Input delay, Hitreg, Desync - Where to fix them

[xVenom]

Edit - If you want help describe your problem clearly with proper context and your pc specs. If you wanna argue or want to make others feel hopeless please stay away.

I know a lot of you are struggling with your games right now. I've been there, and let me tell you straight up: it's fixable.

The problem is that when you don't really understand what's going wrong, every "fix" you try feels like a drop in the ocean. So before anything else, let's actually understand the problem and name it properly. It can come down to your hardware, your software, or your internet. But let me be clear about one thing: your electricity is not the reason. If it was, it would've been proven with real tests and real numbers by now. From my own experience of 4 years of struggle, research and helping my friends, the eletricity really isn't a problem.

Let's start with the glossary terms you need to describe what you're actually feeling in-game.

Input Delay (floaty aim, heavy mouse)
This is when your actions show up late on screen. People usually describe it as floaty aim or a heavy mouse. If this is your problem, your focus should be entirely on hardware and software settings. Nothing else.

Hitreg issues
Forget "i shot him" for a second and think about sprays and hip fires. You know how a lot of high-rank players get insane hitreg even while spraying or hip firing? That's not random or lucky. If your bullets pass through a character, the game should register a hit. If it doesn't, your game client isn't in sync with the game server. Why does that happen? Hardware and network. So that's where you look.

Interpolation buffer (that "behind the server" feeling)
This one is controlled by the game client, and developers built it in for one main reason: network jitter. You are never shown the exact live state of the game. There's always some delay between you and the server, and the client adds a buffer on top of that so enemy movement stays smooth even when packets arrive unevenly.

Quick example: on a 60Hz server, packets are sent roughly every 16.6ms. If your connection has jitter, the client bumps the buffer up by a tick or so, giving it enough room to interpolate enemy movement instead of stuttering.

This is a completely different headache, and honestly I've suffered with this one for a while. Good internet, good hitreg, and yet I'd still get lasered by people who were clearly bad. Guys I couldn't even react to, or who seemed to have inhuman reactions to my peeks. That feeling is this.

Desync
This is a really wide term that can mean any of the things above or all things combined. That's exactly why you have to fix it layer by layer instead of chasing one magic setting.

---

Where to actually look for fixes

Input Delay - Always hardware and software settings. It has nothing to do with your internet or your electricity. Sure, EMI can technically play a role, but that would be an extreme case, not the small heavy feeling most of us get. Focus on optimizing your hardware and software.
Areas to look at: DPC latency, interrupt latency, RTC/timer resolution, CPU clock speed, bad drivers, core affinity, and BIOS settings.

Hitreg - Network and hardware settings. Frametimes can cause hitreg issues too. Your internet can cause it, and your Windows network settings can play a role as well. So how do you measure it? Tools like iperf3 and hping let you test your UDP connection. With iperf3 you can send small UDP packets that mimic real game traffic almost exactly, which tells you a lot about what your connection is really doing.
Areas to look at: network quality, frametime, 1% lows, and network adapter settings.

Interpolation buffer - This is where most people suffer, because barely anyone actually knows what it is, and there's almost nothing written about it from the player's side. The causes are wide: network, hardware, or OS settings.
Areas to look at: packet pacing, network adapter driver and settings, and CPU/GPU frametime.

If you really want to understand little deep, go read about the PC latency pipeline (Nvidia has documentation on it, and Gamers Nexus made a good video too), and also look into how network packet pacing affect interpolation. I cant post links here yet.

Here's the big takeaway when it comes to gaming: the lowest latency isn't what matters most, consistency is. Whether it's your network packets or your frame times, steady and consistent pacing beats raw speed every time.

I'll be putting together a full optimization guide soon, once I have the time to write everything down properly in a GitHub repo or a single doc. In the meantime, if you really think your problem comes down to factors you can't control, like electricity, reply below and I'll try to prove otherwise by helping you optimize it in my free time. ( preferably someone who has already posted here in the past that had issue for long time).

Being a pro takes skill, no one's denying that. But not a lot of people want to admit that good internet and good hardware play a huge role in separating the top players from everyone else.

