1% & 0.1% Low FPS Results - Useful or Useless?

[@philscomputerlab]

Thank you for shining light on this issue! Something else I've noticed is that on older machines you can greatly improve smoothness and frame times with a frame rate limiter. Works especially well with a variable refresh monitor...

[@joeyvdm1]

PhilsComputerLab. Hey, howzit going Phil. Nice to see you here. You are absolutely right. I always limit my frames, even on my new rig. I don't want my CPU going anywhere near 100% CPU usage (I don't even want it near 90% to be honest) so the less the better. You are letting your CPU breath as it does not have to feed the GPU as fast as possible. A variable refresh monitor is a fantastic companion when doing this (and in general). On older builds its a godsend

[@philscomputerlab]

@@joeyvdm1 And it reduces heat, noise and power...

[@joeyvdm1]

@@philscomputerlab Exactly. It really does lower stress on all components and leads to happier system and nicer all round experience. It is something that is not mentioned by enough people.

[@joeyvdm1]

@Gotta Go Fast You're right bud. Adoredtv has a great video covering Radeon Chill. Nvidia has just added a feature in its control panel to manage your frame rate too now called "Max Frames" (although it has none of Radeon Chills other features). But MSI Afterbuner is excellent too.

[@liaminwales]

frame rate limiter always works better than v sync for me.

[@ResilientME]

I'm in favor of dropping .1%, keeping 1%, and adding whatever measurement you feel best tracks percieved smoothness.

[@mieszko_drugi]

The most underestimated tech youtuber

[@TheLilPorkChop]

o 3o with the brightest smile

[@ArjunGopinathan]

This makes more sense, I can’t believe No other KZbinr ever addresses this. I’m really glad I found your channel sir

[@ani0.biswas]

I upgraded from i5-4440 to r7 3700x, man it feels day and night

[@2lazy2think91]

3:21 Tech Deals giving example backs up by math Me : New knowledge learn

[@АзаматСулейменов-ш4р]

Even If his math was right which is technically not his argument is a non sequitur because if part of something is small compared to the whole that doesn't mean it will not have an effect. If it did 400 parts per millions of carbon dioxide would not effect global temperatures.

[@Blaquegold]

Honestly you need to be a teacher. The way you explain things makes so much sense for anyone to understand. And your detail is worth noticing. Keep up the great work.

[@Vlamos27]

You are completely right. Smooth gameplay is the most important thing. Perfect frame times especially.

[@ZAR556]

Short answer, 1% yes 0,1% no

[@hhectorlector]

If you wanted the short answer I don’t think KZbin is the right platform for you to get your info! But I guess blindly accepting “yes” and “no” answers works for some people

[@railshot888]

So Gamers Nexus is wrong basically. Ok.

[@stevethea5250]

@@hhectorlector 1% low yes, .1% low no

[@kevinerbs2778]

No, because a % is based on an end total. Not a constant variable.

[@Neonagi]

Thanks for making this, anxiety over 0.1% lows has dissipated. 1% lows or above and frame pacing have increased for balance.

[@MegaSportFootball]

Only what matters its How often you will have these fps drops. Less drops - Smoother feeling of gameplay.

[@jasonmcgrody9472]

How about a frame time graph? I've seen some places give % of time with frame times less than X milliseconds.

[@mz-pd5hw]

so is not possible for the Ghost Recon example to have 10 fps in the 0.1%? that would be a couple of ugly skipped frames or even periodic stutters. Some skips and stutters while very annoying wouldn't appear in the 1%, unless they are a lot of them, but 1 ugly skip every minute would be awful. Just 4 runs show some variance but I don't think is too bad, just mean more runs are needed, for it to be useful, that "evidence", tells me not that 0.1% is useless but that 4 runs is too few. That data doesn't show randomness as you suggest, far from that. Of course it may be a better metric to shows frametime consistency, in that case great, but I don't think there is any evidence that 0.1% is useless.

[@davidgunther8428]

I've settled on 1% low being important, 0.1% much less important. Hardware unboxed uses average and 1%, Gamers nexus uses all 3, and includes error bars which shows the variability. I'd say 1% or 5% lows might be useful to show the typical slowest frame in a given second. After that, some metric that can capture severe stutters or hangs would be nice. I remember seeing when RDR2 came out it would have some multi- second hangs. It that was one frame I'm not even sure it would show up as 0.1% low stats. Maybe something that looks at frame time and will highlight frames that take 2× or 3× longer than the average to see if they are an issue at times other than loading screens.

[@tonssw]

Is there a way to measure 5% lows?

[@karmacode88]

Yeah. I have a build I will be working on later this year and the most important thing to me when it comes to CPU is how well it will handle frame pacing now and in the future. You are one of the few channels that I've seen that actually focuses on this aspect and it's greatly appreciated!

