Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Everything about latency. Tips, testing methods, mouse lag, display lag, game engine lag, network lag, whole input lag chain, VSYNC OFF vs VSYNC ON, and more! Input Lag Articles on Blur Busters.
Eonds
Posts: 262
Joined: 29 Oct 2020, 10:34

Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by Eonds » 16 Sep 2021, 06:29

Latency:

Not all latency is perceptually the same
System latency is highly complex and variable when you don't lock down all variables.
Almost every part of your system has some sort of power saving feature(s) affecting latency including your OS.
A lot of power saving features can't be conventionally disabled.
Mobile GPU's (laptop/console GPU's) have massive latency penalties due to TBDR (Tile-based deferred rendering).
Laptops are just awful, don't use them if you care about latency.

There's all sorts of waiting/idling/timing events that happen which affect latency.
If you've ever reversed any drivers like nvlddkm & dxgkrnl you can see a bunch of settings for power states, power management & other latency related settings.

There's many buffers on your system that hurt latency at the expense of higher FPS.
FPS isn't a useful metric for measuring latency, the only relevant metric in terms of FPS is how close 0.1% lows are to your average.
Latency is more important than a small FPS increase in most cases.
Variable voltages/frequencies/power state switching causes latency penalties. (set fixed frequencies & voltages, Don't use PBO, or intel's ITBM/Speed step/shift).

Drivers should always be stripped & reversed so you can optimize the latency.
Most keyboards have terrible latency & so do mice. (Don't fully trust any latency measurements from RTINGS/other reviewers for many reasons including but not limited to, Non optimized benches, better versions of products sent to them, they don't use scopes or probes, they have power saving features on.

Most latency benchmarks should be taken with a grain of salt and you should be able to estimate the latency of the product by the hardware it harbors + take into account the standard deviation of multiple different reviewers tests and you'll have a general idea.
Non mobile gpu's still have many power saving features & other scams that increase FPS at the expense of latency in different areas.
modern AMD GPU's (5000 series & even below) are much easier cards to tune/disable/enable settings and typically have lower latency by default compared to Nvidia GPU's (GTX 10 series /RTX 20/30series).


Some RGB is very very noisy. my k65 mini's rgb on full brightness gets picked up by my mic. Avoid things that cause interference if you can, using DC instead of PWM for example. Anything above 58C on most components causing issues like micro throttling, power saving features, & clock gating + more. Disable all RGB.

There's many many many tweaks you can do on your OS, but at the end of the day windows is awful & needs to be replaced. Set all useless processes to low priority, security processes, DWM, & kill your explorer before playing via task manager. It can be re opened via task manager (Alt + tab to get back into game & out of game when you kill the explorer). How would you start the explorer back up? This way, CTRL + ALT + DELETE, Task manager, File > Run new task > explorer.exe .


I can list 1000 tweaks here but that's just obnoxious. Just because it's new hardware, that doesn't mean it has lower latency than older hardware. Don't fall for FPS scams (5-10 fps differences in benchmarks when comparing a CPU/GPU). Many tweaks are kept guarded/gate kept simply because "we" don't want everyone to use it as it gives "us" an advantage. Many athletes do this IRL with routines, drugs, equipment etc. Believe it or not many pro's get their PC's tweaked by people like "us". It's actually very popular for pros to get their pc's optimized in rocket league/Fortnite/Warzone/Apex Legends etc. I thought I would just shed some light.

With all that being said some people exponentially benefit from latency reduction. It's not linear for everyone and a lot of it's mental.
If you're an average/above average player don't expect a latency to make you a high level player. Generally speaking lowering nearly anyone's latency is better than not. Latency affects people's hand eye coordination differently. Wireless mice lag + low polling rate, don't trust the results, they'll be different for everyone depending on battery life, interference, etc.

NVIDIA sort of came out claiming to care about latency but won't actually let you change a bunch of power saving features, and other tricks that hurt latency on their GPU's. You can't really change GPU VRAM timings either. Don't trust the companies either, they want your money not your opinions or test results. They often manipulate people & that's how the game goes. Same with displays, keyboards, mice, audio peripherals, controllers, consoles, laptops, etc. AMD is much more trustworthy than NVIDIA, but still be skeptical.

