The Tech Report - Inside the second with Nvidia's frame capture tools

[Technikal]

Another good article..

Inside the second with Nvidia's frame capture tools

http://techreport.com/review/24553/inside-the-second-with-nvidia-frame-capture-tools

"We've come a long way since our initial Inside the second article. That's where we first advocated for testing real-time graphics and gaming performance by considering the time required to render each frame of animation, instead of looking at traditional FPS averages. Since then, we've applied new testing methods focused on frame latencies to a host of graphics card reviews and to CPUs, as well, with enlightening results.

The fundamental reality we've discovered is that a higher FPS average doesn't necessarily correspond to smoother animation and gameplay. In fact, at times, FPS averages don't seem to mean very much at all. The problem boils down to a weakness of averaging frame rates over the span of a whole second, as nearly all FPS-based tools tend to do. Allow me to dust off an old illustration, since it still serves our purposes well"

 

[Fooshnik]

For all the whining about crossfire vs SLI, they seem to correlate pretty closely on the games AMD has actually worked on.

Also, for all the whining about FRAPS frame times, they seem to correlate pretty closely with FCAT. Hopefully AMD will fix the other games so you don't have to use Afterburner/Radeon Pro to get smooth frame times.

 

[Fooshnik]

Yes, in cases where two frames output to the display at nearly the same time, the first gets truncated by the second. It's a whole frame, it just never got time to display. Vsync on keeps this from happening.

 

[GoldenTiger]

Still amazes me that people regard Radeon cards as a good value and viable option, when over the years they have had and continue to have well-known problems with anisotropic filtering quality (banding), frametimes, general bugginess, poor crossfire profile release speed/overall support, etc. I've tried them most generations, but they continually disappoint and I always end up back on an nVidia solution. Yeah, they're costlier, but at least they work much more reliably and consistently.

Still, I guess the overall market agrees considering steam hardware stats and how poorly AMD does on them. I hope AMD someday gets its game together, because having only one company that makes real graphics cards would suck.... nVidia has already noticed this trend and maintains higher pricing than AMD it seems now.

Anyone remember AMD aniso flickering and shimmering? http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036361116 As one example from years past... it's always something with this company to try to sneak quality loss in to make their benchmarks look good, be it frametime silliness or otherwise.

So what do we make of the problems of runt and dropped frames? They're troublesome for performance testing, because they get counted by benchmarking tools, helping to raise FPS averages and all the rest, but they have no tangible visual benefit to the end user. [/quote[
AMD chose specifically to push frames out as fast as possible to result in good benchmark "FPS" measurements, while degrading the user experience, instead of (like nVidia) sacrificing review marketability to provide actual quality. And it's not even that they get displayed briefly, in many cases they are truncated before even fully drawing, or just skipped entirely. It's high time they stopped getting a free pass by some enthusiasts: questionable judgement or outright cheats suck, regardless of which company does it (quack3.exe anyone?).

 

[Spyhawk]

Still amazes me that people regard Radeon cards as a good value and viable option, when over the years they have had and continue to have well-known problems with anisotropic filtering quality (banding), frametimes, general bugginess, poor crossfire profile release speed/overall support, etc. I've tried them most generations, but they continually disappoint and I always end up back on an nVidia solution. Yeah, they're costlier, but at least they work much more reliably and consistently.

Still, I guess the overall market agrees considering steam hardware stats and how poorly AMD does on them. I hope AMD someday gets its game together, because having only one company that makes real graphics cards would suck.... nVidia has already noticed this trend and maintains higher pricing than AMD it seems now.

Anyone remember AMD aniso flickering and shimmering? http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036361116 As one example from years past... it's always something with this company to try to sneak quality loss in to make their benchmarks look good, be it frametime silliness or otherwise.

So what do we make of the problems of runt and dropped frames? They're troublesome for performance testing, because they get counted by benchmarking tools, helping to raise FPS averages and all the rest, but they have no tangible visual benefit to the end user. [/quote[
AMD chose specifically to push frames out as fast as possible to result in good benchmark "FPS" measurements, while degrading the user experience, instead of (like nVidia) sacrificing review marketability to provide actual quality. And it's not even that they get displayed briefly, in many cases they are truncated before even fully drawing, or just skipped entirely. It's high time they stopped getting a free pass by some enthusiasts: questionable judgement or outright cheats suck, regardless of which company does it (quack3.exe anyone?).

