Deus Ex: Mankind Divided PC GPU (DX11 and DX12) performance benchmark review

Game reviews 126 Page 10 of 11 Published by

teaser

(FCAT) Frametime experience

Frametime and latency performance

With FCAT we will look into Frame Experience Analysis. Basically with the charts shown we are trying to show you graphics anomalies like stutters and glitches in a plotted chart. Lately there has been a new measurement introduced, latency measurements. Basically it is the opposite of FPS.  

  • FPS mostly measures performance, the number of frames rendered per passing second.
  • Frametime AKA Frame Experience recordings mostly measures and exposes anomalies - here we look at how long it takes to render one frame. Measure that chronologically and you can see anomalies like peaks and dips in a plotted chart, indicating something could be off. 
Frame time
in milliseconds
FPS
8.3 120
15 66
20 50
25 40
30 33
50 20
70 14

We have a detailed article (read here) on the new FCAT methodology used, and it also explains why we do not use FRAPS anymore. Frametime - Basically the time it takes to render one frame can be monitored and tagged with a number, this is latency. One frame can take say 17 ms. Higher latency can indicate a slow framerate, and weird latency spikes indicate a stutter, jitter, twitches; basically anomalies that are visible on your monitor.

What Do These Measurements Show?

What these measurements show are anomalies like small glitches and stutters that you can sometimes (and please do read that well, sometimes) see on screen. Below I'd like to run through a couple of titles with you. Bear in mind that Average FPS often matters more than frametime measurements. 



Per

Above an FCAT plot of latency relative to FPS in percentiles. We use the Geforce GTX 1070 and the Radeon R9 Fury. I often get asked the question why we do not include the faster Fury X here, well FCAT is dependant of a DVI monitor output, and AMD is not implementing them any more on their reference products. Only board partner cards release DVI enabled products. Hence the R9 Fury we use is the STRIX from ASUS, as it has a proper DVI output connector. So at 50% you could consider to be the average frame-rate. The cards are nice and close and cuddly to achother. The plot is based on the first 31 seconds measured in the benchmark. 

Frame Pacing / Frametime

Plot

Above a the frame-time results plot of the test run @ 2560x1440 (WQHD) performed with a GeForce GTX 1070 in 2560x1440 (WQHD). That's picture perfect rendering really.

25192_plot

And above the R9 Fury. The spike at the beginning sometimes can happen when you startup the FCAT sequence, this is not an error from the graphics card. Here again we see really okay frame-time behaviour overall. Remember you are looking at close to roughly 2000 rendered frames; all nicely plotted to see if anything massively weird happens. That is just not the case. And now let us overlay and combine the two:

25195_plot

Both graphics card manufacturers seem to have the game well under control ralative to frame pacing, this is close to excellent. Sweet results here for both brands really. 

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