Certain builds of windows have different implementations of game mode that can cause stuttering depending on the power plan being used & other factors. Disable game mode, and even HAGS has micro stuttering even though it lowers latency. A lot of games are unoptimized garbage because the devs are awful and don't deserve their jobs (Fortnite/Cod/Apex). Most games have shit servers with low tick rates affecting everyone and most notably high level players. Use native resolution/refresh rate otherwise expect higher latency/lower quality (if you're using an LCD). Stop worrying about your FPS counters, ping & the aesthetics if it's affecting your gameplay negatively.

Hardware: New doesn't = better latency, Tighter timings > slight increase in frequency with RAM. More RAM sticks doesn't = better latency or FPS. All 144hz LCD's are bad (my harsh opinion). Don't cheap out on hardware/peripherals, save your money and buy high quality/low latency components and you won't have to replace/regret it. Thanks for coming to my ted talk. Yes interference is very real and extremely common and varies in severity. Stop looking for god fixes for your mental issues/hardware desync. The only fix is properly optimizing your setup to the max. Like the chief recommended, if you're convinced it's dirty power, buy a high end battery/wait to play until the AM, or use filters for your outlets and use cable shielding.


OPTIMIZE YOUR BIOS AND TRY SPREAD SPECTRUM SETTINGS BEFORE YOU SPEND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ON EQUIPMENT.

slaver01
Posts: 89
Joined: 21 Sep 2020, 01:48

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by slaver01 » 16 Sep 2021, 07:27

Please you check this:
Image

MegaMelmek
Posts: 235
Joined: 21 Jan 2021, 12:54

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by MegaMelmek » 16 Sep 2021, 07:27

Sorry mate this is all BS. The issue is inside the PC. Most of them with issue is high end PC high power over 600w PSU.
Framerate is no important if you got input lag 400ms.The way is stay on old PC if it works for you do not chase 500FPS because in most case it will work only in offline gameplay.
If you play online you need LAN, USB, GPU, CPU, work in harmony all the time and these new HW are not able to deliver that.

Eonds
Posts: 262
Joined: 29 Oct 2020, 10:34

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by Eonds » 16 Sep 2021, 20:16

MegaMelmek wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 07:27
Sorry mate this is all BS. The issue is inside the PC. Most of them with issue is high end PC high power over 600w PSU.
Framerate is no important if you got input lag 400ms.The way is stay on old PC if it works for you do not chase 500FPS because in most case it will work only in offline gameplay.
If you play online you need LAN, USB, GPU, CPU, work in harmony all the time and these new HW are not able to deliver that.

That's literally part of what I said mate. You should re read it so you can comprehend it better. None of it's bullshit, it's all factual.

Eonds
Posts: 262
Joined: 29 Oct 2020, 10:34

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by Eonds » 16 Sep 2021, 20:25

slaver01 wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 07:27
Please you check this:
Image
What about it ?

howiec
Posts: 183
Joined: 17 Jun 2014, 15:36

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by howiec » 17 Sep 2021, 01:01

Eonds wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 06:29
[...]

System latency is highly complex and variable when you don't lock down all variables.

[...]

(Don't fully trust any latency measurements from RTINGS/other reviewers for many reasons including but not limited to, Non optimized benches, better versions of products sent to them, they don't use scopes or probes, they have power saving features on.

[...]

OPTIMIZE YOUR BIOS AND TRY SPREAD SPECTRUM SETTINGS BEFORE YOU SPEND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ON EQUIPMENT.
Agreed.

I don't have any experience with AMD's recent GPUs wrt latency optimization and other tweaks.

Nvidia is still the performance king with RT and DLSS so I'll probably be getting a 4090 flagship next too. I also wish they focused more on latency reduction or at least gave consumers the ability to tweak everything to their liking.

Maybe if I have time I'll buy AMD's upcoming, next-gen GPU from a store and test it out as well although I'll need help discovering all the possible tweaks/optimizations.

