1) Fraps records sound, Gamecam does not - Now that may or may not be a big deal however, the free version of Gamecam does not allow you to record sound. The program itself will cost $24.95 USD to register the program. Fraps on the other hand allows you to obviously record sound with the free version.
2) Fraps can go up to 60 fps(v2.5) Gamecam does not - The free version of Gamecam only allows you to record up to 30 fps. Now mind you they may be updating it to keep up with Fraps, however before v2.5 came out this wasn't an issue with either program.
3) Fraps has one button, Gamecam has multiple buttons - Fraps allows you to record video game footage by hitting one button on your keyboard with ease. With Gamecam there are multiple buttons to record, pause, and stop recording. Also if you have a game that requires a lot of keyboard shortcuts the default setting for Gamecam's keymap will more than likely bypass those shortcuts. Now to me this isn't a big issue, because Fraps and Gamecam are customizable so you can set the recording keys to whichever you like, however there are more buttons to play with in Gamecam. Now to go in Gamecam's favour, you can set multiple keymaps to each of your games so as not to interfere with the controls. For instance, you can set up Gamecam to launch say Counter Strike and have its own custom keymap, and you can launch UT in Gamecam with a totally different custom keymap.
4) Fraps is easy, Gamecam is not - Not to say Gamecam is not easy to learn, I was able to figure it out within five minutes, but I'm not a noob when trying to figure out any program. I can literally figure out any program within a short period of time. However, if you like ease of use and not a lot of settings than Fraps is the way to go. Now here is where I like Gamecam however, Gamecam has a lot of features that Fraps does not, so that adds to the complexity of the program. The features include Video Quality, Video brightness, Image capture format and Image capture quality, as well as other features that are disabled with the free version. So if you like more features but a more complex program than go with Gamecam.
5) Recording Fraps vs. Gamecam - With Fraps, when you record your game footage there is nothing in your way, you can still see the full screen(although at a slower pace with earlier versions of Fraps). However, with Gamecam there are two things that launch on your screen overlaying the gameplay. First there is a vertical semi-transparant control panel at the top left corner of the screen, with a small window on the bottom right of the screen. The control panel contains buttons like Record, Pause, Stop, etc. With the window in the bottom corner it shows a smaller scale real time video of what your recording footage would look like. Now this can be a bit bothersome. I didn't like it because if you have to click buttons on a menu and the buttons are on the bottom right corner of your screen than you can't see the buttons. The small window is on top of those buttons. The only way to click those buttons is by looking at the smaller screen and finding your mouse arrow and moving it to the buttons in that bottom corner, just to click on them. I find it at times aggrivating. So don't expect to be recording any RTS games with Gamecam if your RTS control panel covers the bottom portion of your screen.
