In video cards or graphics cards what does fraps mean?

well i know all the nvida series and stuff like that but what does the term fraps mean is that the thing to look for when you want a good graphics card for gaming if not what do you look for in a graphics card to determine if it will be good or fast and with every new series or higher number series like nvida 200 series every series does the fraps get higher what do fraps do ?|||FRAPS is a screen capturing software that most people use to record gameplay.



FRAPS is sometimes used as a benchmarking tool by some people to determine how good a certain graphics card is, because while it records it displays the current framerate at which the certain game is running.



However there's little point in using it (except to demonstrate or show off how good a certain card is) because there are better benchmark tools like 3dMark and 3dMark Vantage that will assign scores (called 3dmarks) to your GPU and then show you how it scales against other graphics cards.



3dmark is the most popular method of benchmarking and testing video cards. http://www.futuremark.com/|||Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with games using DirectX or OpenGL graphic technology. In its current form Fraps performs many tasks and can best be described as:



Benchmarking Software - Show how many Frames Per Second (FPS) you are getting in a corner of your screen. Perform custom benchmarks and measure the frame rate between any two points. Save the statistics out to disk and use them for your own reviews and applications.



Screen Capture Software - Take a screenshot with the press of a key! There's no need to paste into a paint program every time you want a new shot. Your screen captures are automatically named and timestamped.



Realtime Video Capture Software - Have you ever wanted to record video while playing your favourite game? Come join the Machinima revolution! Throw away the VCR, forget about using a DV cam, game recording has never been this easy! Fraps can capture audio and video up to 2560x1600 with custom frame rates from 10 to 100 frames per second!|||Fraps is a program which lets you do screen recording/capture in a 3d environment. Good for recording clips from games.