[@justsomegamer2285]

Great instructive video as always.

[@alexandremenino2006]

this is legit the 3rd video that i watched to learn what 1 and 0,1% low were the other 2 were too complicated explaining frame times and stuff thx for explaining it simple

[@baizidbostamishishir5829]

Huge thanks and respect man......you have no idea how much stress you take off of my head....thanks a lot....

[@jtiger102]

Always nice to have more people explaining what the benchmarks mean!

[@pjsonpiano]

This was incredibly useful. I had a 4790k and I was looking at going to a 3700x or a 3900x and I was disappointed that the average frame rates were so similar but as you said its that 1% low where you feel the difference. games are much smoother; start up is much faster etc. Just mirroring what others have said you nailed it on the head.

[@kathleendelcourt8136]

I went from an i7-3770k to a Ryzen 7 3700x and the difference is massive, all the little stutters and slowdowns in games that I never managed to get rid of even by lowering the settings in the options menus are now gone. And I agree 1% low is just as important as the average framerate, but 0.1%low measures tend to be way too all over the place to be truly useful.

[@joeyvdm1]

Tech Deals, you are absolutely right. My frame delivery consistency improved considerably going from a i7 2600 to a r7 3700x (as i expected it to). And yes, the upgrade was to improve the consistency between the lows and average frame rates taken as a whole and not my max frame rates. PS: I think you are on the right track in experimenting with how you benchmark and the way those results are presented to us. If anyone can figure out the best and most reliable way to achieve this, its you.

[@Raivo_K]

Same here going from 2500K (4.7Ghz) to 3800X (4.5Ghz). The frametimes are much more consistent so even 60fps feels nicer. What GPU are you using and did ytou change you GPU too. I had and still use GTX 1080. Honestly the platform upgrade pushed back my GPU upgrade considerably. No point in pairing 2500K with anything stronger if the frametimes are a mess.

[@joeyvdm1]

@@Raivo_K Absolutely. That was a massive upgrade for you too. Great pairing with that 1080. Running a 1070ti at the moment and its like I got a whole new GPU with the new platform. But here is an interesting tidbit. I paired the i7 2600 with a 1050ti for a secondary rig and in newer more demanding games it bottlenecks the 1050ti (Detroit: Become Human) being the latest. Even in older games like Shadow of War. When I swapped the 1050ti into my R3700x rig the mins went up and turned it into a GPU bottleneck. I believe its the per core performance and the DDR4 3200mhz (tweaked timings) that help. The 1050ti is really low on bandwidth. Anyway, what games are you playing and are showing the biggest improvements?

[@Raivo_K]

@@joeyvdm1 I don't play that many games at the moment. I was playing Mass Effect Andromeda multiplayer with friends. There i noticed the biggest improvement. Frostbyte engine loves 8 cores. Even when booting to single player my CPU was at 100% constantly for minutes before it stabilized and fps went to mid 50's. Now i get faster loading, no waiting and fps is 90+ straight away. I believe all Frostbyte based games should see a nice per uplift. Also Quake Champions become much more fluid.

[@joeyvdm1]

@@Raivo_K Absolutely agree. Multiplayer gaming and Frostbyte engines make great use of 8 cores (and i suspect more, to an extent, if you've got them). In single player gaming (Shadow of the tomb raider, Jedi fallen order, Red Dead 2, Detroit Become Human, etc) I have gotten major upgrade including load times (as you mentioned). EDIT: All round system performance and snappiness is fantastic too. I do lots of video converting and I can encode with a gazillion tabs open while watching youtube and working in photoshop and it is still as responsive as if I was doing nothing.

[@tomcruise7319]

1% lows are the main thing I always look at in benchmarks. I never understood why the .1% lows were there, because it's literally a pointless factor. I would rather have a CPU that averages 100fps with 80fps 1%, than a 110fps CPU that gets 70fps 1%. You can easily pick up a CPU nowadays that run games flawlessly such as the 2000/3000 Ryzen and 9700/9900k.

[@АзаматСулейменов-ш4р]

But would you rather have averages 100 fps with 80fps 1% and 30 Fps 0.1% than 110fps 70fps 1% and 60 Fps 0.1%. The first example will result in 33 ms frametime every 10th second which is a stutter. A lack of memory can do that. I am not saying there is no case to be made for abolishing 0,1 (0,1 is noisy hard to replicate) but 0.1 is not a completely useless metric.

[@feduzerr3140]

It's important for multithreaded processes like modern games. It shows to evaluate the expression of micro freezes.

