You won't necessarily get the exact same results each time, but they should be very close. If you want to be scientific about it, reboot again and go back through the whole process from there-just make sure the environment is the same for every test. Run the benchmark, and don't touch anything while it's going. Futuremark recommends (opens in new tab) waiting another 15 minutes at this point for pristine results, but I wouldn't worry about that in your case. Next, turn off anti-virus software, close anything that automatically updates, and, well, basically just kill any background software you can safely kill. Before each benchmark, reboot your PC and give it some time to settle. Start by making sure your OS and drivers are up-to-date. You should follow some best practices, though. Again, if you just want to see the results of an upgrade, there's no need to go overboard. One processor might be great in Tomb Raider, for instance, but struggle in another game. Grand Theft Auto 5 (run the benchmark in-game after completing the prologue)īecause no one game or benchmark tool can tell you everything about a system's performance, we generally do several different benchmarks when testing a GPU.
Quite a few games come with benchmark tools-here are some off the top of my head: Your results will generally be your minimum, average, and maximum framerates. Real world benchmarks test real games, which you can do by recording your framerate during some consistent in-engine scene with FRAPS or other software (the tricky way), or by using a benchmarking tool included with a game.