What it measures
Frame times from the game you are actually playing, read from the graphics stack itself rather than from an overlay hooked into the game. Start the capture, play normally, stop it.
Playing your own game matters. A synthetic scene tells you how the machine handles that scene; it cannot tell you whether your game stutters in the one place it always stutters.
The numbers
| Number | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Average FPS | the least useful figure here. Two machines with the same average can feel completely different. |
| 1% low | the worst 1% of frames. This is what stutter feels like — a high average with a poor 1% low is the classic "high fps but feels bad". |
| 0.1% low | the rarest, worst frames. The visible hitches. |
| Frame time | the same data in milliseconds. 16.7 ms is 60 FPS, 6.9 ms is 144. |
Read the lows, not the average. Going from 200 to 210 average changes nothing you can feel. Going from a 90 to a 140 in the 1% low changes everything.
Comparing two runs honestly
- Same game, same map, same settings, same length of run.
- Change one thing between runs. Change three and the comparison tells you nothing about which one mattered.
- Play the same way. A run spent looking at a wall and a run spent in a firefight are not comparable.
Why the numbers move between runs
They always do. Thermals, background work, where you walked, what the other players did. A few percent between two runs is normal and is not evidence of anything. If a change is real, it shows up repeatedly and it shows up in the lows.
Saved runs feed the stutter scan
Runs you save are used as evidence by the stutter scan: frames measured clearly slower than the frames around them appear there as a finding of their own, next to the possible causes. A saved run from the game that stutters is the most direct evidence you can hand it.
Related
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