[@mikeoes1]

Finally!! A video that explains 0.1% and 1% lows in a way I can wrap my head around. The key wording he used was "1% low means 99% of the time your FPS will be above this number". No other video (gamer nexus, RandomGaminginHD, bitwit etc....) about 1% and 0.1% lows took the time to elaborate on this one specific but important explanation. Great job!

[@enioapolinario8538]

This video is so good, i need this! Thank you Tech Deals ❤

[@NoToeLong]

How much does capping the FPS/enabling Vsync affect frame consistency and stutters? All of your CPU tests are pushing the absolute maximum FPS and pinning the CPU at 100% (which naturally leaves few resources for system tasks), but many people play with Vsync or a cap and never get close to maxing out their CPU. It would be interesting if you could test frame time consistency between locked and unlocked frame rates to see if leaving some headroom could keep older CPUs going just a bit longer.

[@TechDeals]

That’s a good idea...

[@KennethRathburn]

Gamers Nexus touched on this superbly in their 9600K review. The main thing I look for is frametimes, and if I see a spike on the frametime chart (which only occasionally show up in Afterburner's framerate graph), then my flags start going up.

[@GOAToatoat]

Hmm. How would you come up with an easy-ish test for frame consistency? Because I completely agree!

[@sworth2366]

Thank you for being the only person I can find online who shows just how extreme 0.1% lows truly are. I've now changed my benchmarking analysis to only include AVG and 1% lows in future. Why do you think 3 and 5% lows might be better?

[@hhectorlector]

Great explanation . Looking forward to future benchmarks

[@АзаматСулейменов-ш4р]

I am gonna have to disagree with some points in the video. I saw 2 arguments. 1) 0.1% lows occupy 0.6 seconds out of 10 minute gameplay. which is first of all mathematically incorrect because although it's true that 10 minutes = 600 seconds * 0, 01 = 0.6 seconds the calculation assumes that every frame is the same length which is not true because 0,1% lows by definition are the slowest 0.1% of frames. Second of all the arguments implies that 0.6 seconds out of 10 minutes gameplay is too small to affect the experience but 1% lows 6 seconds out 10 min sounds small too but no one says it doesn't matter, furthermore 0,6 seconds of out 10 min is one frame every 16.6 seconds. if that 1000th frame is slow enough you can get a stutter every 16.6 seconds which for me would be very annoying. The time to stutter ratio is further diminished at higher framerates like 144. 2) Second argument is not as bad and there's a case to be made for the noise of the dataset but noise can be corrected by excluding outliers and other methods. And even is the dataset is still somewhat noisy 0.1 lows are still important because when it comes to smoothness the slowest frames are the most important. I recommend watching Gamers nexus's video on the subject.

[@АзаматСулейменов-ш4р]

also in the middle of the video I felt he undercut his own point by stating that replacing old 2013 cpu by ryzen 2600 will dramatically improve the experience but not average framerate which begs the question which frames will the new cpu increase if not average and the obvious answer is 1% and 0,1 lows.

[@TechDeals]

You need a pretty big data set to remove the noise... far larger than 5 or 10 runs... look at the variance here in 4 runs... it might well take a hundred runs to iron it out.

[@АзаматСулейменов-ш4р]

@@TechDeals Well some better optimized games will have less variance. You can discard an outlier and average out the rest data points and while I agree that getting perfect, statistically significant P < 0.05 0.1 % lows are hard but it's not cancer research. In videogame benchmarking less stringent standards are fine. If the position is 0.1 lows are labor intensive and time consuming and not worth it that's ok but 0.1 lows are not useless as a metric.

[@stevenhuang2120]

I'd say if you do frametime chart (probably with nvidia frameview) it would be much easier to prove your points.

[@BhaalTheFleischgolem]

I agree, that it is a huge problem for reliable and repeatable results to use 1% or 0.1% low Frametimes.....but you should not confuse the strange stuff that the Afterburner is messuring, with the "1% low Frametimes", that HW unboxed and Gamers Nexus are showing. Your description of the "1% low results" fits the "percentile"......with 36000Frametimes and 99.9th Percentile, you are looking at the 37th worst Frametime....convert it to 1/s and you got your result.....it fits your descrtipion....0.1% of the Frametimes are worse than this number....it does not include any information on the 36 Frametimes that took longer. What HW unboxed and Gamers Nexus are doing is, that they take the avg of the worst 36 Frametimes....it gives you an even worse number....including singel frametime outliers. To do that, you need to record all of the 36000 Frametimes....MSI Afterburner does not record these frametimes....it uses an moving window, selectively deleting older Frametimes....you can see, how it is switching from 0.1% of 13 FPS to 63FPS at 2:50 in your video. If it would work like others are calculating the 0.1% low Frametimes, it is impossible to have such a jump....using MSI Afterburners avg FPS is alright....using Afterburners X% low Frametimes...don't do it...or do it only for broad measurements. If you want to messure "frametime-performance", then use Fraps(no Vulkan and not all DX12 games), OCAT, or CapFrameX! ....and make sure, you don't use the OCAT overlay...it sometimes kills performance! I like 99th and 95th percentile...they show you how the game was running in the worst part of the test szene. And I like the 0.1% low Frametimes....they take the avg of the frametimepeaks....but you need to repeat the szene at least 5 times..calculate the 0.1% low and then take the avg of the 3 best....this way you can ignore unlucky benchmark runs....and you get a reliable number on how bad the stutter is.

