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, Screen Capture Software, Realtime Video Capture Software.
D3DGear is Fraps alternative, a very fast Game Recording Software and Twitch Streaming Software. It records game play to movie with high quality, small file size and minimal lag. D3DGear game recording performance and quality are superior comparing with Fraps software.
If you used Fraps software to record game play to movie, D3DGear should be a good Fraps alternative software for you. For recording video game, D3DGear is actually much better and faster software than Fraps. D3DGear can do a lot of things that Fraps software cannot. Below table outlines some key features comparison between D3DGear and Fraps.
| Features | D3DGear | Fraps |
| Video Recording Technologies |
D3DGear video recording technologies is far better than Fraps softare. D3DGear implements a very sophisticated movie capture and compress engine for video game recording. With this engine, D3DGear is able to record video game to movie with little system performance impact, and recorded movie is highly compressed with HD quality, and it is ready to upload to Youtube. |
Fraps software uses a simple lossless Codec that not only produces huge size movie file, but also significantly affects system performance. The lossless movie is unusable because of its huge file size; users have to use movie editor software to compress movie further. Fraps software movie recording technology is obsolete with current software and hardware technologies. |
| Audio Recording Technologies |
D3DGear audio recording technologies is far better than Fraps. D3DGear compresses audio data while recording audio source. D3DGear supports two audio recording Codec: MP3 or Windows Media Audio Codec, depending on which movie file format is being used. Audio data is compressed with high bitrate so that the original audio quality is well preserved. |
Fraps software does not compress audio data while recording audio source. This results larger movie file size. |
| Video Encoding Technologies |
D3DGear supports more variety video Codecs than Fraps. D3DGear supports follwoing video encoding Codecs: MPEG-4 Ver 2 Codec, Motion JPEG Codec, Windows Media Video 9 and Huffyuv Lossless Codec. |
Fraps software supports only "Fraps" proprietary Codec. |
| Movie Format |
D3DGear supports more variety movie file formats than Fraps. D3DGear supports three movie recording file format: AVI1, AVI2 (OpenDML) and WMV. |
Fraps only supports AVI movie format. |
| Overlays |
D3DGear supports overlay function that is not available in Fraps. D3DGear supports face cam overlay function. User can add face cam or webcam overlay on top of movie video, where user can capture their facial motion. This feature is unique and is not available in other recording software. |
Fraps software does not support this feature. |
| Video Game Broadcasting Technologies | D3DGear supports video game streaming and broadcasting function, which is not available in Fraps. | Fraps does not support this feature. |
| AMD Mantle API | D3DGear supports AMD Mantle API based video games, and is full compatible with AMD Mantle API. | Fraps does not support AMD Mantle API based video games. |
| Measure Game Frame Rate | D3DGear supports measuring video game frame rate and displaying it on the screen as overlay. D3DGear supports to display frame rate at predefined 9 locations, or user can choose to display it at anywhere on the screen. | Fraps only supports to display frame rate on pre-defined 5 locations. |
Here are some comments from D3DGear users:
Fraps is a god awful program. Get D3DGear. It's so fantastic. It works infinitely better than Fraps ever could. I used fraps for yeeeeears until I found D3DGear and dropped it immediately. I've recorded quite a lot already and it looks great. Oh and D3Dgear is also WAY less resource intensive.
D3DGear Better than Fraps! Best Game Recorder! No lag for me in BLR.
Hey guys! I wanted to email you guys and tell you that I love your software. It performs much better than FRAPS and many of the other recording programs on the market at the moment.
I used some programs like Fraps, msi ab, bandicam, dxtory, action, d3dgear and what I saw. The fastest one is D3DGear, in HD quality I couldn't even felt that I'm recording, it's really amazing.
D3DGear use less HDD space than any other software!! I record 5 minute Sniper elite 3 and D3DGear use only 264MB of space!! With Fraps you can record only 3-4 seconds with that size.
I use a mix of D3DGear and Fraps. D3DGear is unquestionably better than Fraps since it's much less intensive, makes far smaller files and has those small extra details.