[dervu]

You forget one thing that many such people experience. If all those settings, hardware, network are wrong. How does this happen that you suddenly get one or more perfect days and then it's all coming back?
I could understand if it was ISP issue or smth, that network suddenly got less load, but if it's all improving at once, whether it's offline or offline symptoms, you can't explain it by software or hardware, when nothing has changed at all.

[crack]

Yes the problem is fixable, the worst part is finding the knowledge to fix it. I remember what it was like to not have this problem, it happened in spring 2019 and has been the same shit since then.

Out of all the hardware changes, unhealthy amount of software tweaking, only placebo or limited time improvements that diminished.

[Fpsgamer]

You forget one thing that many such people experience. If all those settings, hardware, network are wrong. How does this happen that you suddenly get one or more perfect days and then it's all coming back?
I could understand if it was ISP issue or smth, that network suddenly got less load, but if it's all improving at once, whether it's offline or offline symptoms, you can't explain it by software or hardware, when nothing has changed at all.

There are usually a lot of things that fix it in combination so you can't really tell a specific one, also it variates from system to system.
You might go and upgrade a part in the future and having to "optimize" again if the issue comes from driver or instability specific problems, also pcs with this kind of issue suffer more from bad drivers and instability, when a similar system wouldn't under the same conditions.

The hardest part is to tell if you are bad or have input lag at a game to be fair, people that are bronze-silver and blame it all on the input lag is kinda crazy. Rank might not matter as much when it comes to this, but it's not the thing holding you back.

[Slender]

I know a lot of you are struggling with your games right now. I've been there, and let me tell you straight up: it's fixable.

The problem is that when you don't really understand what's going wrong, every "fix" you try feels like a drop in the ocean. So before anything else, let's actually understand the problem and name it properly. It can come down to your hardware, your software, or your internet. But let me be clear about one thing: your electricity is not the reason. If it was, it would've been proven with real tests and real numbers by now. From my own experience of 4 years of struggle, research and helping my friends, the eletricity really isn't a problem.

Let's start with the glossary terms you need to describe what you're actually feeling in-game.

Input Delay (floaty aim, heavy mouse)
This is when your actions show up late on screen. People usually describe it as floaty aim or a heavy mouse. If this is your problem, your focus should be entirely on hardware and software settings. Nothing else.

Hitreg issues
Forget "i shot him" for a second and think about sprays and hip fires. You know how a lot of high-rank players get insane hitreg even while spraying or hip firing? That's not random or lucky. If your bullets pass through a character, the game should register a hit. If it doesn't, your game client isn't in sync with the game server. Why does that happen? Hardware and network. So that's where you look.

Interpolation buffer (that "behind the server" feeling)
This one is controlled by the game client, and developers built it in for one main reason: network jitter. You are never shown the exact live state of the game. There's always some delay between you and the server, and the client adds a buffer on top of that so enemy movement stays smooth even when packets arrive unevenly.

Quick example: on a 60Hz server, packets are sent roughly every 16.6ms. If your connection has jitter, the client bumps the buffer up by a tick or so, giving it enough room to interpolate enemy movement instead of stuttering.

This is a completely different headache, and honestly I've suffered with this one for a while. Good internet, good hitreg, and yet I'd still get lasered by people who were clearly bad. Guys I couldn't even react to, or who seemed to have inhuman reactions to my peeks. That feeling is this.

Desync
This is a really wide term that can mean any of the things above or all things combined. That's exactly why you have to fix it layer by layer instead of chasing one magic setting.

---

Where to actually look for fixes

Input Delay - Always hardware and software settings. It has nothing to do with your internet or your electricity. Sure, EMI can technically play a role, but that would be an extreme case, not the small heavy feeling most of us get. Focus on optimizing your hardware and software.
Areas to look at: DPC latency, interrupt latency, RTC/timer resolution, CPU clock speed, bad drivers, core affinity, and BIOS settings.

Hitreg - Network and hardware settings. Frametimes can cause hitreg issues too. Your internet can cause it, and your Windows network settings can play a role as well. So how do you measure it? Tools like iperf3 and hping let you test your UDP connection. With iperf3 you can send small UDP packets that mimic real game traffic almost exactly, which tells you a lot about what your connection is really doing.
Areas to look at: network quality, frametime, 1% lows, and network adapter settings.

