Battlefield 4 VGA graphics performance benchmark review

Game reviews 126 Page 9 of 11 Published by

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FCAT Frame Experience Analysis Single GPU

With a benchmark technology called FCAT on the following pages 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.

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Meet the FCAPS setup - two new dedicated PCs and two monitors merely for a handful of plotted graphs.
  • 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 17ms. 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 ?

But basically 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 like to run through a couple of titles with you. Mind you that Average FPS matters more than frametime measurements. It's just an additional page or two of information that from now on we'll be serving you.

FCAT Frame Experience Analysis Single GPU

Per

Above a percentile chart of the 30 seconds @ a monitor resolution of 2560x1440 pixels. Here we plot FPS and place it in relation to percentiles. This methodology could be used to determine average FPS as well.

Check the 50% marker:

  • Radeon R7-260X does roughly 22 FPS on average in this scene sequence
  • Radeon R9-280X does roughly 46 FPS on average in this scene sequence
  • GeForce GTX 770  does roughly 44 FPS on average in this scene sequence

But now lets look at frame latency.

Plot

Above are the cards flexing muscle at a monitor resolution of 2560x1440 (WQHD). You'll notice that here frametime scaling in milliseconds is higher for the slower cards, and lower for the fast cards. Low latency means a graphics card can squeeze more frames into one second. As you can see for all cards tested there are no stutters recorded.

For all cards, this really is as good as it can get. All cards have one dropped frame, that is some shader loading in-game. This is nearing perfection really. With this chart, lower = better. Huge spikes above 40-50ms can be considered a problem or indicate a low framerate. Spikes that drop down can be dropped frames.

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