Our methodology, including the parts that can be wrong — and how real player data keeps correcting it.
Every estimate starts from three ingredients: a performance score for your GPU and CPU (built from published benchmark data across our catalog of 170+ GPUs and 270+ CPUs), a demand rating for the game, and your resolution. GPU score divided by game demand, scaled by resolution, gives a baseline frame rate at High settings. On top of that, each setting in the game's menu carries a per-option impact weight— hand-built per game from benchmark analysis, so the settings list you see matches the game's real menu, in the game's real order.
Crucially, the model also applies a CPU ceiling: a cap on achievable FPS set by your processor and the game's CPU-heaviness. In esports titles and simulation games, that ceiling — not the GPU — is usually what decides your frame rate, and no amount of settings tuning moves it.
They are not live benchmarks. Real FPS varies by scene (a quiet forest vs. a 64-player firefight), driver version, RAM speed, background software, and game patches. We'd rather be honestly approximate than falsely precise: the point of the estimate is to make relative decisions — which settings to lower, whether your CPU or GPU is the limit, what an upgrade would buy you — not to promise an exact number.
This is the part that makes FrameCoach different. Players can report their real FPS on the site, and our desktop app (with explicit opt-in) measures actual in-game frame rates and — for supported games — reads the actual settings the game is running from its own config files. Each report becomes a comparison: what we predicted vs. what the hardware really did, on known settings.
With thousands of these reports collected, we regularly re-calibrate: when the data showed our esports CPU ceilings were too conservative, we raised them and CS2/Valorant estimates snapped into line with reality; when GTA V reports showed we were over-promising on budget CPUs, the game's demand rating and CPU-heaviness were corrected. Every fix is driven by the direction and size of real-world error, not guesswork — and the more reports come in, the sharper the model gets for the next player with your hardware.
Pick your hardware and game in the optimizer, or grab the desktop app— it detects your PC automatically, and for 50+ games can apply the recommended settings to the game's config with one click (and undo it just as easily).