Methodology

The scale

Every graphics card and processor carries a perfIndex: one integer between 1 and 100, where 100 is the fastest consumer part we track. It is a ratio scale, so a card at 40 really is about twice the card at 20.

For graphics cards the index is derived, not typed. Each card carries the score its source published, and the index is that score divided by the flagship's score:

perfIndex = round(score / flagshipScore × 100)

Nobody edits an index by hand. Correct a score and every index, every game threshold that leans on that part, and every verdict on the site move with it in the same build.

Where the graphics numbers come from

All 47 cards use 3DMark Steel Nomad scores, read from UL's published comparison table. Steel Nomad is a modern rasterisation test whose spread tracks in-game differences far better than a general-purpose synthetic score does.

Two limitations, stated rather than buried:

• The very top is exaggerated. Steel Nomad separates the flagship from the card below it by more than games typically do. Treat the gap between the two fastest cards as an upper bound, not a promise.
• The very bottom loses resolution. Below about index 5, cards that behave differently in games land on the same integer. At that end the video memory gate, not the index, is what decides a verdict - and it decides it correctly.

We cross-checked the ordering against PassMark's G3D list and found no card ranked in the opposite order by the two sources.

Why the processors are still estimates

Every processor here carries a hand-placed index, and every verdict that uses one is marked ● estimated. That is deliberate. The obvious sources measure the wrong thing: PassMark's CPU Mark and 3DMark's CPU Profile at maximum threads are throughput tests that rank a 16-core part above an 8-core one even where games do the reverse, and the 8-thread result still places a 9950X above a 9800X3D, which is backwards for gaming - the large cache that decides it does not show up in the test.

Borrowing one of those numbers would let us print "verified" next to a figure that does not measure what this site claims to compare. So they stay estimates until a gaming-specific dataset is in hand, and the site says so on every verdict.

How a game's tiers are built

A tier does not carry an index. It names the two parts that represent it - "the minimum tier of this game is an RTX 3060 with an i5-10400F" - along with the system memory, video memory and storage it needs. The indices are looked up from those parts when the site is built.

This is the same rule as above, applied to games: a threshold that was written as a number would quietly stop meaning what it meant the moment a benchmark was corrected. A threshold that names a card cannot.

Games get up to four tiers: minimum, recommended, high and ultra. Games whose publisher only specified two only get two here - we do not invent the others, and the checker says "not defined by publisher" instead.

How a verdict is computed

1. Look up the index and video memory of your card, the index of your processor, your memory size.
2. For each tier, check all four against that tier's thresholds. Exactly on the threshold counts as a pass.
3. The verdict is the highest tier where every component passes. One failing component fails the tier - a rig is only as good as its weakest part.
4. The bottleneck is the component furthest below the next tier, as a percentage of that tier's requirement.
5. Headroom is the margin of the weakest component that did clear, so it tells you what will run out first.

Video memory is a hard gate

Video memory is not weighted alongside core speed - it is checked separately and it is absolute. A card with 4 GB fails an 8 GB requirement no matter how fast the chip is, because that is how the hardware behaves: when the working set does not fit, the frame time collapses rather than degrades. Several cards in our catalogue are held back by memory long before their core speed becomes the issue, and their pages say so.

What we refuse to output

We never print a frame rate. A frame rate depends on resolution, settings, driver, scene and what else your machine is doing; the honest output is a band and a bottleneck, not "approximately 62 fps". If you see a site quoting a precise frame rate for a game that has not shipped on PC, you have learned something useful about that site.

Verified and estimated

A part is verified when it carries a benchmark score copied from a published source, and estimated when it carries a hand-placed index instead. The schema refuses to let an entry hold both, and refuses to let a hand-placed index describe itself as verified - the rule is enforced by the build, not by our good intentions.

Today 47 of 86 positions are verified: every graphics card, and no processor. A verdict is only labelled ● verified when both parts are verified and the game's requirements are official, so most verdicts on this site still read ● estimated. The full checklist lives in the repository as data/TODO-verification.md.

Game thresholds carry a separate label. 18 of the 19 games here have requirements the publisher actually published; the rest are our estimates and are marked ● unofficial specs on their pages. For a game with no announced PC version, every threshold is an estimate by definition - there is nothing official to copy.

What would change a verdict

• A verified benchmark position that differs from our estimate by more than three points.
• Official system requirements replacing an estimated set.
• A driver or patch that materially changes how a game behaves on a class of hardware.

When any of those happens, the data file changes and every page that depends on it is rebuilt. There is no cached verdict anywhere in this system.

What this tool does not do

• It does not scan your machine. Nothing is detected, uploaded or fingerprinted.
• It does not know your monitor, your resolution or your settings.
• It does not model upscaling, frame generation, or a specific driver version.
• It cannot see compatibility gates that sit outside performance - a mesh shader requirement, an operating system floor, an anti-cheat driver. Where we know of one, the game page names it.