You really need to get rid of them green shades man. I don't care how many amd cards you have had in the past. It doesn't give you anymore objectivity than anyone else. All I ever read from you is how bad AMD is and just how great Nvidia is. You NEVER hone in on any Nvidia issues and oh yes there are plenty who complain on various sites across the net. You continuously try to show AMD products in the worse possible light. Amd isn't as bad as you say they are and Nvidia is far from as great as you think they are.

Get over it dude. No matter what you say people will still buy amd products because they work and they don't cost an arm and a leg. Ive had my Gigabyte 7970 since launch and it has been the best video card Ive ever owned...except maybe the R300(9800xt) I had back in the day. I can play any game with this card and it overclocks like a beast on air(1200gpu by 1600mem by 1.2volts STABLE 24/7) and Ive had no issues whatsoever playing any games.

 

[GoldenTiger]

You really need to get rid of them green shades man. I don't care how many amd cards you have had in the past. It doesn't give you anymore objectivity than anyone else. All I ever read from you is how bad AMD is and just how great Nvidia is. You NEVER hone in on any Nvidia issues and oh yes there are plenty who complain on various sites across the net. You continuously try to show AMD products in the worse possible light. Amd isn't as bad as you say they are and Nvidia is far from as great as you think they are.

Get over it dude. No matter what you say people will still buy amd products because they work and they don't cost an arm and a leg. Ive had my Gigabyte 7970 since launch and it has been the best video card Ive ever owned...except maybe the R300(9800xt) I had back in the day. I can play any game with this card and it overclocks like a beast on air(1200gpu by 1600mem by 1.2volts STABLE 24/7) and Ive had no issues whatsoever playing any games.

You haven't read many posts by me if you think I've never brought up nvidia issues before over the years . That said, AMD *on the whole* seems to have far more issues than nvidia does, and the marketshare definitely reflects that. As far as me putting them in a bad light... they did that themselves, these articles simply prove it. I'm just a commentator.

 

[biggles]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-benchmarking-frame-rate,3466.html

Another related article on the subject. While Nvidia appears to be better addressing the issue I am hopeful that AMD will prioritize this in the future.

 

[KENNYB]

Get over it dude. No matter what you say people will still buy amd products because they work and they don't cost an arm and a leg. Ive had my Gigabyte 7970 since launch and it has been the best video card Ive ever owned...except maybe the R300(9800xt) I had back in the day. I can play any game with this card and it overclocks like a beast on air(1200gpu by 1600mem by 1.2volts STABLE 24/7) and Ive had no issues whatsoever playing any games.

You're looking at this from a rational point of view. We can't have that up in here.
I fully expect both to screw up again in the future. Right now it's time for AMD to take a good needling for concentrating on what nVidia is doing instead of focusing on their product. That means kick a fanboy while he or she is down.

 

[GoldenTiger]

You're looking at this from a rational point of view. We can't have that up in here.
I fully expect both to screw up again in the future. Right now it's time for AMD to take a good needling for concentrating on what nVidia is doing instead of focusing on their product. That means kick a fanboy while he or she is down.

Wow, how surprising, someone tends to advocate for something he finds works well for him and thus enjoys using it! WHAT A SHOCKER! People tend to do that in the real world . That said, there is factual, objective, extremely strong proof that AMD's cards this generation are vastly inferior on numerous counts (crossfire, profile release speed, overall glitchiness such as ULPS and scaling, runt frames and falsely inflated fps numbers). So, I would discount most anyone saying that their opinion the card works OK for them as knowing what they're talking about, honestly, at this point. Ultimately people will buy what they want to, and they want good products: hence why nVidia's cards are outselling AMD's vastly this entire generation (as well as over time) and their marketshare reflects that.

 

[GoldenTiger]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphics-card-benchmarking-frame-rate,3466.html

Another related article on the subject. While Nvidia appears to be better addressing the issue I am hopeful that AMD will prioritize this in the future.

I've been hopeful AMD would get their act together for many generations now... . Sadly, they always disappoint me, which sucks because they tend to be cheaper cards and if they could just get their software sorted out, they'd be a great value. Unfortunately, they aren't as things stand and haven't been for ages.