DX12: FCAT Frame Experience Analysis Rise Of The Tomb Raider

With a benchmark technology called FCAT on the following few pages, we will look into Frame Experience Analysis. 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 measurement. 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. 

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 frame-rate, and weird latency spikes indicate a stutter, jitter, twitches; basically anomalies that are visible on your monitor.

What Do These Measurements Show?

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'd like to run through a couple of titles with you. Keep in mind that average FPS matters more than frametime measurements. 

Rise Of The Tomb Raider Frame Experience Analysis

Above, a percentile chart of the first 31 seconds @ 2560x1440 of the benchmark recorded. In this particular chart we plot FPS and place it in relation to percentiles.

In black the GTX 1080, in green today's tested GTX 1070 and in red the Radeon R9 Fury. Normally we'd be using a Fury X but for FCAT we need a DVI output, the RadeoN R9 Fury X does not have one hence we use a board partner Fury 

• If you look at the X axis at 50%, that is 50% of the time measured frames is close to 100 FPS in the first segment of the benchmark. This you can consider the average frame-rate (this is the intro scene where Lara walks over the snowy mountain).

Now we move to latency measurements (frame-times). Above, the GeForce 1070 rendering Rise of ther Tomb Raider at 2560x1440. On this 31 second run the graphics card manages extremely well; as you can see, there are no stutters recorded. At the end what you see is a scene change, it is not an anomaly. Now let's add the Radeon R9 Fury and GeForce GTX 1080 in-to the graph.

So on each benchmark page I will add one extra FCAT result, in here you can see the GeForce GTX 1070/1080 and Radeon R9 Fury, just a little extra for comparison's sake. As you can see, in the intro scene the Fury produces some stutters, I can visibly see these on screen, they are for real.