[@TechDeals]

Tools are indeed a challenge... FRAPS is out of date and no longer useful, sadly... the others are complex and not pretty for what I do. It’s a thing, for sure,.,

[@F2FTech]

Tech Deals I’d suggest using FrameView. It works with DX11,12, and Vulkan. You can use the output to create frame time plots using excel, or download a utility called FLAT ( Frame latency Analysis Tool). Like the person mentioned above, Afterburner is terrible for measuring frame times using his example and you don’t even get a proper timer cutoff when benchmarking. Additionally, FrameView will allow you to measure at either the present or display stage of the rendering pipeline. Fraps, OCAT, and others measure at the present stage which is before the driver, OS, and GPU. This sometimes picks up on “slop” that is not felt by the user. The display stage is similar to FCAT, which is does a better job at showing what the user will experience at the monitor. Food for thought 👍

[@BhaalTheFleischgolem]

@@TechDeals Afterburner is still the best for the live gamelay videos, that you do....and I like your videos...live gameplay has a very usefull use case. For Benchmarks, you could take a look at CapFrameX...it uses the OCAT code, but without the overlay problems(start and finish of the benchmark comes with an audio notifikation)......and it displays the frametimedata immediately in the app....very nice....and the results for percentile and 1%low seem to be accurate...but with a bit of special sauce...percentile are not "the one frametime"...it is a bit more complicated then that, but within the "error bars".

[@BhaalTheFleischgolem]

@@F2FTech I don't like FCAT....I think it is a measurement, that was introduced by Nvidia to cover up the problems with multi-GPU systems. It is true, that Fraps and OCAT are using the present stage, before the driver....In my opinion, this is what you feel when you play a CPU bound game. If theses frametimes are inconsistent....your information on the movement in the game is inconsistent.....the driver and GPU may do some frame pacing.....so the display gets evenly spread frames....but it still shows uneven informations about the movement/animations. So uneven drawcalls are always bad...even if the GPU does frame pacing and FCAT shows consistent frametimes...it is a cover up for a bad experience. If you are GPU bound, it does not matter to much....the CPU is doing the drawcalls in line with the GPU output....so OCAT and FCAT show little differences....maybe FCAT is better in this situation....but why using it, if it is only good in some situations? Since there are adaptive sync 30-144Hz monitors, one big feature of FCAT analysis is not important anymore...analysing how relevant each Frame was on an 60Hz output, was nice at the time...now I don't care anymore.

[@geerussell]

I think 0.1% low has its uses but the limitations are significant. It's best on built-in benchmarks and will often reveal things like microstutter. Consistently low 0.1% numbers are usually a legitimate issue and not just some random windows did something in the background. At the other end of the spectrum, an extended playthrough with respawns, saves, loads, etc will render it worthless. In the middle, on a stretch of playthrough that doesn't have those kinds of interruptions, bad 0.1% numbers are often indicative of some kind of real performance issue that merits further investigation.

[@ruiamaral4669]

Frame time variances as well as fps variances are the most important parameters. They are achieved by calculating the derivative of those to parameters. That's what human vision is more sensitive about. I much prefer a constant 60fps experience then a 60 to 120fps, all over the place, one. If the fps variance is slow and gradual the brain adapts to it easily but if it's changing by the second it is perceived as stuttering. That's very distracting and completely destroys immersion for me. That's the reason why I block my maximum FPS, with rivatuner, to a number that alows me to have the best and smoothest experience possible even if that number is well below the average fps achieved by my system. That's a number between average and 1%fps and how close to 1% really depends on the game.

[@fabiusmaximuscunctator7390]

Thx for this really interesting video! I totally agree with you. I also benchmark with Afterburner on my own machine. I just let it run in the background, while I'm playing. Sometimes the 0.1% is 0 or 1, although the game ran really smoothly for an hour. Maybe I just died several times or reloaded the save game. Steve form Hardware Unboxed never uses 0.1% lows. Maybe you know his channel. In my opinion 0.1% lows only make sense if the benchmark doesn't take any longer than 30s and is repeated several times to eliminate a potential outlier.

