Deus Ex: Mankind Divided

Publisher: Square Enix Holdings

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided is our toughest DirectX 12 title. We test using the 'Ultra' preset, and at these settings it is currently one of the toughest games to run smoothly, presenting a challenge for even flagship graphics cards. We run the built-in benchmark (hidden in the 'Extras' menu), as it is very consistent and makes full use of the engine's features. We also rely on the game's own frame rate counter since FRAPS does not currently work with this game when using DirectX 12. We've actually found that your experience in-game will typically be with frame rates a little higher than the average frame rate from the benchmark, but even so it's the minimum frame rate that we focus on and that you should really take into consideration, because it's in the most challenging parts of the game that you'll really feel the slowdowns, and it's no good having a sub-par experience in the heat of battle.

Fallout 4

Publisher: Bethesda Softworks

Our Fallout 4 benchmark is a 30-second FRAPS recording of a manual playthrough, where our character runs forward through a woodland area just outside the Corvega Automation Plant. The scene is very challenging relative to the rest of the game, with massive draw distances and complex volumetric lighting. This means the results below are not representative of typical gameplay, but rather of the most challenging points in the game. We test at the game's 'Ultra' preset, the highest available, and v-sync is disabled in the game's .ini file.

3DMark

Publisher: Futuremark

3DMark is arguably the most popular synthetic benchmark around today. The DirectX 11 portion, Fire Strike, comes in three flavours: Fire Strike, Fire Strike Extreme and Fire Strike Ultra, which run at 1080p, 1440p and 4K respectively. All laptops are tested in Fire Strike and Fire Strike Extreme using the default settings. Anyone can download and run the Fire Strike benchmark for free, so you can easily compare your own system's score with those you see below. You'll need to pay to unlock Fire Strike Extreme yourself, however.

3DMark Time Spy, meanwhile, is a DirectX 12 benchmark that runs at 1440p. It is designed to properly utilise the advantages of the DirectX 12 API. The benchmark is available for free, but you'll need to pay to change any of the settings, including the resolution. We use the default settings, so you should easily be able to compare your score.

VRMark

Publisher: Futuremark

VRMark is another synthetic GPU benchmark from Futuremark, this time specifically designed to assess a system's ability to handle VR gaming, although no VR headset is required. The Orange Room test assesses whether a system is capable of meeting the current minimum requirements for an Oculus Rift or HTC Vive VR headset. We run it at default settings, so users can easily compare scores here to the free version of this benchmark where settings cannot be changed.