Gaming tech: Fraps

Sometimes you just assume something is common knowledge because you know about it and maybe your friends know about it. I’m always surprised how often someone asks in an MMO’s general chat stuff like: “How do you take a screenshot?” or “How do you know how many frames you’re getting?”

The response is usually something like, “I use Fraps.” Yeah, I just thought everyone knew.

Granted many MMOs have a built-in means to take a screenshot, or you can even just take your own by pressing print screen and pasting the result into any image-editing program. Not all of them let you know your frames per second (FPS), though. Hey, they don’t want you bitching to their tech support about how slow their game is, do they? And none that I know of let you record in-game video.

Fraps is near-essential gaming tech.

Want to know your FPS, take quick screenshots or record videos of your in-game heroic deeds? Go get Fraps. Fraps is near-essential gaming tech. It’s a great, little program that does all those things and a bit more. It’s an efficient sucker, too, taking up only about 21K RAM when loaded. Plus it includes some nice benchmarking features so you can compare your frames performance in all the games you play.

The free version does most of what any gamer needs, but if you want to create videos without watermarks, you’ll have to buy the full version. You should buy it anyway, just because Fraps is such awesome gaming tech and you should support that. It’s only $37, so don’t be cheap.