Input lag or something else?

[Synnx90]

Hi, so I play a lot of Overwatch, and I have been dealing with this issue for over a year now and I have no idea what to do anymore or if I am just crazy, One day out of the month the game feels absolutely perfect, Crosshair is fast and snappy, shots are instant, It even feels like the sensitivity is much higher, I feel like I can actually see the enemies heads and shoot them, And it feels like I am hitting the shots I want to hit, but 99% of the days, The game is completely unplayable, It feels very slow, the shots feel delayed, Even just single shot firing at the floor I feel like there is a slight delay, I try to hit a shot and it just misses and feels like it just goes through their head / over their shoulder, Another thing I noticed was the sensitivity does feel slower / heavier and way less snappy than it does on those "perfect" days, The game also looks noticeably blurry, making it impossible to focus, and it feels more like I am just shooting in their general direction, rather than at them.

I play with a 300fps cap @ 240hz on the monitor, but I have tried 360hz too.

I thought it could be unstable voltages as it is an Asus board with a lot of auto settings, as it feels very different and inconsistent every time I play, maybe it was changing on a day by day basis, and I was randomly getting a stable one, I have no idea, It just feels like the frames are delayed/dragged out, higher latency, motion blur, not very snappy or responsive.

PC Hardware

13900k
Asus Z790-e
Corsair DDR5 7200mhz CL32
RTX3080ti
1000W PSU
Asus PG259QN

Things I have tried

Disabling ecores
Unparking cores
Disabling MCE and Intel Adaptive boost (makes mouse feel slower, don't like it much)
XMP 1, 2, and XMP Tweaked
Default Bios settings.
Some other bios settings, like LLC, VRM spread spectrum, AC/DC (no idea what any of those do though)
Different monitors
Windows 10+11 (I am using W11 right now because of 13900k)
Low latency mode on and off
Manyyy different "tweaks", with and without.

If anyone could give me some on advice on what I could try, I would be very grateful.

[TN_fun]

I have the same problem. I think it's the servers, the game are perfectly smooth and responsive, very rarely, usually with after patches and server restarts. Keep in mind, overwatch is not offline, not even a shooting range with bots on the server.
You can watch twitch, few people have the game working perfectly.

Gale adelade also knows about this problem and understands something in it, you can watch his stream and chat

[Synnx90]

I have the same problem. I think it's the servers, the game are perfectly smooth and responsive, very rarely, usually with after patches and server restarts. Keep in mind, overwatch is not offline, not even a shooting range with bots on the server.
You can watch twitch, few people have the game working perfectly.

Gale adelade also knows about this problem and understands something in it, you can watch his stream and chat

I tried playing after patch, and it was still the same, I did however install geforce experience, and my mouse feels a lot snappier, also game seems to be much more responsive / way less motion blur with the overlay turned on.

I have no idea why or at this point, if it actually is, but ill keep playing with the overlay on for a while and see how it is.

[imprecise]

Hi, so I play a lot of Overwatch, and I have been dealing with this issue for over a year now and I have no idea what to do anymore or if I am just crazy, One day out of the month the game feels absolutely perfect, Crosshair is fast and snappy, shots are instant, It even feels like the sensitivity is much higher, I feel like I can actually see the enemies heads and shoot them, And it feels like I am hitting the shots I want to hit, but 99% of the days, The game is completely unplayable, It feels very slow, the shots feel delayed, Even just single shot firing at the floor I feel like there is a slight delay, I try to hit a shot and it just misses and feels like it just goes through their head / over their shoulder, Another thing I noticed was the sensitivity does feel slower / heavier and way less snappy than it does on those "perfect" days, The game also looks noticeably blurry, making it impossible to focus, and it feels more like I am just shooting in their general direction, rather than at them.

This sounds like networking to me. Are you able to achieve the same results offline? If it feels responsive and crisp offline then laggy and delayed online then it's likely:

network device issue. First thing to do is clear any bad caches like dns, turn off all networking equipment and computer, then test again. If it remains, this can be fixed by updating drivers, optimizing advanced settings, and disabling power saving. In my case it also helped switching my NIC to legacy mode.

If the same feeling exists offline, it's likely:

background apps stealing real-time performance. DWM does this, and other apps are being designed to do this. Discord, Chrome, steamwebhelper, etc are set to above normal priority, and when they use CPU time it gets prioritized above Normal which can interfere with other data being processed in-order. Please see my Esports guide linked below to see how I configured Process Lasso to address this issue. The configuration for network is also in there.

[Synnx90]

Hi, so I play a lot of Overwatch, and I have been dealing with this issue for over a year now and I have no idea what to do anymore or if I am just crazy, One day out of the month the game feels absolutely perfect, Crosshair is fast and snappy, shots are instant, It even feels like the sensitivity is much higher, I feel like I can actually see the enemies heads and shoot them, And it feels like I am hitting the shots I want to hit, but 99% of the days, The game is completely unplayable, It feels very slow, the shots feel delayed, Even just single shot firing at the floor I feel like there is a slight delay, I try to hit a shot and it just misses and feels like it just goes through their head / over their shoulder, Another thing I noticed was the sensitivity does feel slower / heavier and way less snappy than it does on those "perfect" days, The game also looks noticeably blurry, making it impossible to focus, and it feels more like I am just shooting in their general direction, rather than at them.

