When we look at graphs for GPU and CPU processors processing power, there is a section where they talk about one percent lows, what is that?
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Basically your processor will always have some “drops” or low speeds so let’s say your card averages 120fps in any given game, your one percent lows are the singular spiked frame drops of the lowest amount so continuing the example assume you’re comparing your card to another card that also averages 120fps one thing you need to note are the lows if your card averages lows of 60fps, and this other card averages lows of 90fps, this second card is better in this one statistic as in the 1% of time where the card will drop its processor performance to the lowest amount what is that low value.
It’s a good measure of stability and general efficiency to see how well your card is really handling something as all cards can’t 100% maintain perfect performance so we also look to see it’s worst performance
(although it’s not the only measure as you still need to look at other things like power consumption, price, heat output which will correlate to how well you can actually cook the card)
It’s the statistical concept of percentiles.
While you run a benchmark, your testing cpu/gpu is generating some number of frames every second. Let’s say that this benchmark ran for exactly 500 seconds, so we got 500 fps datapoints. We take those values and sort them from lowest to highest, and then look at the value that’s 1% away from the low end — the 5th value. That’s the 1% low (or 1st percentile).
It’s an informative statistic in this case because really bad lows point to occasional disruptive stutters, which of course make for a bad experience.
You can use 1% lows with all sorts of metrics, and it’s basically telling you what the worst 1% of your measurement was. The closer it is to your average, the more stable your performance is.
In CPU or GPU testing, one of the metrics you might use is FPS. Now average FPS is one way of measuring this, but it doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story. If I display 5940 frames in 100 seconds of gameplay, that’s 59.4 FPS, which is close to the standard of 60 FPS. Sounds alright – not amazing, but certainly playable, right? Well, maybe.
– If I get that 59.4 FPS because every 100th frame is dropped, I’ll have a 60 seconds with 59 frames and 40 seconds with 60 frames. In this case, the 1% low – the worst second of my 100 – is going to be 59 FPS and people aren’t going to be able to tell the difference. Even if they could, 59 frames is still pretty close to 60 and is, despite what some PC builder snobs will tell you, perfectly playable.
– If that 59.4 FPS is instead 99 frames of 60 FPS and an entire second of no frames, my 1% low is the second with 0 frames. EVERYONE will be able to notice that, and it will cause problems in gameplay. This is why the 1% low is important – it tells you how bad the bad is.
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