Poll: Why not use benchmark tests instead of demos?

[Joccaren]

Yeah, I was just saying that's why some people would want them. The min specs and such will tell you if you can play it, but I'm guessing it doesn't tell you whether it'll drop down to 5fps during hectic fights.

For the record, I doubt I'd use them even if they came, I was just saying who they'd be for, seeing as I've no experience with benchmarks*

Eh, it depends on what is defined as hectic fights. Most fights in games aren't all that hectic as they have to run on consoles as well. Spawning in 20 enemies on 2 teams and getting into a massive fight, however, generally will slow down most PCs to a crawl - of course that depends on the game though. A Battlefield or Starcraft type game would do fine, Skyrim would die.
Generally they're like buying a console game, basing it off the minimum specs. You're guaranteed to be able to play it, and it should maintain a playable framerate most of the time, but you're not necessarily going to get perfect performance out of the game.

I've had some experience with benchmarks, but that was more for, well, you know, benchmarking and seeing how high I could get my FPS in stress test games to compare with how others did.

Really it just seems like something that'll waste developer's time [Making benchmarks ins't as easy picking some random area and rendering it] just for those who don't want to bother with minimum requirements or learning the theory behind them. I'd rather see the effort go into a demo, or into polishing the game itself.

 

[Strazdas]

if any, at least one of them, fail, it shows as a fail.

Yeah. I pretty much always get 'failed' based solely on my video card which, to be fair, isn't that great. But it still works well, which is what I don't understand (in fact, it exceeds the minimum requirements for pretty much every game).
It really just seems to be failing the card purely because it's an integrated card, not because it doesn't work well enough. So, I don't really trust it.

yeah, integrated cards are like no card at all. and most of the cases that is completely true. most integrated cards wont play games. at all. and there is no way for the program to know which integrated card you have. it also looks only at very surface based things (i guess thats fair since system erquirements often limit themselves to that as well). for example i got a 8600M GS. Most games requiring 8000 series wont run on it, its a laptop card and thats ok for it, but the site doesnt care, its 8600 so any game with 8600 passes as sucess.

Eh, it depends on what is defined as hectic fights. Most fights in games aren't all that hectic as they have to run on consoles as well. Spawning in 20 enemies on 2 teams and getting into a massive fight, however, generally will slow down most PCs to a crawl - of course that depends on the game though. A Battlefield or Starcraft type game would do fine, Skyrim would die.

CHA CHA CHA i cant stop laughing. 20 enemies you call a massive fight?
when you got a 100 on 100 we can talk.