In order to evaluate the seismic performance of a reinforced concrete building structure, four different analyses are carried out. Firstly, conventional pushover analysis with code-specified inverted triangular load pattern is conducted. Secondly, the pushover analysis with uniform load pattern is performed. Thirdly, adaptive pushover analyses with spectral amplification for both EC 8 artificial and Northridge earthquake are carried out. Lastly, Incremental dynamic analyses under a number of scaled PGA for both EC 8 artificial and Northridge earthquake record are performed. Comparative studies demonstrate that the adaptive pushover analysis may be able to explain the response characteristics that conventional pushover analysis with fixed load distribution fails to capture.