Frametime benchmarking

[mrthuvi]

So i was browsing the forum and i saw this thread: http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/16529-gtx-670-erratic-frametime/

What interests me is that op had to post a video on youtube to describe his frametime issue. 

 

Linus has repeatedly talked about how hard it is to benchmark frametime in his videos. After some digging, i have found out that it is not exactly true. Frametime benchmark can be easily done. Frame runt benchmark is what is hard to do. 

 

So fps is not reliable, we get it, we can get very high fps with horrible stutter. While fps tells us how many frames are there per second, basically what frame time tells us is how much time each frame is rendered. If there is a frame that takes too long to render - bam - that's when the stutter occurs. 

 

So how do we do frametime benchmark? Using fraps. Check the frametime button. Here's a tool to view benchmark data - Frapfs Bench Viewer: 

http://sourceforge.net/projects/frafsbenchview/files/

 

I use Darksiders II to test if frametime can show me the stutter that fps don't show. For those of you that don't know, Darksiders II have horrible stutter issue despite having high FPS, ingame vsync is useless, i have to use radeon pro to fix it but i'm not gonna use it in this test. Note: the game itself is buggy on both AMD and Nvidia. I'm gonna benchmark it for 1 minute (right in the starting snowy area, just sitting on the horse looking around doing nothing):

 

FPS benchmark: min: 67, max: 102, avg: 87.2

Fps looks good but the game stuttered horribly. 

 

Frametime benchmark with no radeon pro:

 

Checkout the spikes! Each spike is a stutter.

 

Same area benchmark, but with dynamic v-sync enabled in radeon pro. Just to show you how smooth game play frametime is supposed to look like: 

 

 

Check out this article too:

http://techreport.com/review/21516/inside-the-second-a-new-look-at-game-benchmarking

 

We all know that 30fps is barely acceptable, 60fps is good, 120fps = awesome. So here is a convert table in techreport:

 

I'd say that any spike above 33ms (below 30fps) is noticeable (in my opinion only, correct me if i'm wrong). Higher spikes/More spikes = more stutter.

Hope this help you! Sorry for my horrible English, and please correct me if i'm wrong in understanding this issue anywhere, guys.

[G.Freeman]

We should bring to light that frame time is an issue only with muti GPU setups on both nvidia SLI and AMD CF but not on single GPUs.

[mrthuvi]

We should bring to light that frame time is an issue only with muti GPU setups on both nvidia SLI and AMD CF but not on single GPUs.

It happens on single GPUs too with badly ported games. Just google prototype 2/bullerstorm/darksiders 2 stutter and you will be amazed with how many results it shows. With AMD, just use radeon pro, Radeon Pro = magic. I don't know how Nvidia GPUs fix it though.

[G.Freeman]

It happens on single GPUs too with badly ported games. Just google prototype 2/bullerstorm/darksiders 2 stutter and you will be amazed with how many results it shows. With AMD, just use radeon pro, Radeon Pro = magic. I don't know how Nvidia GPUs fix it though.

I have never had a frame time issue yet in any of the games I play on my Radeon HD 7850.

[ERSCreeper]

I have had frametime issues with my gtx 550 Ti and my HD 7950 in some games before. Can't recall the names but I remember I stopped playing them due to the stutter.

[iSuzak]

RadeonPro is pretty amazing :o

[Chivpcgamer]

It happens on single GPUs too with badly ported games. Just google prototype 2/bullerstorm/darksiders 2 stutter and you will be amazed with how many results it shows. With AMD, just use radeon pro, Radeon Pro = magic. I don't know how Nvidia GPUs fix it though.

badly ported games are badly ported games its irrelivent. They should be thrown away and not given the pleasure of our money

[G.Freeman]

badly ported games are badly ported games its irrelivent. They should be thrown away and not given the pleasure of our money

True. and Prototype was a terrible console game anyway LOL.

[Chivpcgamer]

True. and Prototype was a terrible console game anyway LOL.

LOL

[SkilledRebuilds]

There are a few games that under utilize our cards,not just under utilization but other instances of shithouse programming causing stutter on single gpu setups, mostly caused by bad optimizations I think, But its hard to tell on a bad port if its the rendering pipeline giving runt frames or another shotty part of the programming making it stutter.

 

You could conclude one is the same as the other, but on a bad game port, it could be a range of things causing stutter, not just the graphics side of things.. Single core usage, enabling any function causing delays in processing something else... etc.

[mrthuvi]

We should bring to light that frame time is an issue only with muti GPU setups on both nvidia SLI and AMD CF but not on single GPUs.

Good idea. 

- The problem with AMD CF is bad Frame Rating (with many frame runts)

- Bad Frame time is an issue with both SLI and CF, SLI is better but we still observed frame time spikes:

Take a look at this:

Notice the 690 frametime spike that reach 50ms. We can definitely notice that stutter in game. 

This graph is weird. So titan and 690 has stutter even in Crysis 3 1080p? We have spikes that reached as high as 50-70 ms. 

Wow 690 showed some spikes as high as 90mn!

 

And last but not least, if the game is badly coded/ported, you will have stutter whether you are using single GPU or dual GPUS:

[G.Freeman]

Good idea. 

- The problem with AMD CF is bad Frame Rating (with many frame runts)

 

 

- Bad Frame time is an issue with both SLI and CF, SLI is better but we still observed frame time spikes:

Take a look at this:

 

Notice the 690 frametime spike that reach 50ms. We can definitely notice that stutter in game. 

 

This graph is weird. So titan and 690 has stutter even in Crysis 3 1080p? We have spikes that reached as high as 50-70 ms. 

 

Wow 690 showed some spikes as high as 90mn!

 

And last but not least, if the game is badly coded/ported, you will have stutter whether you are using single GPU or dual GPUS:

 

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