On this planet of science, SI prefixes are sacrosanct. Nicely, until you occur to be a computing scientist, by which case the selection of prefix—mega vs mebi—generally is a little controversial. It seems that one programmer at Valve fell on the mistaken facet of the prefix conflict when exhibiting your CPU clocks within the Steam efficiency overlay, however at the very least it is all been mounted with a tiny patch.Final week, Valve added a efficiency overlay to the present Steam beta, and I’ve to say that it is fairly nifty-looking. You get body charges, clock speeds, processor utilisation, and reminiscence consumption (RAM and VRAM), all in a useful bar that you simply place round your display screen.Nevertheless, in some patches notes for the beta Steam consumer, Valve “mounted [the] Mhz/Ghz conversion for CPU pace values in Efficiency Monitor so values aren’t 2.4% decrease than anticipated.” How precisely does one find yourself lacking 2.4% of a CPU’s clock pace? The reply lies within the prefixes.
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To illustrate your processor is working at 3,500 MHz, however you need to present that in GHz. Since Hz is an SI unit, one makes use of the SI prefix system the place the G stands for giga and is a a number of of 1,000. In different phrases, the clock pace is 3.5 GHz. What Valve did was use the pc science prefix of gibi, which is a a number of of 1,024.Divide 1,000 by 1,024 after which subtract 1; multiply by 100, and also you get a share distinction of two.34%! Okay, in order that’s not precisely 2.4% nevertheless it’s clear the place Valve made a boo-boo. I do know it is a very minor factor, and kudos to the programmers for fixing it so shortly, nevertheless it’s somewhat humorous that Valve made such a foolish error.Thoughts you, I want different firms would repair their overlays or efficiency screens as shortly as this. With out wishing to sound like a moaning Minnie, Nvidia’s Frameview nonetheless insists on forgetting key bindings or folder picks. Sure, the workforce behind it is vitally small (i.e. one or two individuals) and it is hardly a excessive precedence for issues that Nvidia wants to repair, but when Valve can do it, so can others.I nonetheless desire MSI Afterburner and RivaTuner Statistics Server to the rest in the case of selecting an simply customisable efficiency overlay, nevertheless it’s good to have choices. It will be fascinating to see what Valve does with its little bar.Preserve updated with crucial tales and the perfect offers, as picked by the PC Gamer workforce.Greatest handheld PC 2025All our present suggestions