Isn't Everybody Overreacting?
Stuttering, measuring anomalies... isn't everybody overreacting? Well yes and no. Small anomalies rendered and which you can experience on screen always have been a part of a graphics card and your overall game experience. For years now we have had that, for years now most of you have not been bothered by it. Aside from a small group enthusiast end-users and analysts, that is the primary context you need to keep in mind when it comes to FCAT measurements, really.
Yeah, average FPS is still (in my opinion) the most important denominator in terms of determining how fast a game can be rendered. Now that doesn't mean I am disqualifying frame time or what I like to call frame experience measurements, contrary. Frame experience measurements in my mindset will help as an extra tool and data-set to show you the relation of render performance versus what you see on screen. Frametime measurements are a tool to detect anomalies that we never really measured. So it is more a question of what can we accept when analyzing anomalies and what not, because some people will totally freak out if they see a couple of latency spikes in a chart. Realistically you'll be hard-pressed to notice it, heck one big massive scary spike in a chart could even something as simple as a game scene change. Frame Time / Frame Experience measurements however are becoming a part of Guru3D test and benchmark methodology. It will sit next towards what we have always shown you, average FPS, as average FPS we still consider to be the best measurement we can fire off at you if you are asking the question "how fast is my graphics cards". But an extra data-set that can detect anomalies obviously is great to have and show.
