CS2's Input Latency 

Love a good, chunky, "I casually got nvidia to send me a bunch of industry-grade latency testing devices" Phil video.

"The solution is usually easy but it's hard to figure out which easy solution is the correct one" describes literally every problem in computing

I'm not deaf, but i still appreciate you taking the time ti make subtitles on EVERY video.

As someone who has had to change the refresh rate on two friends' monitors because they never changed the setting i've got to say: spreading the word is important. CHECK YOUR MONITOR SETTINGS, PEOPLE

19:53 - in case anyone is confused about that, the trick is making sure your GPU isn't oversaturated at 100% usage, that's basically what reflex is doing. For example: - 131 fps, 99% GPU -- less responsive - 120 fps, 91% GPU -- more responsive That said, if your GPU is underutilized, then it's the other way around: the more fps, the better. - 131 fps, 57% GPU -- slightly more responsive - 120 fps, 51% GPU -- less responsive

Getting Nvidia itself to sponsor you and send you testing hardware definitely feels like a badge of honor that you've earned after all these years of creating my favorite tech and gaming related videos across all of your channels. Congrats!

11:34 3KP: You probably set this to the highest and think it's the best... Gamers: Oh no 😳 3KP: ... And you're right. Gamers: Sigh of relief

Thumbs up for the K'nex bolt build striking the mouse, well done Philip.

Unbelievable how professional this video is, even compared to your normal ones.

the liquid crystals (from LCD) in the display are actuated electromagnetically, overdrive just overvolts these tiny electromagnets in the hopes that it accelerates the crystals faster. but as the electromagnets don't actively slow the crystals down for their new position, they can overshoot and then bounce back a bit

This is actually the best video i've seen at explaining all the different components that go into rendering an image and what each of the options you can add on to that process do. awesome work!

I have been searching for a video like this all week. I have been using my 240fps camera to test different setups. Thanks for the video. I learned a lot.

Great work mr philip, there's not many resources out there that go this in depth on latency. I'm sure this video will be a lot of use to people over the years

This is a ridiculously impressive research project. Great work Philip!

Awesome and meticulously researched. Very impressive video!

I'm glad you got an Ldat , and you have it the 3Kliks treatment , logical , informative and entertaining. Thank you for all your work 🙏

really interesting to see all these factors measured.

Now this is truly in depth... Amazing video

I like how in depth you go with your videos.

amazing video philip! Awesome to see the LDAT in action, its a super sweet piece of tech.

Well done Philip. This is the most comprehensive video on input latency I've ever seen. You do brilliant work with your platform in the CS community. Cheers 🍺

Thank you, mr Philip! I was waiting for such a test. :)

Leave it to you to make going through all of these settings extremely interesting and helpful...bravo and thank you!

Love seeing Philips analysis leap to a new level. Hoping now he's got these cool tools we'll be seeing further deep dives into the topic!!

finally a video that actually explains what an ldac is instead of assuming the viewer knows all about it and it's history of an obscure device they'll never see

I love this video! You totally nailed what's been bugging me since I ditched my old CRT for a crappy LCD. Had no clue about input latency, and here I was, wondering why everything felt off. Thanks for clearing that up, seriously I feel enlightened now

THAT BLACK REFLEX SQUARE!!! I used to have it on HDR games and thought my PC was broken/weird for it because I had no idea what it was

You never cease to amaze me Philip. This is actual insanity. I can't believe you went through all of that for this game. I love this community !

Awesome video! One thing I wanna note, all of these different things add up really quick, to the point where your latency could be 4-6ms faster then if you didn’t fine tune everything. That doesn’t sound like alot but you definitely can notice the difference. That paired with making sure your cpu and gpu aren’t at a super high usage in order to make sure you have the most consistent frames with the highest 1% lows, is the most important thing you can do for your setup. The highest framerate ≠ the best and smoothest experience. Frame caps are very important, finding the middle ground between latency and fps is the hardest part. My rule of thumb is to make sure your gpu and cpu arent over 85% usage, because past that it starts affecting the consistency of your frames. Cap your fps to something you can constantly obtain within that 85%. Higher 1% lows = less microstuttering and buttery smooth gameplay. There is also a GAINT rabbit hole of tweaks and different things you can change on your pc in order to lower latency, some of it is not good so always be careful and do your research before listening to what some random person online says

u know its gonna be a good phillip video when theres a Fluffykins sighting in the first minute

