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    Why don't ALL games have a built-in benchmarking feature?

    Discussion in 'Gaming (Software and Graphics Cards)' started by Mitlov, Dec 2, 2011.

  1. Mitlov

    Mitlov Shiny

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    I've just installed Batman: Arkham Asylum, and I noticed that there's a benchmarking feature. With your current graphics settings, it'll run through certain scenes under certain conditions (covering the breadth of gameplay), and then report max FPS, min FPS, and average FPS. This allows you to tweak settings to ensure smooth gameplay throughout the game, instead of choosing something that "seems right" and suddenly discovering halfway through the game that on that particular scene, your machine can only pump out 11 FPS.

    It's brilliant, it's useful, it can't be hard for the game makers to do, and it's not in any other game I own. Why not?
     
  2. DEagleson

    DEagleson Gamer extraordinaire

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    I think its because its not worth it.
    Some devs want to maximize profits, and working on a benchmark feature would take away valuable time.

    But i agree that popular games should have some sort of benchmark included.
     
  3. Steven

    Steven God Amongst Mere Mortals

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    *Shrugs* It's not something gamers care enough about to complain about.
     
  4. redrazor11

    redrazor11 Formerly waterwizard11

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    Programming things takes time. Time costs money. Cheaper to release dev tools to community, and let them create their own damn bench demos :p
     
  5. SomeRandomDude

    SomeRandomDude Notebook Evangelist

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    Because it's a feature that can be easily replaced by playing the game and tweaking things as you go along.
     
  6. dante316

    dante316 Notebook Consultant

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    just use FRAPS.
     
  7. masterchef341

    masterchef341 The guy from The Notebook

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    BF3 has a very complex performance analysis monitoring widget in game, but no timedemo

    Lots of games have timedemos built in though. Lots and lots.

    I guess the primary reason that ALL games don't have that feature is because not all dev's add that feature :p
     
  8. reaversedge

    reaversedge Notebook Evangelist

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    not all games but some games, depends on the devs priority. but for me working for the patch after the game's post release period is much better.
     
  9. GamingACU

    GamingACU Notebook Deity

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    In b4 quality vs economics debate.

    Plus a decent amount of games have these now days (RE5, DMC4, Crysis just a couple off the top of my head).
     
  10. Zymphad

    Zymphad Zymphad

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    Metro 2033, Just Cause 2, STALKER COP, and Witcher 2 has something so you can test your settings.
     
  11. InspiredE1705

    InspiredE1705 Notebook Evangelist

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    I played Batman Arkham Asylum and when I got to the part where you combat the "dream nightmare scene" - with the giant guy my FPS were 2 FPS at 1920 x 1200 on a Gefore 570 Superclocked HD vc. Normal fps was around 60+, but not for this scene!
     
  12. Mechanized Menace

    Mechanized Menace Lost in the MYST

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    That doesn't seem right unless you had Physx and AA jacked up really high.
     
  13. lozanogo

    lozanogo Notebook Deity

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    That doesn't sound right. Were the two FPS constant for a while (say more than 10 secs) or was it just the minimum recorded (probably a single dip)?
     
  14. lua

    lua Notebook Consultant

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    what's the term from the id4 movie again? oh yeah. plausible deniability. it's better to keep gamers guessing or in the dark.