Eonds
Posts: 262
Joined: 29 Oct 2020, 10:34

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by Eonds » 17 Sep 2021, 02:23

howiec wrote:
17 Sep 2021, 01:01
Eonds wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 06:29
[...]

System latency is highly complex and variable when you don't lock down all variables.

[...]

(Don't fully trust any latency measurements from RTINGS/other reviewers for many reasons including but not limited to, Non optimized benches, better versions of products sent to them, they don't use scopes or probes, they have power saving features on.

[...]

OPTIMIZE YOUR BIOS AND TRY SPREAD SPECTRUM SETTINGS BEFORE YOU SPEND THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS ON EQUIPMENT.
Agreed.

I don't have any experience with AMD's recent GPUs wrt latency optimization and other tweaks.

Nvidia is still the performance king with RT and DLSS so I'll probably be getting a 4090 flagship next too. I also wish they focused more on latency reduction or at least gave consumers the ability to tweak everything to their liking.

Maybe if I have time I'll buy AMD's upcoming, next-gen GPU from a store and test it out as well although I'll need help discovering all the possible tweaks/optimizations.

Yes well said. The only thing they have going for them is the casual RT / DLSS stuff which is totally fine if you're into that stuff & you want high FPS. It's for single player so latency is irrelevant honestly unless you're using VR or something lol.

slaver01
Posts: 89
Joined: 21 Sep 2020, 01:48

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by slaver01 » 17 Sep 2021, 04:18

Eonds wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 20:25
slaver01 wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 07:27
Please you check this:
Image
What about it ?
do I leave disabled?

Rallaz
Posts: 45
Joined: 12 May 2020, 08:41

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by Rallaz » 17 Sep 2021, 04:46

slaver01 wrote:
17 Sep 2021, 04:18
Eonds wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 20:25
slaver01 wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 07:27
Please you check this:
Image
What about it ?
do I leave disabled?
That all depends you wanna achieve a baseclock 100.00 or as close as possible, so your in for some testing mate.
Best case scenario would be to try first by using off/on ( a high value) on Spread Spectrum.

Look at base clock after the values are changed and see whats making the biggest difference.

Usually if you don't have any EMI/EMF's problem these values tend to be best with OFF.

There is also a value called PCIe Spread Spectrum Clocking I keep this OFF it improves latency for me at least.
There is also another value called RFI Spread Spectrum which apparently is usually set to 1.5% by MOST bioses.
I've modded mine with the same program ur showing here to 0.5%. I would try to modd it and go for 0.0% some day by thats another day when I feel I've the energy to flash my bios a couple times because you can break shit by doing this.

I could recommend you try mod the following values I posted here but its no guarantee it will work for you or that you even have it from the beginning.

Eonds
Posts: 262
Joined: 29 Oct 2020, 10:34

Re: Rant/Education/Latency/Tips

Post by Eonds » 17 Sep 2021, 07:17

Rallaz wrote:
17 Sep 2021, 04:46
slaver01 wrote:
17 Sep 2021, 04:18
Eonds wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 20:25
slaver01 wrote:
16 Sep 2021, 07:27
Please you check this:
Image
What about it ?
do I leave disabled?
That all depends you wanna achieve a baseclock 100.00 or as close as possible, so your in for some testing mate.
Best case scenario would be to try first by using off/on ( a high value) on Spread Spectrum.

Look at base clock after the values are changed and see whats making the biggest difference.

Usually if you don't have any EMI/EMF's problem these values tend to be best with OFF.

There is also a value called PCIe Spread Spectrum Clocking I keep this OFF it improves latency for me at least.
There is also another value called RFI Spread Spectrum which apparently is usually set to 1.5% by MOST bioses.
I've modded mine with the same program ur showing here to 0.5%. I would try to modd it and go for 0.0% some day by thats another day when I feel I've the energy to flash my bios a couple times because you can break shit by doing this.

I could recommend you try mod the following values I posted here but its no guarantee it will work for you or that you even have it from the beginning.

I'll add if you believe you have interference issues set RFI spread spectrum to 6%. Generally speaking having everything static & 1:1 will provide the smoothest experience. SB spread spectrum doesn't really do anything for most people who anecdotally had interference issues.

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