Fraps is a universal Windows application that can be used with all games using DirectX or OpenGL technology. In its current form Fraps performs many tasks and can best be described as:

Benchmarking Software – See 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 to capture the screen. Your screen captures are also 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 1152×864 and 100 frames per second! All movies are recorded in outstanding quality.

Fraps has support for Vista and DirectX 10 games. Since the Vista Desktop Window Manager (DWM) runs through DirectX you can now take screenshots and record video from the desktop just like any other game or 3D application in Vista.