How do you find out your FPS?

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

Well in multiple places across Tech-Forums I have seen people say they get 30 FPS(Frames Per Second) or 70 FPS or something to that effect. I am curious as to how you find out how many Frames you are getting. Is there a program you run while you are playing or does it tell you in a menu in the game somewhere?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Abstract Hero]

Most people use programs such as Fraps, MSI Afterburner, or EVGA Precision.

 

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

I just looked at the website for Fraps and am wondering if it slows your PC down when you use it. I know it wouldn't slow most of you guys down but my PC is OLD. Do you think the program would run on a Celeron 1.4 Ghz, 512 RAM, Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 128 MB GPU? It says modern CPUs Pentium 3 or above so I am not that hopeful.

I just think it would be interesting to see how many FPS I am getting.

 

[Peter.Cort]

yeah it'll run but with a setup like that I'm not sure if you wanna see your fps...

but fraps won't slow down your computer by just running an fps counter.

and celeron's are a p4 based proc.

 

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

Yeah I am probably getting about 3 FPS. The performance of the games that I run is pretty good with a little lag now and then. But then again I don't really have anything to compare it too. My cousin does have a gaming computer but I can't really compare to that!

So a Celeron is based on Pentium 4 technology? It just seems strange to me because the other PC we have has a Pentium 4 that is 3.0 Ghz.

 

[Peter.Cort]

clock speed doesn't have any bearing on the generation of the processor. the e2160 series is a 1.6ghz i believe, and is much faster than a p4 at 4.0ghz.

the celeron is a p4 without any cache making it cheaper and slower.

 

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

So does the e2160 series just have a bigger cache or what makes it faster? I don't get a lot of the speeds and cache and bandwidth talk about computers.

 

[Peter.Cort]

well the whole architecture of the chip is different which makes it natively faster. and cache is used to store frequently used 'processes' that the processor does, so when a process calls on the cpu to run something, the cpu doesn't have to do the task 100% from scratch, but can go "hey, i've done this a lot and it's in the cache, so i can just bring part of it from the cache to speed this up."

bandwidth in relation to cpu's is the same as bandwidth in relation to your internet. the P4 to Core2 is much like dial up to dsl, more data can go back and forth because of increased bandwidth which is achieved by more efficient architecture. <-- very broad explanation of it all, but should give you the jist of it

 

[fairfieldfalconsfan]

Ok that makes sense I think...

I got Fraps and ran it while playing a couple games. I got between 15 and 25 FPS depending on what was happening. When I ran it during MX vs ATV Unleashed I got like 10 but when I put 5 opponets(sp?) I only got 6-8. I knew before that it was really jerky when I did more then 2 other players and I wanted to see how bad it really was.

Thanks for the help guys.

 

[Druid]

Is it in the cards for a new build? Give us a budget, and we'll put something nice together for you.