How accurate is Fraps fps rating?

[Big Ev]

Hey,

I've been doing some various experiments with Fraps, see my in-game performance and I just wanted to know how accurate its readings are. I am playing CoD2 on the rig listed in my sig and the frame rate jumps around b/w 15-40 fps on these settings:

1600x1200
Refresh Rate: 85
4x AA
8x AF
Soften Smoke Edges: Everything
Dynamic Lights: High
Bodies Shown: Insane
All Models: Extra

Basically everything maxed out. Problem is, even when the Fraps counter says I'm @15-18fps the game appears to run smooth as silk. There is no choppiness of slowdown I notice. I know for a fact when animation dips below 24fps, it should be noticable to the human eye.

Maybe my eyes are just that bad? :p

Maybe it has something to do with the dual core?

[Sazar]

It is pretty accurate. Keep in mind that because it is polling data, you might have a +/- discrepency but it is relatively accurate.

Typically you might not notice a drop to ~15fps or so that much unless you are in a fire fight and moving around at more than a crawl. BF2 does not take advantage of your 2nd core either so dual-core would not assist.. What I would suggest is to set affinity to your second core for FRAPS so it reduces any extra drops you might be experiencing.

I can notice clearly while playing cs:s and having extra choke on some servers absolutely kills frame-rate and it drops from 100-150 down to about 15-20 and I can tell very clearly.

If you are running around and still don't notice a drop in frame-rate, perhaps you really are getting a mis-reading.

[Big Ev]

Thank you for the response. I'll deifnitely try your recommendations :)

[OWA]

You can also compare it with the built-in framerate counter. Use cg_drawfps 1 and see how it compares to fraps (that is, run both). A lot of games have their own framerate counter and from what I've seen, they usually match pretty well.

[Smokey]

Ive ran Fraps along side the ingame FPS counter in Quake4, and both give the same readings, just fyi :)

edit: OWA beat me to it :p

[Monnie Rock]

fraps works with openGL ?

[OWA]

Yes, it works with both.

[Medion]

I know for a fact when animation dips below 24fps

Depends on the person. I can notice large drops in framerate. However, back on my first Voodoo1, while setting the in-game settings for Ultim@te Race Pro, I noticed that going down 1 frame per second at a time, 13fps was the lowest framerate that still appeared smooth to me. There was just a huge noticable difference between 12 and 13fps for me.

I'm not saying I'd enjoy a racer at 13fps. However, it would be TOLERABLE at 13fps as long as it never went above or below that. Any deviance at that framerate was noticable and annoying.