LABS TEST / GRAPHICS CARDS
Ben Hardwidge and Edward Chester delve into the tangled web of the
£150-£350 graphics market, in order to find the sweet spots
Graphic
equaliser
LABS TEST
How we test
A
ll our graphics card tests are performed on our graphics test
rig, incorporating a Core i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 4.7GHz
on all cores, 16GB of 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4
memory and a Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 5 motherboard.Minimum gauge
For a long time, we’ve said that the minimum frame rate is a more
important metric than the average. While the average may be a fair
representation of what you’re likely to experience for the most part, it’s
the minimum that you’ll really notice when you’re playing a game, so
you want to know the worst-case scenario.
However, we’re now taking a more nuanced approach to the way
we calculate the minimum. Until now, we’ve reported the very lowest
frame rate recorded in each benchmark as the minimum, but this might
only come down to the occasional rogue dropped frame, and it can also
make it difficult to get reliably repeatable results in some benchmarks.
When you’re playing a game, an occasional rogue dropped frame
might be a bit annoying, but it’s only a split second before you can get on
with playing again. If you experience prolonged periods of slowdown
for a few seconds then that’s a bigger problem. For this reason, we’ve
adopted a new way of reporting frame rates.
Using Nvidia’s FrameView app (custompc.co.uk/FrameView),
we record the frame rate, and the software also organises them intoLABS TEST / GRAPHICS CARDS
Custom PC’s graphics test rig has
a Core i7-8700K overclocked to
4.7GHz on all coresBenHardwidgeandEdwardChesterdelve into the tangled web of the
£150-£350graphicsmarket,inorderto find the sweet spots
Graphic
equaliser
LABS TEST
Howwe test
A
ll our graphics card tests are performed on our graphics test
rig, incorporating a Core i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 4.7GHz
on all cores, 16GB of 3000MHz Corsair Vengeance LED DDR4
memory and a Gigabyte Z370 Aorus Gaming 5 motherboard.
Minimum gauge
For a long time, we’ve said that the minimum frame rate is a more
important metric than the average. While the average may be a fair
representation of what you’re likely to experience for the most part, it’s
the minimum that you’ll really notice when you’re playing a game, so
you want to know the worst-case scenario.
However, we’re now taking a more nuanced approach to the way
we calculate the minimum. Until now, we’ve reported the very lowest
frame rate recorded in each benchmark as the minimum, but this might
only come down to the occasional rogue dropped frame, and it can also
make it difficult to get reliably repeatable results in some benchmarks.
When you’re playing a game, an occasional rogue dropped frame
might be a bit annoying, but it’s only a split second before you can get on
with playing again. If you experience prolonged periods of slowdown
for a few seconds then that’s a bigger problem. For this reason, we’ve
adopted a new way of reporting frame rates.
Using Nvidia’s FrameView app (custompc.co.uk/FrameView),
we record the frame rate, and the software also organises them into
LABS TEST / GRAPHICS CARDS
Custom PC’s graphics test rig has
a Core i7-8700K overclocked to
4.7GHz on all cores