Apples to Apples GPU Benchmarking

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ProOC

Limp Gawd
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Jun 17, 2003
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What are you guys using for games and/or software to bench your GPU's? I am not looking for random FPS reports, I am looking for something more along the lines of the old Quake timedemos (predetermined rendering) that is the same all the time and a good apples to apples comparison with 2 different cards. Quake games are just too old to matter and I wish that todays games offered such a feature. I could be missing something, but at this point I am almost willing to shell out money for a newer game that does this, just to benchmark.

I have purchased 3DMark Vantage and 3DMark 11, but the cards I am attempting to compare are not both DX11 cards, so I cannot use 3DMark 11 for this scenario (I realize they are synthetic benchmarks, but at least I could begin to look at some numbers). 3DMark Vantage doesn't run on my machine any more due to issues that can be further read about and end here. So I cannot even use 3DMark Vantage for this testing.

Please help me understand how I evaluate the power of these cards. I am not even going to mention the card models as I do not want this to be a flame war on peoples personal opinions, I JUST WANT SOME NUMBERS!!!!!!! Thank you so much and happy computing!
 
The problem with this is for example Crysis 2 has tools available to do this and it is also a newer game but what would your results tell you? Well it'd tell which of the two cards you comparing plays Crysis 2 better (well to some extent) and to some degree how well it would play other Cryengine 3 games. But then you have to ask yourself is that all you are playing? And how many Cryengine 3 games are there or will be coming out that you will be playing?

Or you can look at Batman: Arkham City. This might be a better representative as it uses a much more popular engine.

Or something like Unigine Haven, its free and easy to use, but I guess if the card runs Haven better it'd be indicative of your performance Oil Rush. Yet that card could be much worse in something like Metro 2033 which you might actually be wanting to play.
 
Thanks for the reply. I hear what you are saying to an extent. At this moment in time though, I have no idea if the newer card is much better than my old card and at least if I saw one benchmark show me a significant difference, I would begin to feel better about it. I sort of jumped on a deal and am not even playing anything very new, but I plan on it. That said, I guess my best bet is to get into said new game and try both cards. If I don't feel a difference that matters, then I will have a good idea of what's going on. I guess WE are our only good benchmark tool these days. ;)
 
Well what you can do is get fraps and just log (basically bench) while you are playing to get some firm numbers. The free version is enough for this.

Other sites like Anandtech, Techpowerup, and Tom's Hardware off the top of my head have larger databases comparing cards across various games.

In terms of actual tools you can run these are some off the of the top of my head if you want to try them. Using relatively recent technology, some use actual engines used in games, varying levels of popularity, varying levels of actual utility.

Free or Demo (besides 3d mark) -

Aliens vs Predator Benchmark
FFIV Benchmark
Hard Reset (game demo)
Street Fighter IV Benchmark
Unigine Haven (this is rather widely used)

Commercial Games with built in or "time demo" type capabilities, or these capabilities through free third party tools -

Batman: Arkham Asylum/Arkham City
Civilization 5
Call of Duty 4: MW
Crysis/Crysis: Warhead
Crysis 2
Dirt 3
Mafia 2
Metro 2033
Resident Evil 5
Shogun 2: Total War
Starcraft 2
 
Crysis has a GPU benchamrk built in. Go to your bin dir and you should see some batch files that should do what your looking for.
 
Thanks limitedaccess. I am amidst some serious testing and will post my results and what I think might be a decent suite of tools to use in the bunch you mentioned.
 
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