Guru3D.com is excited to bring you the "Guru3D VGA Charts". The VGA charts have been a much requested feature by you, the readers. The VGA charts is simply put a selection of games in which we will show you performance numbers (measured by average framerate). The distinct difference review results and these charts is two-fold, in our reviews we can only show you 5 maybe 6 comparative graphics card results due to limitation. In the VGA chart you can see all the reference cards we have tested in an orderly and easy to comprehend manner.
We look purely at reference (baseline) performance, as it is a tremendous task to keep these charts updated. Please bare in mind that due to driver revisions and passing time it is very possible that a card measured 4 months ago could be say 5% faster now due to driver optimizations. At all times keep that in mind.
The VGA charts will show you the baseline performance of products we have tested, and we'll add future results over time. To make things easy to understand we color-coded the framerate from Red (bad performance, to yellow (okay performance) to blue (true Guru3D preferred performance). Next to that each result will carry a pictogram showing you clearly if performance is good, okay or bad.
The VGA charts are for your reference only. There will be no comments on product performance, it's just a quick way to find results.
Examples how you could use these charts:
- If you want to purchase a certain graphics card, yet do not know how well a certain game will perform at 1280x1024. You just check the card versus resolution and look at the color coding or pictogram for your answer.
- You want to play F.e.a.r at a decent framerate at 1600x1200. What would be the cheapest card for that ? Just look up F.e.a.r. versus 1600x1200 and observe where performance is acceptable enough for you.
Please bare in mind that we just started gathering results. With time passing, more and more results will be added. We hope you will like this feature.
What's that average FPS you mention ?
What are we looking for in gaming performance wise? First off, obviously Guru3D tends to think that all games should be played at the best image quality (IQ) possible. Where possible we'll do this in the games. Maning your results would be better if you choose for example "mediaum" quality settings in the game. Obviously your framerate will be higher, yet the image quality would go down.
The dilemma: IQ often interferes with the performance of a graphics card.
Measuring FPS: We measure this in FPS, the number of frames a graphics card can render per second, the higher it is the more fluently your game will display itself. This is the number you'll see in the charts !
A game's frames per second (FPS) is typically measured average of a series of tests. That test often is a time demo, a recorded part of the game which is a 1:1 representation of the actual game and its gameplay experience. After forcing the same image quality settings; this timedemo is then used for all graphics cards so that the actual measuring is as objective as can be.
| Frames per second |
Gameplay |
| <30 FPS |
very limited gameplay |
| 30-40 FPS |
average yet very playable |
| 40-60 FPS |
good gameplay |
| >60 FPS |
best possible gameplay |
- So if a graphics card barely manages less than 30 FPS, then the game is not very playable, we want to avoid that at all cost.
- With 30 FPS up-to roughly 40 FPS you'll be very able to play the game with perhaps a tiny stutter at certain graphically intensive parts. Overall a very enjoyable experience. Match the best possible resolution to this result and you'll have the best possible rendering quality versus resolution, hey you want both of them to be as high as possible.
- When a graphics card is doing 60 FPS on average or higher then you can rest assured that the game will likely play extremely smoothly at every point in the game, turn on every possible in-game IQ setting.
- Over 100 FPS? You have either a MONSTER of graphics card or a very old game.
Mind you that if you have a faster or slower system, the results would be off as well. We have built a test system that consist out of the following components:
OS related Software
- Windows Vista 32-bit
- DirectX 9/10 End User Runtime
- Latest graphics cards drivers available
- NVIDIA nForce 590/680iplatform driver 9.53
With that being said, please make a selection of what VGA charts you'd like to see:
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