One of the most critical parts of benchmarking a gaming PC is recording frame times. However, frame time recording has become increasingly difficult because Direct X12 works a whole lot different than X11. FRAPS and other older recording tools are unable to document games that run on Direct X12. There are a few benchmarks out available out there, but they are either quite difficult to use or only work with specific games.
AMD commissioned a third-party developer to work on a tool that can be used easily for Vulcan and Direct X12 benchmarking. The end result is a little something called OCAT. Even though this new benchmarking tool was developed by AMD, it is also compatible with NVidia and Intel graphics as well.
The tool is a lot better than FRAPS because it has a highly detailed in-game overlay and also offers better data formatting options, according to a report from Digital Trends. The program can be downloaded from Github and installation process is a pretty straightforward process.
Once done installing OCAT, do not be surprised to look at a screen that is filled with a variety of squares. This is what the program's default setting looks like and users won't even have to change them, but there are a few important things about it that are worth knowing about how the program behaves might be a little "weird" for some users.
OCAT is not your typical tool because it does not capture a specific application by default. Looking at the menu's options closely, there are words "Capture All Applications" being highlighted, and the program means what it says. Every application that has a visible window will be benchmarked by OCAT, including your web browser and games.
Users who are doing a basic benchmark shouldn't worry about this because all of the results will be separated by application, which means users will not see any confusion by numbers on the screen. However, this can clutter up the files so you can simply select "Capture Single Application" to avoid this from happening. According to the video below, there are still a lot of bugs on the program so stay tuned!
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
