A seismic design method for reinforced concrete frames has been previously proposed based on eigenfrequency optimization. Here, performance-based earthquake engineering (PBEE) is used to assess the effectiveness of this design procedure. The findings show that the design method produces building designs with different distributions of strength and stiffness over building height. Consequently, these buildings have reduced drifts at lower stories, smaller collapse risk, and lower expected casualties. The results also demonstrate the benefit of using the PBEE framework to evaluate of novel approaches in seismic design, providing objective measures of their impacts on building seismic performance.