How to measure computer performance in games?

Question

Computers

Good afternoon, dear habrasobshchestvo!
I am a fan of running around in some game universe with a shotgun at the ready. The home computer was bought with an "average, for games" configuration. At the time of purchase, almost all game novelties “flyed” at maximum settings. But progress does not stand still, and now Borderland 2 has begun to lag in certain game situations. And I had a question: what performance, in fact, is not enough? If you suddenly do an upgrade, then what to improve? Replace the processor, video card? Go add another one to SLI? Will the processor be enough for a new video card?
What performance monitoring tools are in demand right now? Or maybe just run some 3D Mark, which will tell me everything in detail and write it down?
My config:
Processor QuadCore Intel Core i5-2300, 2900 MHz (29 x 100)
Video card NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1 GB)
Motherboard Gigabyte GA-Z77-DS3H
4 GB RAM.

Answer 1

FRAPS can write logs. And in fact, it is usually used for this. You will receive specific information on specific games. And 3D Marks are parrots that don't say anything.
And in your case, it’s better to take the GTX 760 for example (instead of SLI, you’ll suffer with it, you’ll get a bunch of artifacts, and even a bunch of microfreezes, it makes sense to use SLI only for TOP solutions), you shouldn’t actually touch the percentage (I have an i5-2500, faster of course, but not a single game can consume more than 50%, although with the advent of multi-threaded rendering, they begin to slightly exceed 50%, the latest games, and even then not all), memory can be raised to 8-16 gigs and cut down swap

Answer 2

In my opinion, the graphics in Borderland 2 are quite simple, it seems to me that the game can partially go into swap and sometimes lag due to this. I would pay attention to the RAM and disk system.

Answer 3

Or maybe just run some 3D Mark, which will tell me everything in detail and write it down?

Can. But for starters, it's a good idea to measure at least the CPU load, memory consumption, and iowait during the game.

Answer 4

First of all, add RAM, at least 8GB in Dual Channel, 16 is better, of course. SSD for games also helps a lot.
Prots should cope. After that, only the video card remains.

Answer 5

Perhaps an indirect sign of an insufficiently powerful processor can be a situation where an increase / decrease in the degree of anti-aliasing (from completely off to a maximum of 16-32-fold anti-aliasing) does not affect the performance of the game, but changing other graphic settings and / or parallel operation of other programs, the video card not involving - it affects noticeably.
For example, in the case of playing GRID 2 on a computer with a Core i3-2100T in conjunction with a GTX 650 Ti Boost at maximum (Ultra) quality settings, the bottleneck is clearly the processor.