Interpolation buffer - This is where most people suffer, because barely anyone actually knows what it is, and there's almost nothing written about it from the player's side. The causes are wide: network, hardware, or OS settings.
Areas to look at: packet pacing, network adapter driver and settings, and CPU/GPU frametime.

If you really want to understand little deep, go read about the PC latency pipeline (Nvidia has documentation on it, and Gamers Nexus made a good video too), and also look into how network packet pacing affect interpolation. I cant post links here yet.

Here's the big takeaway when it comes to gaming: the lowest latency isn't what matters most, consistency is. Whether it's your network packets or your frame times, steady and consistent pacing beats raw speed every time.

I'll be putting together a full optimization guide soon, once I have the time to write everything down properly in a GitHub repo or a single doc. In the meantime, if you really think your problem comes down to factors you can't control, like electricity, reply below and I'll try to prove otherwise by helping you optimize it in my free time. ( preferably someone who has already posted here in the past that had issue for long time).

Being a pro takes skill, no one's denying that. But not a lot of people want to admit that good internet and good hardware play a huge role in separating the top players from everyone else.

neuroslop

[xVenom]

You forget one thing that many such people experience. If all those settings, hardware, network are wrong. How does this happen that you suddenly get one or more perfect days and then it's all coming back?
I could understand if it was ISP issue or smth, that network suddenly got less load, but if it's all improving at once, whether it's offline or offline symptoms, you can't explain it by software or hardware, when nothing has changed at all.

Again you need to be specific on what problem you are talking about. When you are being too generic, it is hard to pinpoint. It is not that those settings, hardware, network are wrong but not optimised for your specific use and problem. Do you really think every pro had to navigate through all this ? definitely not.

[xVenom]

Yes the problem is fixable, the worst part is finding the knowledge to fix it. I remember what it was like to not have this problem, it happened in spring 2019 and has been the same shit since then.

Out of all the hardware changes, unhealthy amount of software tweaking, only placebo or limited time improvements that diminished.

Whats the problem you are facing? and whats your spec?

[ablemor]

Floaty mouse movement is caused by EMI or RFI, which is a proven fact, + I don't understand how this topic was created without a solution attached to it.

[vnb]

You forget one thing that many such people experience. If all those settings, hardware, network are wrong. How does this happen that you suddenly get one or more perfect days and then it's all coming back?
I could understand if it was ISP issue or smth, that network suddenly got less load, but if it's all improving at once, whether it's offline or offline symptoms, you can't explain it by software or hardware, when nothing has changed at all.

There are usually a lot of things that fix it in combination so you can't really tell a specific one, also it variates from system to system.
You might go and upgrade a part in the future and having to "optimize" again if the issue comes from driver or instability specific problems, also pcs with this kind of issue suffer more from bad drivers and instability, when a similar system wouldn't under the same conditions.

The hardest part is to tell if you are bad or have input lag at a game to be fair, people that are bronze-silver and blame it all on the input lag is kinda crazy. Rank might not matter as much when it comes to this, but it's not the thing holding you back.

best advice is to straight up ignore anything that comes from user "dervu".

He is the king of vagueposting.

[dervu]

You forget one thing that many such people experience. If all those settings, hardware, network are wrong. How does this happen that you suddenly get one or more perfect days and then it's all coming back?
I could understand if it was ISP issue or smth, that network suddenly got less load, but if it's all improving at once, whether it's offline or offline symptoms, you can't explain it by software or hardware, when nothing has changed at all.

There are usually a lot of things that fix it in combination so you can't really tell a specific one, also it variates from system to system.
You might go and upgrade a part in the future and having to "optimize" again if the issue comes from driver or instability specific problems, also pcs with this kind of issue suffer more from bad drivers and instability, when a similar system wouldn't under the same conditions.

The hardest part is to tell if you are bad or have input lag at a game to be fair, people that are bronze-silver and blame it all on the input lag is kinda crazy. Rank might not matter as much when it comes to this, but it's not the thing holding you back.

best advice is to straight up ignore anything that comes from user "dervu".

He is the king of vagueposting.

Hard not to be vague, when you can't provide a way to measure the issue.
Also where is this variety in systems where I had multiple that would still have same issues and then each one would work perfectly in another place?