This sounds like networking to me. Are you able to achieve the same results offline? If it feels responsive and crisp offline then laggy and delayed online then it's likely:

network device issue. First thing to do is clear any bad caches like dns, turn off all networking equipment and computer, then test again. If it remains, this can be fixed by updating drivers, optimizing advanced settings, and disabling power saving. In my case it also helped switching my NIC to legacy mode.

If the same feeling exists offline, it's likely:

background apps stealing real-time performance. DWM does this, and other apps are being designed to do this. Discord, Chrome, steamwebhelper, etc are set to above normal priority, and when they use CPU time it gets prioritized above Normal which can interfere with other data being processed in-order. Please see my Esports guide linked below to see how I configured Process Lasso to address this issue. The configuration for network is also in there.

I cant test offline because Overwatch doesn't have an offline mode, And I have used your guide a few times.

And the feeling of my mouse changes if:

I turn MCE off.
Intel Adaptive boost off.
240hz ingame, 240hz desktop (snappy and responsive)
240hz ingame, 360hz desktop (feels like its longer distance to 360, idk how to explain that)
low latency mode on
XMP1, 2, and Tweaked all have different feelings/responsiveness.

[Synnx90]

So I was just playing with more settings, I changed the maximum processor state in edit power plan from 100% to 70/80/90% and the mouse feels to be moving much better, gameplay also feels more responsive, but my clock speeds remain at 5.5ghz on pcores while gaming, ecores drops to 2ghz, If thats the case does anyone know why that might be? My PC isn't overheating, its only 45-55c with game open, I haven't tested it much and don't want to get my hopes up, but it does feel like a night and day difference, whether its better or not ill have to try and play for a few days.

[widow13]

So I was just playing with more settings, I changed the maximum processor state in edit power plan from 100% to 70/80/90% and the mouse feels to be moving much better, gameplay also feels more responsive, but my clock speeds remain at 5.5ghz on pcores while gaming, ecores drops to 2ghz, If thats the case does anyone know why that might be? My PC isn't overheating, its only 45-55c with game open, I haven't tested it much and don't want to get my hopes up, but it does feel like a night and day difference, whether its better or not ill have to try and play for a few days.

Going from high performance to balanced power plan has helped me a lot and game is more consistent and playable.
Sometimes It may work on high performance but balanced seems to be working a lot better.

[Synnx90]

So I was just playing with more settings, I changed the maximum processor state in edit power plan from 100% to 70/80/90% and the mouse feels to be moving much better, gameplay also feels more responsive, but my clock speeds remain at 5.5ghz on pcores while gaming, ecores drops to 2ghz, If thats the case does anyone know why that might be? My PC isn't overheating, its only 45-55c with game open, I haven't tested it much and don't want to get my hopes up, but it does feel like a night and day difference, whether its better or not ill have to try and play for a few days.

Going from high performance to balanced power plan has helped me a lot and game is more consistent and playable.
Sometimes It may work on high performance but balanced seems to be working a lot better.

Yes I knew about that, but im talking about reducing the max processor state from 100%, pcore clock speed remains 5.5ghz but it seems considerably better, again, I don't know if its placebo, but it feels like a night and day difference.

I was wondering if anyone knew why or have anything similar, cause I have been having issues with this 13900k since it released.

[JustNumber]

I have i9 13900kf and it is same. I am playing with XTU. Looks like under 5GHz feel less input lag and more stable fps. Last days i found out if i do stress test in XTU for nemory then i have Watt drops for cpu but other stress test no drops. I found out also 150watt and lower there is no watt drops. My theory for now is maybe one of the psu cables for cpu for motherboard are issue or memory issue.To be honest this cpu is garbage . I will return it anyway after 1 year.

[Synnx90]

I have i9 13900kf and it is same. I am playing with XTU. Looks like under 5GHz feel less input lag and more stable fps. Last days i found out if i do stress test in XTU for nemory then i have Watt drops for cpu but other stress test no drops. I found out also 150watt and lower there is no watt drops. My theory for now is maybe one of the psu cables for cpu for motherboard are issue or memory issue.To be honest this cpu is garbage . I will return it anyway after 1 year.

I don't know what my issue is but ive tried everything, I was thinking for a while it could be unstable voltages, but I have tried Asus MCE/Intel Adaptive Boost off and it felt much worse, I've also tried 6000 CL30 ram kit instead of 7200CL34.

However, I set maximum processor state yesterday to 99%, p core clock was still 5.5ghz on all cores, and the movement in game felt so responsive, and my shots were no longer delayed, its the first time I have been able to feel like I was "playing" the game for months, I'm just curious if anyone might know why that is, Because for months its felt so slow, my movement feels heavy, game feels out of sync, I die before I can even react, and shots obviously have a little delay.