[@grizzly6699]

Showing frame times sounds like it would a useful addition to the regular average and 1% lows.

[@alberthakvoort8473]

Thank you for the great vid. I like the idea with measuring the responsivenes of a cpu.

[@IRSmeger]

What would be great is if you could get the time intervals between frames. Then you could calculate the variance and plot the data

[@whiskeredgundam7765]

I love your work and how you truly explain everything. Before I ever make a purchase I always go over your videos on it. And I have been meaning to tell you, love the new intro. Keep up the good work.

[@ignis86]

Can you do a list of best budget options for AAA gaming in the different resolutions for the next three years and or 5 years?

[@rhekman]

Thanks TechDeals for tackling this issue. Average FPS is just that -- an average. And trying to sift frametime anomalies out of a subset of an average is froaght w/issues. Back in the day Scott Wasson at TechReport was championing frametime analysis, then PCPerspective experimented with some different graphing techniques, and GamersNexus continues with an occasional frametime plot. Sadly the more advanced analysis never became the norm.

[@loserchild19]

I think your idea for measuring the frame pacing would work just fine 🙂

[@RusselVL-G]

you nailed it. awesome!

[@RichardSewill]

I don't know what to think. My first reaction is to ask, would using standard deviations from the mean be better? Instead of using the mean, would using the medium and standard deviations from the medium be better? Your comment, it's better to have a consistent frame rate of 30 fps than have half your frames be 30 fps and have your frames be 90 fps, is very interesting.

[@TechDeals]

That’s an option, the question is how to get that data easily.

[@olehaus]

I'm glad you are looking at the commonly used benchmarking system today and identifying it's flaws. I agree to omit .1% since it's not significant to the experienced gameplay. I will suggest a benchmarking system which makes a graph of fps versus percent to show how 'often' you can expect a certain fps. A narrow bell-shape will be better, a flat dome-shape will be worse. With this, one can see how much the fps varies, how often the fps are under accepted level, and get a better view of frame-pacing.

[@dw8555]

Excellent explanation! Thanks!

[@StefanEtienneTheVerrgeRep]

The human eye can't even see 1% or .1% . The human eye can only see 24% per second.

[@heyguyslolGAMING]

GREAT Video!!! Between what I have learned from you and Digital Foundry I've been heavily focused on the 1% lows and .1% lows over Average FPS and learning to tune my graphics settings and cap frame rate to get a buttery smooth game play. I think a lot of us gamers (which I'm very much guilty of) are/were too focused on Average Fps numbers. This is why I upgraded from the 9700K to the 9900K because while the 9700K has the potential to OC to 5.2-5.3ghz the FPS increase does exceed what you would often get from a 9900K but what you don't get is the Hyper Threading to smooth out those 1% Lows for buttery smooth game play. For the record if I didn't own a 2080 Ti or plan to upgrade to a top tier card in the near future AMD is the answer because the cpu performance is a great fit and won't bottleneck the gpu but if you do own a 2080 Ti and play at 1440p you really should be pairing that gpu with an Intel chip to get the most of that gpu. Otherwise why buy the card? You would only gimp the performance to almost a near 2080 Super experience :/ I digress - JayzTwoCents ; in regards to the .1% lows I think you are probably right, its the 1% lows that seem to carry the most weight. Awesome channel you have hear man. I love the fact that you don't just review hardware and give the boring benchmark graph charts but you do lots of testing and demo what you are testing. This is how we learn, so good job man keep it up.

[@BWalker8732]

OMG someone finally broke this down for me 💯 thanks 👍🏾

[@nonametito2599]

Great information. Thanks!

[@adoniskomplex91]

I mostly agree with your statements. 1% low is definitely enough when 0.1% is above a number where you notice lags and jumps. When the 0.1% value is 30 or even 50, then you'll never ever notice the moment when it happened. But let's say you measured a value of 10, I bet, you could tell me the moment when it was measured given the fact, that some things were moving in the game.

[@Castaa]

The one value of 0.1% lows is it can spot random very low fps glitches that happen infrequently. within a play through.

[@TechDeals]

Is that because of the game, or because Windows decided now was the time to check for updates? Or run a virus scan? Or NVidia GeForce Experience did a thing?

[@Castaa]

I was thinking something heavily taxing a system resource within the game but infrequently. Like a large amount of AI for a tick or some large resource loading in to VRAM before a frame, a rare but exception about of alpha rendering, could be anything. Especially noticeable at 120Hz+ vsync'ed frame rates if it drops to sub 60 fps for a frame every so often. (could be external or internal to the game) I'm not saying you are wrong with the 0.1% lows being not very valuable statistic. I've just had cases where you get random but very noticeable hitches that happen every few seconds or minutes. But the last time it happened to me it was because my Razer software was misbehaving due to a bug. So no real need to account for that in a benchmark.

