Multi-GPU World Tour 2006: Part 6
In part 6 of the Multi-GPU World Tour, the guys over at nV News take a look at some "uncommon" benchmarks. They put the test rigs through several games not commonly used for benchmarking purposes in an attempt to see how they stack up in a variety of real-world situations. The games they used are Morrowind, Brothers in Arms, Neverwinter Nights, Painkiller and Dungeon Siege 2.
"One approach to testing graphics card performance is to use in-game benchmarking, which relies the game engine to play back a recorded demo of actual gameplay. As the demo is played back, without sound and as fast as the computer being tested allows, the benchmark calculates and saves the frame rate as well as the time the frame rate was calculated.
When the benchmark concludes, the collected data is then processed and used to report minimum, maximum, and average frame rate. Other useful statistics can be provided such as the number, or percentage, of frames that fall within a given range of values, similar to the game F.E.A.R. With in-game benchmarking, the deviation from repeated benchmark runs is low and makes it an accurate measure of performance. Since many games do not feature an in-game benchmark, a second approach can be used."
When the benchmark concludes, the collected data is then processed and used to report minimum, maximum, and average frame rate. Other useful statistics can be provided such as the number, or percentage, of frames that fall within a given range of values, similar to the game F.E.A.R. With in-game benchmarking, the deviation from repeated benchmark runs is low and makes it an accurate measure of performance. Since many games do not feature an in-game benchmark, a second approach can be used."