Loved the vid. Of everyone I'm subbed to, a big substantial vid like this from Phil gets me more excited than most channels

Nice content i was looking for it, found it and get even more... thanks

Hey Philip! Always love these videos! I'd really like to see some testing with Gsync's intended use with vsync on + a capped framerate! I remember reading blur busters' articles testing gsync both with and without vsync on. They basically came to the conclusion that frametimes were more consistent with it turned ON and the framerate capped. Would like to see some additional testing to backup you saying in this video that you should always turn vsync off

I cant believe he uploaded a 30 minute video!! I’m so excited

Amazing video, I was curious about these questions and your video answered them.

Another fantastic video mate. Interesting, informative, educational. Cheers!

Hi Phillip, Reflex+GSYNC+VSYNC is theoretically supposed to limit your framerate to a percentage below your refresh rate. I believe that's why your vsync+gsync testing showed 58fps and such a reduction in latency! However I have noticed this feature does not kick in with 100% consistency. Maybe something to look into a little further? Great video!

I swear this is your coolest video yet. I'm so glad Nvidia sponsored you and gave you all this equipment

This is an AWESOME rabbit hole, thanks Philip.

This video saved my sanity. I have had the black reflex testing box on my screen for months. No idea where it came from or how to fix it. I scoured the internet with the most common response being a dying monitor or various other issues, whose solutions did not solve my problem. IT HAS BEEN MONTHS!!! I quite literally debated clicking this video. I'm not concerned with my input lag in CS2 as I don't notice a problem..........If I hadn't, I would still be playing with that little black box that flashes every time you click. Thank you for giving my sanity back

Right on time. thank you

I feel like the title shouldn't be limited to CS2. Anyone searching for videos on input latency would learn so much from this, but they might not click the video if they think it only applies to CS.

Wow. I've been a regular binge watch viewer of your channels but this video might be one of your top 10 masterpieces. The way you stated that this company is the best with pronunciation of the exact word while stating your personal opinion about advertise - the very thing you are doing right there - was just word artistry. And then the level you invest into testing and research! This has at least the potential for a standalone Paper journal contributed, if not even a whole PhD thesis in computer science. I think I have never seen somebody so seemingly unintentionally achieving such an academic level of depth while doing something so obviously entertaining for oneself at the same time.

Another great vid philip! Learned a lot of things that I didn't know before, I'm definitely one of the people who has to change their settings now lol. Thank you!

Just to make it clear, you want to enable vsync when you use gsync to get completely rid of tearing. When you have vsync and gsync on, it acts differently than regular vsync. But you need to cap your framerate slightly below your refresh rate, or use nvidia reflex which does it for you. If you don't cap your framerate, it'll hit your refresh rate and default to regular vsync which introduces a lot of latency.

When I recorded my 240hz monitor with a 240 fps cam and tested different overdrive settings the main difference between them was that at lower overdrive levels a new frame often looked transparent. The white object that I used for testing was often grey the first frame it was visible and turned white in the next frame. With the highest overdrive level this still happened sometimes but a lot less often. I'd assume that the transition from black to grey is already enough to trigger the LDAT.

Amazing!!! One of the best videos youve done m8

Fantastic video! Whenever you say conclusion for your summary in these videos I always am reminded about how my English teacher teachers hated that :)

13:20 As a side note: when using gyro input and flick stick for playstation 4 controllers on steam input, be sure to use a wired cable. When I tried wireless, the input lag was extremely noticable due to bluetooth delay, or at least to me. If you want an idea for a continuation for this video, I think it'd be interesting to see how controllers stack up to keyboard/mouse.

Extremely detailed explanation, thanks! I'm wondering how much of a factor a keyboards input lag would be in CS. Counter strafing is very important in this game, and standard mechanical keyboards have a debounce delay of around 5ms. Keyboards with optical and analog switches don't have that 'problem'. Could be an idea for a follow up video.

I appreciate the video, a lot of valuable information compacted into one video.