[@Gombair]

I dont know how good it would be, but maybe you could show us the median frame time, or the mode of all frames.

[@Waldherz]

1% lows are why I get frequently upset with my 2080ti not even being able to hold any amount of fps steady in any of the game that I play.

[@dadgamer6717]

Thanks! Very interesting! You mentioned 3% low etc. Wonder what info afterburner dumps from the benchmark and if you can calculate it with Excel using the perceintile function?

[@MicahTheZombie]

I'm trying to understand frametime stuff better, so someone please correct me if I'm wrong. I think I disagree with the video on the subject of 0.1% framerate being useless. One of the points that the video makes is that 0.1% low is a bad measurement because it's such a small amount of frames it doesn't really tell you much about the whole experience. His example was that 0.1% of 60fps gameplay over 10 minutes is only 36 frames which is about a half second, which makes it sound like somewhere in the course of 10 minutes of play the game will freeze for half a second. That's not a big deal. But I understand it differently. If you're playing at 144fps, then the 0.1% low in 10 minutes of gameplay is about 86 frames. Rather than experience a half second stutter once in 10 minutes, that's 86 separate times that you're going to experience that 0.1% low. If the 0.1% low is bad enough, that's 86 times that you go to make a headshot and the game stutters and you miss the shot because of it. I might be completely misunderstanding this and if so then please let me know.

[@KeklikSapiens]

You're right. The 0.1 percent value becomes more important as the game duration and target frame rate increases (unlike in the video). The 0.1 percent value may be meaningless for short-term benchmarks, but it is more important than the 1 percent value as the durations increase during the actual game experience.

[@stephenxs8354]

Log fps for entire benchmark at set interval then plot?

[@selohcin]

I agree with you, Tech. When looking for at-a-glance performance indicators for a given set of hardware, I always assign 50% of the score to the average frame rate and 50% to the 1% Low. Both of those numbers are very useful.

[@paulschutte5905]

One possible way to test is to cap the max fps at say 60 fps. Then the average fps becomes meaningful as extremely high fps wont be able to cancel very low fps and hence will accentuate performance dips. The closer they can get to the cap (60 fps), the better the card is.

[@XxSenpaiixX]

how do i keep the 1% fps stable? i noticed that when i play at 60 fps, 1% many times drops even to 30..making a fps drop..how do i keep it stable? or as high as possible?

[@Entity8473]

I totally agree with you a static frame rate or a frame rate with low variance is better than when it jumps all over the place. Especially with synthetic benchmarks, sometimes the frame rate may ideal around 25 fps than jump to 75 or more for a few seconds just to return to 25 fps. I wonder how many people realize that is just how the system behaves depending on how demanding the game.

[@MsIndycar]

Heading in the right direction but when u measure frame times you end up in same spot with %lows

[@adilb1087]

I get on my rtx 2070 super and ryzen 5 3600 and 16gb ram 0.1% lows on paladins to 25 fps from 400 and i feel the stutter all the time how can i fix this temps are at max 60C

[@adilb1087]

even tried to cap my fps still didnt work

[@keithverret6191]

Just to clarify, you can get better fps, or better timing, or faster frames by upgrading. I went from avg 50fps on an RX 590 with an FX-8320 on high settings in most triple A titles. I bought a 3800x and kept the same gpu and I now get 60-70+ fps avg with no lag or issues. So you can get better game performance by just updating the CPU. I'm not sure if you said what you said slightly off or if I misheard you. My apologies if I misheard you, but I hope this info helps. Also, it's not alot of performance gain, but it can be just enough to push you over on fps. The misses rocks an FX-8350 and I know there's gpu performance just sitting on the table, so I'm gonna try to get her on Ryzen for that same reason. Edit: Rewatched video. I heard you wrong. And you covered all I said above. Thanks for the video!

[@vidfreak56]

The only way 1% lows matter is if you calculate them via a circular buffer that constantly updates, so low numbers dont saturate the entire benchmark. You then calculate the amount of time certain 1% lows occurred during a set time period and possibly develop an average aswell. So that would imply a 1% low frame rate thats, on average, either closer to the highest FR or not.

[@keremetou]

Tech, sorry to comment before watching the video, but can you please rename the video with the word "very" in front of "useful" just for the sake of importance. Be assured that I'll watch the video when I'll finish work, keep up the good stuff for us, you're awesome!

[@luizucchetto2528]

Great video explaining the uselessness of the 0,1% low. May I suggest videos on combinations of CPU and Video cards that would pair together to give the "best" experience at 1080 and 1440 and 4K gaming. Or have you done this already?

