Some games also offer a synthetic benchmark that runs in the game engine. Two of the games we use for gameplay, have synthetic tests that we opted to included in the evaluation as well.
Tomb Raider
The included benchmark tool in Tomb Raider has Lara Croft standing on a rocky cliff next to the ocean. The camera wraps around her slowly, while the wind blows her hair wildly. It spits out a result at the end.
For this test the power target seemed to positively affect the minimum FPS, but also strantly resulted in lower max FPS. Increasing the GPU clock and Memory clock both netted appreciable increaseses frame rate when overclocked.
Grid Autosport
Grid has a somewhat different approach. Their benchmark isn’t exactly synthetic. The game prepares a race and actually simulates it. The camera angles change at set points, but the race results aren’t always the same. The AI is put to work in this test, which is ideal for a game like this.
The gameplay in Grid really isn’t affected much by either the memory of GPU overclock. There’s a slight bump in fps accross the board, but the increase is so slight it makes no diffference in the real world. The settings aren’t able to be increased as a result, and frame rates remain below 60fps even at peak. Turning off DSR is an easy fix that will dramatically increase your frame rate if this isn’t enough for your tastes.
