⚡ IMPORTANT ⚡ NO ELECTRIC/EMI threads HERE! ⚡

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.
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⚡ IMPORTANT ⚡ NO ELECTRIC/EMI threads HERE! ⚡

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 19 Sep 2021, 14:01

Hello all,

Too many Electricity/EMF/EMI-related topics have started to fill this forum and distract from latency's original purpose. An EMI forum exists as a subtopic under Offtopic Lounge: viewforum.php?f=24

EMF = ElectroMagnetic Fields
EMI = ElectroMagnetic Interference

Latency was originally intended for display latency and other similar latency issues, but EMI latency problems are starting to distract a bit.

(Note: Lag from EMI is legit, and not tinfoilhattery -- just an outlier problem only university Ph.D circuit designers & NVIDIA circuit engineers are able to troubleshoot. Some other less-interference-experienced hobbyist forums delete these threads, but Blur Busters is an incubator for legitimate temporal issues such as Hz, GtG, MPRT, lag, VRR, etc -- Blur Busters is a temporal company that mythbusts this shit.)

From now on, please post EMI-related threads in the EMI subforum. Be warned it will be an eclectric mix of low-experience people and high-experience people. The forum is often a frustrated tone because of the huge difficulty of troubleshooting EMI (requires unviersity Ph.D in electronics circuit bdesign). So it may be frustrating to people unfamiliar with this or not educated in this stuff. In all cases, please follow the Blur Busters "Be Nice To Newbies" rule there since real evidence & tinfoil hat evidence may mix -- but at the very end of the day, EMI-caused input latency issues are a real problem affecting a minority (e.g. people who live next to high voltage transmission lines). In other words, don't deny EMI latency existence -- use evidence and science based approaches where possible.

Electrical Issues Affecting Latency -- Interference, Harmonics, EMI, EMF

TL;DR: Your latency problem is probably not electricity related, but it can still sometimes happen. Most newbies should not visit the EMI forum, as problems are often elsewhere.
Head of Blur Busters - BlurBusters.com | TestUFO.com | Follow @BlurBusters on Twitter

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  2. Please report rule violations If you see a post that violates forum rules, then report the post.
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⚡ IMPORTANT ⚡ NO ELECTRIC THREADS. Electric-related threads moved to EMI forum ⚡

Post by Chief Blur Buster » 21 Sep 2021, 13:49

Crossposting:
Why This New EMI Forum Exists
  • We have permitted this forum to exist because Blur Busters is an incubator of computer temporal issues (Hz, GtG, MPRT, PWM, VRR, latency, ghosting, blurring, stutter, etc). Basically the entire temporal universe.
  • EMI is real science. See Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Electronics Notes, and many others, for more information.
  • Blur Busters generally mythbust a lot of these "Millisecond Matters" issues, with the known domino effect of single milliseconds cascading to human-visible issues.
  • We protect many outlier temporal topics that are distant spinoffs of the old "30fps vs 60fps" skeptics of twenty years ago. You can read about Blur Busters research at www.blurbusters.com/area51 as an incubator of display research of the future.
  • Now, inevitably, we started having threads about EMI / inteference issues that creates latency, and several of them are legitimate (even in the midst of many wild goose chases and red herrings).
  • So we've decided to allow a small sub-forum for these types of threads.
The Modern Computer
Most latency problems do not result from electricity. However, rarely, they do. It's often at the level of "Too infrequent to show up in manufacturer beta testing" but at the level of "It appears over a thousand people are affected in a population of 10,000,000"

Latency from interference / electrical / EMI / EMF is almost always an error-correction latency. Modern computers are full of error correction.

...Yesterday 1985 IDE bus .... CRASH upon electircal issue
...Today's 2020 nVME .... LAG upon electircal issue (error retransmit)

...Yesterday's 1985 ISA bus ... CRASH upon electircal issue
...Today's 2020 PCI-Express ... LAG upon electircal issue (error retransmit)

...Yesterday's 1985 RS232 serial bus ... CORRUPTION
...Today's 2020 USB ... LAG upon electircal issue (error retransmit)

...Yesterday's 1985 video RAM ... CORRUPTION
...Today's 2020 NVIDIA GDDR6 RAM ... LAG upon electircal issue (error retransmit)

So, now if you live in a high-radiation environment, it's possible to be getting millions of hidden error correction events throughout your computer -- death by a thousand cuts -- millions of microseconds and nanoseconds building up to human feelable multi-millisecond latencies. It's quite possible. It has happened before.