[@Damarcuhh]

Problem is cant seem to fix is my fps avg is 180+ but my 1% lows are as low as 1fps cant seem to find out why please help!

[@vask92]

It makes sense. Also it might be useful to plot frametimes on a chart, that way it'll be easy to see how consistent fps is

[@Yuhid.]

I have high end components however my 1% and 0.1% lows are permanently on 0. Whatever I do it doesnt get fixed. Is this a sign of that my hardware is broken?

[@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo]

That's a sign that your pc is not generating in frames per second, but in seconds per frame. For this case, you need to look at the frame time. Measured in miliseconds (ms). If it goes above 1000-1500 miliseconds, you will get 0 fps. Like ping, which is also measured in ms miliseconds. It means your pc is as good as a cgi render farm from the early 1990s. Maybe in 30 years the current cinebench will run in 30fps as opposed to 30 spf on current cpus.

[@Yuhid.]

@UmmerFarooq-wx4yo ah man..... Is there anything I can do. Because normally when I play my games it is butterly smooth. For example warzone, fortnite and other more demanding games are running perfectly. It mostly happens when I try to play games that dont demand much Performance Like minecraft e.t.c.

[@82Tellus]

You might want to have a look at why 1% and 0.1% lows are handy, you either have to include them, skip them or just show raw frametime data, skipping them and just showing average fps says nearly nothing about actual game performance and fluidity, you can have average fps that is not bad and even 1% that isn't bad while 0.1% is pisspoor and reoccuring through the entire test with a frame here & there, this 0.1% low you will notice. The drawbacks you mention here is something you as a tester should remove as an outlier, if you include outliers that do not reflect gameplay this is your wrongdoing as a reviewer. Check out gamersnexus very old video on this topic for more clarification, there's many more that debate the same thing but this is a good start kzbin.info/www/bejne/q4nIoXyNnpmGna8

[@banzaiman1]

Ive just upgraded from.an i5 4690 to ryzen 5 2600x keeping the same gtx 1060 and the experience is soo much smoother, yes im not really getting any more fps but it feels much nicer

[@rhekman]

I'd love to see a new type of graph for frametimes. For game benchmarks where you can get a count of frames and a log of frame times, quantize them into millisecond "buckets" -- e.g. take number of frames that took over 500ms to render, then 250ms, 125ms, 66ms, 33, 16, 8, and under 4ms. Plot frame total on the X axis, and plot frametime bucket on the Y axis with slow frames at the bottom, fast frames at the top. Connect the plot points to create a curve. I'd call this a "FrameTime Quantization" or FTQ for short. "Good" results would have a sharp peak as high and to the right of the chart as possible. "Bad" results would have multiple peaks. The tallest peak would equate to a "median FPS" - e.g. a sharp peak at 16ms would be a "solid 60 FPS".

[@Ink-Eyes88]

what would be a good 1% low statistic? my 6700xt always shows a numeric value of 2, I thought it was supposed to mean that sometimes (if my average fps is 120) then every once in a while my fps should go down all the way to 2? that shows extremely bad to me but I always have a smooth gaming experience. Then again I don't know much, any help please? is that a good statistic or not?

[@udaypaul4360]

If you were a teacher in school all studs would come first...cause you explain so well....

[@kepler1175]

This video sums up why Tech Deals is a great channel. Well, sums up one part of it.

[@acekorneya1]

yeah i felt the smoothness right away in games as soon as i upgraded from a delidded 3770k 4.8GHZ to a 3950X is was night and day.. i mainly use this rig for rendering workloads but for gaming and streaming is a beast of a cpu and can break 10K in R20 easily while staying at 82c on full load

[@Yadro767]

Good job, Tech. So, when shopping for a non-existent graphics card, start with "Avg FPS", focus on 1% Low, and ignore 0.1% Low. Got it, Thanx.

[@eepiest]

very important question,,,,, if your 1% low is lower than your monitor hz is that bad then? or is it not noticable at only 1% of the time out of 99% being higher than the monitor hz

[@forasago]

Oh and adding to my other comment: The apparent difference in accuracy between 0.1% and 1% is merely a function of how long your benchmark is. It just so happens that you (and most people) tend to run benchmarks for long enough that 1% of the sample is still meaningful but short enough that 0.1% picks up "noise". If you ran the same benchmarks for 10 times as long your 0.1% results would become as meaningful as your 1% results are now. In turn, if you ran shorter benchmarks you might have to give up the 1% category. Assuming that the "noise" really comes from outside the games it should be constant, at least on the same PC with the same programs running, so we could calculate a precision cutoff depending on the length of each benchmark. So for longer benchmarks we could go all the way to 0.5% for instance, and for something like the Far Cry 5 benchmark we might stick with 3% or whatever.

