1. Who is behind it
The calculator is an independent project maintained by one person, Ander Pascal: the calculation engine, the hardware catalogue and the text. It is not a lab, has no test bench of its own and does not pretend to: the performance data it is calibrated against comes from third-party published reviews, and every page says so.
It started from a question that keeps coming up on forums — "will my new graphics card bottleneck my processor?" — and from answers that almost never said for which resolution, which game or with what margin of error. This tool tries to answer that with numbers that can be checked.
2. Where the data comes from
- Specifications (cores, clocks, VRAM, memory bus, TDP): official AMD, Intel and NVIDIA datasheets, cross-checked against PassMark and TechPowerUp.
- Gaming performance: frame rates published by TechPowerUp, TechSpot / Hardware Unboxed, Tom's Hardware, Gamers Nexus and Digital Foundry (2023–2026). This data is compiled, not measured here, and the exact source of each observation is not yet recorded.
- Current state: engine 2026.08, catalogue revised 2026-08-19. Every change to the model or the text is recorded in the changelog.
How that data becomes a verdict: methodology. How far off it is, and what that figure does not measure: accuracy.
3. How the pages are checked
Comparison pages are not written one by one: the engine generates them from templates that are maintained and reviewed by hand. That makes an error in a template an error on thousands of pages, so before any change ships these automated checks run:
- engine and invariant tests (the verdict and the FPS chart come from the same numbers);
- a sweep of every catalogue combination for contradictory results;
- a check of the prose of all 7,566 comparisons in three languages against a list of known defects, including self-contradicting recommendations;
- the internal cross-validation published on the accuracy page.
4. Corrections
If a figure or a sentence is wrong, write to us from the contact page with the page's address and, if you have it, what you measured and how (game, resolution, preset, driver). Confirmed errors are fixed and recorded with their date in the changelog. Go to contact →
5. Editorial independence
This site is not sponsored by AMD, Intel, NVIDIA or any hardware retailer. It is funded by ads and Amazon affiliate links (affiliate disclosure).
The links decide nothing: the verdict and the recommended part come from the engine, and a page where nothing clears the bar for a purchase says so, with no link to a new part. The engine has no price data, so it does not judge value for money.