There’s A Lot To Learn About Graphics Performance
There are a number of myths surrounding video card performance, and we certainly didn’t cover them all. We tried, however, to address the most popular ones, answering some of the questions you asked us after Part 1 of this series along the way. We also expanded a bit into the broader ecosystem of which video cards a part of.
In doing so, we introduced two new concepts: the "40 dB(A)" test, and the A+/A/B Classes of anti-aliasing – what we believe is a much needed categorization of today’s most talked-about anti-aliasing techniques.
We broke new ground on measuring and comparing video memory bandwidth (something that, to our knowledge, has never been done before) and comparing video cards using thermal envelopes and throttling, rather than raw, unthrottled frame rates.
We de-mystified (hopefully) convoluted concepts like the impact of PCIe and whether it’s a bottleneck in your system, how anti-aliasing works, how video memory works, how display connectors differ from each other, why different vendors expose proprietary technologies and how video cards throttle when they overheat.
All of that information was collected in two articles, which we hope will be a useful reference for both system builders and gamers when it comes to getting the most out of their systems. Promoting a better understanding of PC hardware is icing on the cake.
I talked about value, though in a more subjective fashion than our typical "value/performance" charts. We're using far more nuanced concepts than average frame rate, frame rate over time or even frame time variance, without forgetting other items that are hard to quantify like vendor-specific value-adds.
What's next?
- We'd like to expand our 40 dB(A) test to add a 50 dB(A) benchmark for new cards, including aftermarket ones (we heard you there!)
- We'd like to look at new platforms like Haswell-E and the latest Maxwell-based high-end cards
- We'd like to thank you, our readers, for bearing with us on reading some very long and technical articles, and for your earlier feedback, which we hope will keep coming!