[@ravipeiris4388]

It's about 12 noon and I've learned the most important lesson of the day after previewing this game. Thank you Tech Deals.

[@NoLuv4Hoz]

This was a very informative crack at a complex problem. Average fps rates are easy to understand but the truth of the gaming experience is more nuanced. Unfortunately, people have increasingly short attention spans and less and less time to consider complexities. Sound bites and summaries only, please! Sadly, this is the equivalent of information fast food.

[@gazzabazzazza]

i'd have thought that some figure or indicator of the degree of frametime smoothness / fluctuation might be useful? % variance or something similar?

[@PeterPauls]

I had a i5 9600k 5 ghz, the Witcher 3, which are not the newest game by far, sometimes made some strange stutters, just for a second, I hated when it happened and It was very annoying. And I started to monitoring my CPU usage, GPU usage, FPS, temps etc. and that moment, when those stutters happened the 6 core CPU did run up to all core 100%, but most of the case the CPU worked on a high precentage. I have Steam, Epic Games app, Origin app etc. running in the background all the time, also CAM software for my Kraken x62 AiO, sometimes I forgot close the browser. So I did some research on Reddit and they said to me go with a higher core count CPU, because that could be the only problem, I have an RTX 2080 + 32GB Corsair Vengance 3ghz CL14 memory, so I sold my Intel mobo and CPU and bought a Ryzen 9 3900x, becaues I considered to start making youtube videos again. Anyway all of these hiccups are gone, I have a much smoother experience, even though the avarage FPS dropped a 5-8 fps, but who cares, the 1% lows are elevated from 10 fps to 80 fps, that's something and I don't have to bother anymore the background apps, they can run without problems!

[@xeno8005]

it's like riding as a passenger in a moving car situation 1 passenger = a driver drives at 120mph and sudden brake to 40mph in a second and goes up again to 120mph next second situation 2 passenger = a driver drives at 60mph and sudden brakes to 40mph in a second and then goes up to 60mph again next second i would choose "situation 2" passenger experience rather than "situation 1"

[@muhammadakbar8197]

ah got it. thats why i almost feel stuttery when gaming with my i5 2500 (non K) paired with GTX 1060 6G. maybe the time has come to upgrade.. 😅

[@Pixel_FX]

i am on a i3 2100 with a 5700XT. imagine my pain :V

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

The time has come indeed. Sitting on a 3570K + 1060 and I'm almost always CPU limited.

[@tejk5184]

Very valid point. I never cared too much for these 0.1% lows, in my opinion it just makes benchmark charts look unnecessary complex.

[@Esspppiia]

Can I do anything about my 180 FPS AVG when 65 FPS 1% lows in Call of Duty Warzone? Ryzen 5 5600x + 5700 XT + X570 + 32GB 3600Mhz CL16

[@alexs6986]

Why not create a probability density function and use standard deviation?

[@Gilfar]

Hi, I need some advice regarding of gpu, I was planing to get new gpu, and at first I wanted to buy rtx 2070 super, but after recent events, I started to consider buying rtx 2060 super, the price for 2060s is ~480$ and 2070s ~630$, so here my question is it worth it to pay extra 150$ for 2070s, or 2060s will be enough for 1080p maybe some 1440p for the next few(5) years ?.

[@Bryan-T]

I don't like any of the current options. I'd like to know what a 10% low metric would look like.

[@LAN-w-]

Should I cap my frame rate to the 1% lows? or around the average framerate for the smoothest gameplay? Specifically Esports games. For example on Apex I average around 80fps and have 1% lows of about 50fps.

[@logan_12]

It will result in input delay if you cap your fps, keep it uncapped my recommendation

[@imadecoy.]

I always knew Steve at Hardware Unboxed had the most valid benchmarking data.

[@dadgamer6717]

Also appreciate this was a more bite-sized video! I love your videos but prefer 10 min to 30 min videos as like to watch youtube inbetween doing other things!

[@Quwartz280]

Thanks that was very helpful.

[@divvydan]

This is a really interesting look. The question then becomes, is there a way of showing things like micro-stuttering and other quality of life differences between products other than the reviewer's opinion, which can only really be done through real world extensive gameplay, rather than inbuilt benchmarks, which is obviously much more time consuming and results in a deep look at smaller number of games rather than a quicker look at a wider variety of games.

[@GuyFromJupiter]

.1% lows basically tell us if we can expect to a game to have severe hangs and snags. Its significance doesn't come from what it tells us about a framerate but rather what it tells us about a game's stability. It's certainly less useful than the other statistics considering that improving it is often much less straightforward than the others if it can improved at all, but it does serve a purpose.

[@teched7226]

I agree, 100%. I would rather you focus on frame time or overall experience than 0.1% low numbers.