game. Lies, damn lies, and benchmarks."
Synthetics not entirely useless (Score:4, Informative)
Re:FRAPS Overhead? (Score:3, Informative)
[H] raises more questions than it answers (Score:3, Informative)
- is triple-buffering on or vsync off? This will make a huge difference to real time versus sped up timedemos
- is sound on when playing back both types of timedemos?
- how does FRAPS affect your benchmark scores?
Finally, in relation to the Crysis real world gameplay versus the AT benchmark score, I thought it was common knowledge that the game would be slower when actually playing it because you likely have physics,AI,logic,sound calculations to do that you don't in timedemo mode. What is the big deal here?
Re:Benchmarks are a marketing tool only (Score:4, Informative)
Re:[H] raises more questions than it answers (Score:4, Informative)
The root of the issue is that timedemos give the video card manufacturers something to tweak their drivers around besides gameplay. And there are also some arguments over how representative of your actual experience a timedemo will be. At least HardOCP gives a crap about their methodology, as opposed to other hardware sites which don't use any sort of statistical analysis.
Re:back in my day... (Score:5, Informative)
Benchmarking provides potential customers with a metric to compare potential purchases.
Re:back in my day... (Score:4, Informative)
That DX chip kicked the arse out of the SX models.
Solitaire on "You just won. Watch the cards leap" was good for checking out the Windows performance, but Wolf told you how fast the PC was.