Budgets and baselines

Specify:

• target FPS and full frame budget;
• rendering-thread and GPU sub-budget with safety margin;
• output resolution and primary/secondary screen percentage;
• renderer path, RHI, shader model, ray-tracing state, upscaler;
• device profile and every sg.* quality group;
• scene, camera, time/weather, dynamic objects/lights/effects;
• memory/thermal/power constraints.

Use milliseconds:

Keep margin for unsampled combat, traversal, streaming, platform services, and thermal variance. Test representative worst cases, not an empty editor viewport.

Resolution sensitivity test

1. Capture at production resolution/screen percentage.
2. Lower primary screen percentage while preserving camera/content/quality.
3. Compare total GPU and each pass.
4. Classify passes that fall with pixel count versus fixed/geometry/submission costs.

A resolution response localizes pixel-scaled work; it does not identify the specific effect. A weak response does not by itself prove CPU-bound because some GPU passes are weakly resolution-dependent.