Designing Our Next GPU Test Suite
by Ryan Smith on March 14, 2010 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- Ryan's Ramblings
In keeping with our desire to refresh our GPU test suite periodically, we’re going to be redoing our GPU test suite to rotate in some more modern games, along with rotating in some DirectX11 games capable of taking advantage of this generation of GPU’s full capabilities. And while we already have a pretty solid idea of what we’re going to run, we wanted to throw out this question anyhow and see what responses we get.
What games would you like to see in our next GPU test suite, and why?
What we’d like to see is whether our choices line up with what our readers would like to see. We can’t promise that we’ll act on any specific responses, but we have our eyes and ears open to well-reasoned suggestions. So let us know what you think by commenting below.
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SinxarKnights - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
Synthetics are important to have an easily comparable benchmark.thurston - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
I would like to see some benchmarks that are not games. I think you should also benchmark some video applications that use gpus.Barneyk - Monday, March 15, 2010 - link
I agree alot with this!Patrick Wolf - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
I'm pretty happy with your current line-up, but yeah you should probably get some newer games in there, but only if they're more demanding than an older benched game.I want to see:
- GTAIV because it's.. GTAIV. I know after all the patches it's still probably not optimized for PC, but it can't be too bad now. And, it's GTAIV!
- The Witcher Enhanced Edition cause it's pretty demanding I think.
And whatever happened to the mystery of better performance when ATI cards are running with Intel CPUs and when nVidia cards are running with AMD CPUs (or something like that)? Has this been solved? If not, it's something I'd like to see tested.
MikeSz - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
Metro 2033 - first game that seems to really push DX 11. also "optimal" requirements posted on Steam are simply insanely high, so the game has a chance to stay in the suite for years to comeShattered Horizon - first and only name I can remember that was written purely for DX 10 and requires a DX 10 card. While I dont think well of the game, it should provide a good benchmark of DX 10 cards
PS my first post :) long time reader
Troll Trolling - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
I would like to see Team Fortress 2, at least on low~med end.Anno 1404 also would be a nice game to add.
Other thing, I think the reviews should have the min FPS, and some kind of FPS stability graph.
MuParadigm - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
Tom's Hardware recently had an article where they tested 2D performance on recent GPUs and found that it was pretty abysmal.I'm not sure what apps outside of a benchmark you could use for testing, but it might help keep AMD and NVidia on their toes with up-to-date 2D implementations in their device drivers if they knew it would be tested.
So I'm recommending the inclusion of some old-fashioned 2D testing.
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MuParadigm - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
I see that GrizzledYoungMan got there first. Consider the above post seconding his points..
JNo - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
For all mainstream / high end cards, MINIMUM resolution of 1680x1050.
I hate seeing reviews of 295s and 5870s etc with fps graphs for 1280x1024, as if anyone who could afford those cards would use a cheap 4:3 monitor...
Also second a value graph / table i.e. £/fps or $/fps for you guys.
For an example, see www.hexus.net
They 'normalise' the numbers a bit first too e.g. for fps above 60, they half the additional fps as, well, they're half as useful above that sort of level (eg 200fps vs 100fps on L4D is not nearly as useful as 40fps vs 20fps on Crysis. First example both 200 & 100fps are highly playable, second example 40fps much more so than 20fps).
And then, for icing, they also provide value tables for overclocked result too.
Just my 2p...
exostrife - Sunday, March 14, 2010 - link
The change I'd like to see has less to do with specific games, and more to do with how people use your reviews.Having 6 games reviewed at 2560 or even higher is pretty pointless. Budget and mid-range cards far outnumber the $600 king cards, and people who are buying mid-range or budget cards probably aren't running huge monitors, so the higher resolutions are less meaningful.
I'd also suggest trying to keep a mix of new and old games in your reviews for two reasons; games on pc's have a lot of replay value and their engines form the core of multiple games, and it also helps create a point of comparison when looking at older reviews. I raise this point because many of us are reading reviews of new graphics cards because we are looking to upgrade our older card. If we can compare old reviews of our card with some of the same games/resolutions to the new card, then thats a bonus.
The other thought I'd have is to try to keep a good mid-range card from each manufacturer from the last 1 or 2 generations in your reviews. This also would help the many of us considering a upgrade just how our current card (or at least a representative of the line) stacks up.