This could be you.
If you’ve just acquired a new game and you’re not sure what settings or resolution your PC can run it at without stutter and lag, a benchmark is a good way to try out various profiles before you dive in. Shadow of the Tomb Raider is one title with a built-in benchmark that’s easy to run.
This benchmark is also a very common test that reviewers run on laptops to put their GPUs to the test. Shadow of the Tomb Raider has ray tracing, so it’s a particularly good way to see how well a gaming rig can handle ray tracing. If you want to see how your GPU stacks up to other systems around the internet, the Tomb Raider benchmark is one of the best ways to do that.
Here’s how to run it.
Get the game
To get started, you’ll need to make sure you have Shadow of the Tomb Raider on your system. The game currently costs $22 on Steam (and tends to change often), but a free demo is also available.
If you don’t have Steam on your computer, you can download it from the Steam website.
Log in, or create an account if you don’t already have one.
Head into the Store tab, search for Shadow of the Tomb Raider, click Add to Cart, and check out.
Price is subject to change.
Once the game is in your library, click on it and select Download. The game will take varying amounts of time to download, depending on the speed of your internet.
Press that green. You know you want to.
Once it’s downloaded, the Download button will turn into a Play button. Click that to boot up the game.
Run the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark
Once the game is running, select Options > Display and Graphics.
Tweak whatever settings you want. Under Display, you can change screen settings like the resolution and refresh rate. Under Graphics, you can tweak game features like ray tracing.
Note: the default display and graphics settings will depend on the power of your system.
If you don’t know what any of these mean, that’s fine. In Graphics, you can select a few preset profiles.
When you’re ready, select Run benchmark.
Needless to say, I do not recommend playing this on my work-issued MacBook Pro.
Your computer will automatically play through various scenarios in the game. You don’t need to do anything. You’ll see the frame rates reflected in real time on the screen. When the benchmark has concluded, you’ll be shown your average, minimum, and maximum frame rates. The game doesn’t save this screen, so make sure you take a picture or screenshot if you want to save the results.