Ashes of the Singularity

Publisher: Stardock

We use the built-in benchmark of Ashes of the Singularity, which runs through an automatic play-through scene in the game. We've selected the CPU-intensive benchmark option and used high settings with MSAA disabled and also ticked the option for multi-GPU support, all of which are located in the game's video options and benchmark menus. On startup we also select the DirectX 12 version, which is only available to use in Windows 10. We use a 30-second Fraps benchmark to obtain the minimum and average frame rate during the benchmark, recording from the start.

Unigine Valley 1.0

Publisher: Unigine

Unigine's free Valley 1.0 benchmarking tool works well as a graphics benchmark as it is GPU-limited and is thus incredibly taxing on the GPU whilst placing the CPU under very little stress. Unigine's scoring system is effectively linear: a card with 2,000 points is considered twice as fast as one with 1,000 points, and half as fast as one with 4,000 points. As such, you can easily replicate and run the test on your own system to gauge roughly how big a difference an upgrade would likely make for you.

3DMark Fire Strike

Publisher: Futuremark

Fire Strike is a showcase DirectX 11 benchmark designed for today's high-performance gaming PCs. It is 3DMark's most ambitious and technical benchmark ever, featuring real-time graphics rendered with detail and complexity far beyond what is found in other benchmarks and games today.