A new era of GPU benchmarking: Inside the second with Nvidia's 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:
