Should game benchmarks be run at lowest settings too?

[Si3Rra_7]

Benchmarking a game like Battlefield, CSGO, Apex legends and other "esports" titles, at Ultra settings is fine, but it's nowhere near what people are going to actually run in those games.

 

Other than 4/3 stretched shenanigans most people run the game at their native resolution, usually 1080p, with the lowest settings for maximum fps, maybe one or two settings turned up to medium if they greatly improve enemy visibility.

 

Benchmarking a game using lowest settings might show us different things. IE:

• cpu A($200) gets 90 fps at ultra settings

• cpu B($250) gets 95 fps at ultra settings

Obviously from this you extract that cpu A is a much better value, but if you benchmark it using lowest settings you get

• cpu A($200) gets 120 fps at low settings

• cpu B($250) gets 160 fps at low settings

This shows that you get a good boost over the 144hz target for cpu B compared to cpu A and should save a little more and buy the better SKU. Many tech websites i follow don't test cpus like this and draw bad conclusions.

What do you guys think? Is just benchmarking games on ultra flawed ?

[lewdicrous]

Benchmarking hardware at high - ultra settings is meant to show you how powerful that hardware is, whether it's a cpu or a gpu.

 

If you're gonna test medium end or low end hardware then that would call for testing games at low to medium settings, but if you're testing high end hardware, then you gotta test it on high to ultra settings, cause no one is gonna buy high end stuff then play on low settings. 

[glenalz81]

4 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

cause no one is gonna buy high end stuff then play on low settings. 

Most competitive titles do not get ran at the highest settings, Pro players with 8700k's and 1080s are running on low settings to improve latency and fps because the extra resources used with highest settings makes a difference, not to me or you though, at the highest level.

 

Like @Si3Rra_7 said only if there's an advantage with visibility or view distance for example would a particular setting be turned up.

[Arika]

no, because that's not the point of a benchmark. mainstream review/benchmark sites are not for your super competitive gamer, they're for your normal everyday person who wants to know if their PC has a change at even running the game they want to play, the people that would "benefit" from such tests are in the severe minority.

[duncannah]

Doing that would make the scores more dependent on the CPU rather than the GPU, no?

[lewdicrous]

22 minutes ago, glenalz81 said:

Most competitive titles do not get ran at the highest settings, Pro players with 8700k's and 1080s are running on low settings to improve latency and fps because the extra resources used with highest settings makes a difference, not to me or you though, at the highest level.

 

Like @Si3Rra_7 said only if there's an advantage with visibility or view distance for example would a particular setting be turned up.

Sure, but everyone who buys those parts is involved in esports or a pro.

Most people would run their games in high or ultra cause it looks way better than it does in low settings.

That's why I think you should benchmark high end products at ultra settings; that's the performance that the end user wants to know.

[Giganthrax]

Aren't benchmarks intended to push the hardware?

 

If you just want to see if a game is going to work smoothly on your computer, just try it out for an hour and see how it goes. If your computer can't run it, you can always refund the game on most mainstream stores.

[Si3Rra_7]

22 minutes ago, Arika S said:

they're for your normal everyday person who wants to know if their PC has a change at even running the game they want to play

Then wouldn't benchmarks run at the lowest settings benefit exactly those people, if they're not sure if their PC can even run those games?

24 minutes ago, duncannah said:

Doing that would make the scores more dependent on the CPU rather than the GPU, no?

Depends on the game. CPU reviews have GPU bottlenecked benchmarks and that's a bad thing. I'm not saying they should test games at 640x480, it becomes a synthetic benchmark at that point, i just wish they'd do more realistic, 1080p low settings benchmarks in appropriate games like battlefield and apex legends, not some cinematic RPG or walking simulator.

2 minutes ago, Giganthrax said:

If you just want to see if a game is going to work smoothly on your computer, just try it out for an hour and see how it goes. If your computer can't run it, you can always refund the game on most mainstream stores.

The point is not whether this hardware can run the game, it's what hardware can run the games at the most FPS on the settings that allow that, that aren't 640x480.