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 1060 3GB, in green a 1060 6GB. If you look at the X axis at 50%, this you can consider the average frame-rate (this is the intro scene where Lara walks over the snowy mountain).

As you can see, the 372.54 driver on the 3GB GTX 1060 does not run rather nicely in terms of overall FPS, more on that in our conclusion.
  

Now we move to latency measurements (frame-times). Above, the GeForce 1060 3GB rendering Rise of the Tomb Raider at 2560x1440. On this 31 second run the graphics card shows one stutter at 16 seconds, other then that little is going on. At the end what you see is a scene change, it is not an anomaly.

So on each benchmark page I will add one extra FCAT result, in here you can see the GeForce GTX 1060 3GB/6GB and Radeon RX 470 and 480, just a little extra for comparison's sake.