Bottom Line Domino Effect: Interference = Error Correction = Latency
So, fellow technical minds, you get the idea. Modern computers are full of error correction. Error correction storms means that millions of nanoseconds can build up to multiple human-noticeable milliseconds, interfering with your gameplay. Some people in other countries are unlucky to live under 500,000-volt power transmission lines, and others are unlucky to live above a mechanical floor (with big motors) in an apartment tower, or a big 200-amp power transformer hiding behind the wall behind computer desk. So even if you don't have any EMI issues, other people do.

Personal Experience / Why Don't I Hear About This In Forums?
I personally have experienced latency-by-electricity-issue. It's legitimate. Just rare.
This stuff is usually mainly talked out by engineers because there's no easy everyday-user instructions for troubleshooting interference / EMI issues. That's why this stuff is very rare in other discussion forums. But it's all over Google Scholar / university papers / advanced engineering materials. If you have taken university classes in circuit and RF design, you are already familiar with EMI issues. Basically orders of magnitude more advanced than an average forum. Just because you don't hear about it in forums, doesn't mean it doesn't exist at a higher level of knowledge. It's why you don't hear about algebra/calculus in discussion forums but it's important at a higher education level at jobs.

Why Is This Not 100% Fixed Industry Wide?
They are (mostly) fixed. As computers got faster, they had to gain more error correction. With tinier transistors, they are more fragile to interference so a lot of mitigations had to be added. But the mitigations are not perfect. The problem is that your neighbor may have a million-times worse interference than you do. It just may not have been strong enough for that neighbour's location. Also, manufacturers can't beta-test in a billion locations at the same time. See Location Specific below.

Interference is Sometimes Location Specific
A rural farmhouse running on a good quality Canadian hydroelectric dam, might have pretty clean electricity and no over-the-air interference. But an urban dwelling in a decripit-infrastructure country, living 10 meters from high voltage power transmission lines & next to a malfunctioning fridge motor & hundreds living near you with old appliances, you might have the misfortune of over one billion times more interference than the Canadian farmhouse bedroom computer. The fact is that not all companies are able to whac-a-mole all possible causes of interferences in all possible countries in all possible parts of the world. There's billions of places to live, and not two locations have identical interference patterns.

We Prioritize Latency Issues
There are many kinds of electrical issues that cause problems (e.g. computer crash). Other forums exist elsewhere on the Internet to cover this. Here, we're prioritizing issues that causes input latencies and such.

Never Assume Your Problem is EMI. And Remember to test OFFLINE
Most online latency is caused by Internet and game issues (even if you switch ISPs and VPNs). Post in the other latency forum first before posting in the EMI forum. Test your issues offline. If you're getting strange latency during only one part of the day because you're playing offline, then it becomes bigger odds that your latency issue is electricity-related. Time-of-day latency during offline play is sometimes caused by electrical interference by appliances that everybody uses nearby, and that can cause electricity to become noisy enough to begin latency issues (from error correction storms in various places) in your computer. Just because changing ISPs did not fix your issue, does not mean you should automatically assume your problem is EMI related.

Electrical Issues Are HARD To Troubleshoot
This stuff is well known to university degree holders (in electricity related) and NVIDIA circuit engineers but almost unknown in the hobbyist communities. This is a topic almost too advanced for Blur Busters Forums, but I have allowed this legitimate topic to exist. However, be warned this forum area will have.

Be Patient
Do not name call other people "crazy" or whatnot. The problem is that this forum is full of experienced (Ph.D/electrical) and inexperienced (speculation/guesses) and these collides into heated fights sometimes. Thus, this forum is somewhat more heavily moderated than usual, and posts may be deleted more often in this area, and threads may be closed more often in this area. To prevent this from happening to your thread, please read the forum rules.

Thank You!
click here to reply in EMI forum

UPDATE: The EMI forum was moved in March 2023 to a subtopic under "Offtopic Lounge". Too many people who want to post in that forum is registering for these forums solely for the EMI forum -- and this is not what Blur Busters Forums wants. Instead, we need more participants with university degrees to contribute to that forum.

TL;DR: Your latency problem is probably not electricity related, but it can still sometimes happen. Most newbies should not visit the EMI forum, as problems are often elsewhere.
Head of Blur Busters - BlurBusters.com | TestUFO.com | Follow @BlurBusters on Twitter

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Forum Rules wrote:  1. Rule #1: Be Nice. This is published forum rule #1. Even To Newbies & People You Disagree With!
  2. Please report rule violations If you see a post that violates forum rules, then report the post.
  3. ALWAYS respect indie testers here. See how indies are bootstrapping Blur Busters research!

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