Meet The 2012 Graphics Charts: How We're Testing This Year

[FormatC]

It's time to revamp the Graphics Charts section! For 2012, we're increasing the number of games and resolutions, dividing the results into three segments. But that's not all. We also include GPGPU benchmarking, power consumption, temperature, and noise.

Meet The 2012 Graphics Charts: How We're Testing This Year : Read more

 

[johnny_utah]

While I love the new techniques, using BITCOIN to bench GPUGPU performance instead of Folding @ Home? Um, okay.

 

[Guest]

Still with the bar charts? Would *love* to see scatter plots with price/score on the axes... So much more useful in picking out a card.

 

[AznCracker]

Man the charts are dying to be updated. Too bad it isn't done more often since it takes a lot of work.

 

[Guest]

You havent added how many cheese wheels it can run in skyrim as a benchmark... wth?

 

[DjEaZy]

... i like the pile of card's @ the end of the article.... a beautiful pile...

 

[pharoahhalfdead]

[citation][nom]johnny_utah[/nom]While I love the new techniques, using BITCOIN to bench GPUGPU performance instead of Folding @ Home? Um, okay.[/citation]

I agree. I know Tom's spends a lot of time benchmarking, but Folding@home is something that is a bit more common. I would love to see F@H in some articles.

BTW, I appreciate all the work you guys do.

 

[randomkid]

Where's the 5760x1080? In the area where I come from, 3x 1920x1080p 22" monitor cost around the same or even less than a single 2560x1440/1600 27" monitor so this is a more likely configuration among gamers.

The 5760x1080 resolution will also push the GPU's harder than a 2560x1440/1600 could so why limit the resolution there?

 

[Guest]

We'll add up to 20 new boards each month until the lower end of the performance range is filled out, too.

How far back in GPU generations are you going to test, if at all? I saw the power consumption charts and could only see GTX 500, 600 and Radeon 6000, 7000 series. I have an EVGA GTX 480 SC for two years and do like to know how it compares to the newer series of GPUs. Much appreciated.

 

[Yargnit]

[citation][nom]MMO Fan[/nom]Yup no surprise here typical Nvidia benchmark suite fuck sakes.[/citation]

So what would YOU like to see used then? If they were trying to push Nvidia wouldn't Hawx 2 be in the suite?

 

[shinym]

For Starcraft II you say "This game doesn't stress the CPU, and is thus well-suited for GPU benchmarking." Looks like you got CPU and GPU mixed up there.

 

[cangelini]

[citation][nom]shinym[/nom]For Starcraft II you say "This game doesn't stress the CPU, and is thus well-suited for GPU benchmarking." Looks like you got CPU and GPU mixed up there.[/citation]
More than likely, it's the sequence the German team picked that is less CPU-bound than other StarCraft II tests we've used.

 

[CaedenV]

[citation][nom]CommieIBanker[/nom]Still with the bar charts? Would *love* to see scatter plots with price/score on the axes... So much more useful in picking out a card.[/citation]
I would love something like this as well, but as Tom's has a world wide market and the prices vary so greatly from place to place such charts become impractical.

What I miss about the old charts is that you could easily compare old GPUs to new ones. When upgrading I think people like to have a reference of what they currently have compared to what they are looking at getting. To throw in a few old cards like the 8600GT, 8/9800GT in the mix may help people feel more secure in their purchases, and have a better feel for what they are getting because they can relate the new card to their old one. Not saying Tom's needs to put in every single card from every generation, but a card or 2 from each generation from the last 6 years or so would be nice.

Another thing I would like is something like Anandtech's bench where when you select your cards you get bar graphs instead of raw numbers in a chart. It is just easier to visually see a 1/3rd difference in performance on a line graph rather than in raw numbers.

 

[quixoticism]

I would have preferred to see all the benchmarks at 1920x1080 done with maxed out graphics settings.
I want to see how the base performance is in games with full detail, and save the heavy AA and resolutions for extreme.

 

[CaedenV]

while speaking of comparison chart complaints:
-Some cards (though not all) show up as their name, others have a picture of the card with a sales link, and others give very little information at all. It would be nice to make this consistent so that at the top of each column we could see the pic (if available), the name of the card, and then a sales link (hey, you have to pay of the site somehow)

-organize the comparison charts a little. On the comparison page it just throws all the charts together with no apparent rhyme or reason. It would be nice to have groupings such as physical considerations (temps, noise, and power usage), gpgpu benchmarks, and game benchmarks sorted either by game.

-Could we add physical dimensions? It would be helpful to some to know how long a card is, and now many slots it takes.

-lastly, under "02 - Unigine Heaven DirectX 11 Performance 1920x1080, 4xAA, AFx16 Shaders medium Tessellation normal" the "score in" has a blank spot to enter in text (pretty sure it should say 'FPS' here) followed by a broken "Go" link.

None of these changes should be all that hard to make, and would make the charts much simpler to use when comparing specific cards.

 

[Guest]

Glad to see Bitcoin Mining being included now.

 

[kyuuketsuki]

[citation][nom]quixoticism[/nom]I would have preferred to see all the benchmarks at 1920x1080 done with maxed out graphics settings.I want to see how the base performance is in games with full detail, and save the heavy AA and resolutions for extreme.[/citation]
This. I, along with probably a large chunk of your readers, are probably more interested in performance at maxed out settings at 1080p than skipping from mid-range settings at 1080p to maxed out settings at higher resolutions.

 

[MMO Fan]

[citation][nom]yargnit[/nom]So what would YOU like to see used then? If they were trying to push Nvidia wouldn't Hawx 2 be in the suite?[/citation]
Now that would just be to obvious.

 

[Guest]

Thanks for your work Guys,reading trough since long time and each rig has been built based upon your tests!
Gabriel

 

[devBunny]

"What would you rather listen to, a low hum or a high-pitched whine at the same loudness?"

Lol. Good question. My tinnitus gives me a couple of the lows and several highs (but, just for fun and to keep me noticing them, the pitch and loudness vary). To be honest, I'd rather not hear any of them! ;O)

 

[devBunny]

Dear Tom's

Regarding charts, I think it's way past time that you provided dynamic, configurable graphs generated from the data rather than static images. Images are fine if that's all that the web savvy that a site has. Surely Tom's is better than that?! [tease, tease] ;o)

I'd like graphs that have options, including choice of colours (I sometimes can't easily see the difference between the colours that you use) and scale (so that I don't have to opening images in another tab and manually enlarging them to read the finer details).

Someone above mentioned scatter diagrams. And why not, if that would suit him? A page that downloads the data rather than an image has scope for creating whatever kind of graph can help represent the data meaningfully.

Tom's, I invite you to kill me with kindness. ;-)

ps. By "dynamic", I don't mean animated. That's pointless, even annoying, eye candy. It's only necessary to show the data more clearly, in a form that people prefer.

 

[shin0bi272]

he he he dx9 games.

The reasoning that you gave for testing dx9 games was the exact reason I gave when emailing you last year about expanding your graphics card list to include older dx9 cards and [edit]note it on the chart that it had to be run in dx10 mode. Cause I can play metro 2033 on my gts250 at about 30fps in dx10 mode but if you leave them out of the test its not really fair since you CAN play them just without tessellation. [/edit] That way when someone has an old dx9 or 10 card that they bought years ago when the consoles just came out and it still plays almost all the new games they will know what to expect from an upgrade.

You dont have to do all the old cards just 2 from each maker. Like do a 280(or 285) and a 250 from nvidia and say the 4870 and 4770 from amd. That way you get a generational example reaching back years for people who have refused to upgrade due to what I like to call Console Upgrade Lag Laziness (or CULL). Plus youd only have to test these 4 cards (or more if youre feeling generous), once a year as long as the test bed's motherboard pci-e slot is still backwards compatible with pci-e 1.0a or 2.0.

[edit]Also over at guru3d they are already sort of doing it... http://www.guru3d.com/article/vga-charts-spring-2011/2 ... yes I know thats an old chart but thats the newest one they have. [/edit]

[edit] And what's up with the price difference between 1920x1200 and even 2560x1440? I go on newegg to see what an upgrade from my 27.5" 1920x1200 monitor would cost. My monitor is 279 the 27" 2560x1440 is 679!? Sure its a million more pixels but does that justify more than DOUBLE the price? Then a 2560x1600 monitor is 1179! Thats not even an extra million pixels for twice the price of the 25x14 monitor! price gouging? what's that? [/edit]

 

[eddieroolz]

My god, these are some hardcore methods for measuring performance and power use, all so that we can make accurate, informed decisions when buying a graphics card! Thanks Toms!

 

[Guest]

I had no clue so much work was put into these benchmarks... some crazy stuff! Thanks for the hardwork

 

[AsTheDeath]

Considering the fact that 2500x1440 screens are so expensive and many 'performance'-category cards perform well enough in 1920x1080, I too would like to see benchmarks on higher/highest settings at 1920x1080. I generally prefer a better look over a higher framerate so that would definitely be the most relevant benchmark for me.