Damn this is ome of the real quality sponsored videos out there Thank you philip!

test gpu scale vs display, please

3kliks is one of the most valuable resources to the general gaming community, he answers questions I don't even know I want the answer to (not this one obviously lol, but I mainly mean his other videos)

Really fantastic video, one of your best for sure.

Man I just love these videos bro. Missed you

Sometimes, I think that my input latency in CS2 genuinely reaches 400 ms- it always happens shortly after a lagspike before going down again, and it's not very frequent, but it's really annoying, especially since I never had that problem in Global Offensive.

Dude how long were you testign for? This video is incredibly valuable, good job man. I cant really verify the results myself but this is amazing

Please make a part two on the topic of network latency while taking into consideration everything already mentioned here!

As someone who watches videos with subtitles on, I thank you.

I think the only thing that wasn't answered by this video was how the latency compares between GO and CS2, other than that, this video is incredibly well done! I'd be curious how the measure up with the tools you now have to measure such things!

V-Sync can be useful (it gets rid of tearing occurring at the lower part of the monitor) without adding any additional latency when used with G-Sync and capping the frame rate below the refresh rate of your monitor, please correct this misinformation I am of the constant slander towards V-Sync by people who don't know how to use it.

exceptionally good work

Great and valuable resource, thank you for this

Hey philip, I had a question after watching the video and wanted to ask you as you stated "if you have stupid questions, do ask". Since the Operating System (and the USB SW which I assume mean drivers) is part of the latency chart, I wonder if different operating systems would have resulted on different results. What do you think? Will it be a noticable latency change or barely noticable?

I was really expecting a latency comparison between CS2 and CSGO. Also as a man silly enough to daily drive a 4090 and 13900k as well, I was expecting to see which CS2/PC settings offer the absolute lowest input latency on that specific setup. Great video nonetheless!

That measuring device is so cool. Every computer should come with one!

This is the science we've been looking for. Many thanks

FYI, if you're using GSync or FreeSync and you're given the option of VSync, always keep it on. You were never supposed to be given that option in the first place.

Philip, I would love to see the "Going Low" series in CS2, like you did in CS:GO again after 10 years. It was such a good series, I would love to see it again.

Excellent video! Thank you very much for this video.

My goodness, I can already tell I need to rewatch this video.

Can you use the LDAT on a CRT monitor? I have a fairly nice Philips CRT that I can run at 1920x1440 at 85Hz. It feels so buttery smooth because there isn't the sample-and-hold method used on digital monitors. I don't know if that means there is less "real" latency but I'd love to see someone do a proper CRT test with an LDAT. A Trinitron-based CRT would be the best to use for a test.

There are various stripped-down windows 10/11 versions. A test of them with a comparison of input latency and fps would be pretty cool

Really interesting, thanks for the hard work.

another great vid, keep it up man

wow I love Phillip he is awesome and his music is great and his history in life is just fantastic. I am no bot, no no.

If you have a G-sync monitor turn V-Sync ON and enable Nvidia Reflex. It will automatically cap your FPS just below your monitors max refresh rate. This eliminates tearing and has other benefits.

great video as always phil

ultimate tester of cs2 ❤ thank you philip

Testing for muzzleflash vs a flashing box is going to be slower because the game engine must register the fire input, pass it through game logic, generate the appropriate animation, particles, sounds, client-side predicted hitscan, and rendering of all of these things before you see it on the screen. One is specific to the game itself, the other is purely system latency before whatever a game adds on top. Some games end up buffering 2-3 frames, or have other situations going on like using a message/event system to pass input and game logic events around (i.e. input message is entered into the queue one frame, the next frame the game logic processes it and issues more events to generate animation/particles/sounds which only start the frame after, and might not even be visible until another frame after that) which at 100FPS is automatically ~30ms on top of system latency. Each game is going to be different depending on what the developers cared about. The original PC release of Halo: Combat Evolved was the worst thing I'd seen before or since. It had a good solid 200+ milliseconds of input latency in spite of running at a decent framerate, and coming from playing id Software FPS games for a decade (at the time) and playng Halo:CE with a mouse meant YUCK!

Question: Could the very low imput latency of CS2 be the result of the subtick system?

really great video, it explained a lot of stuff about latency, would be curious how much the upscaling affect the latency in this case

Can we get a comparison between CSGO and CS2 latency? Like stats with uncapped and capped? Would be really interesting to see if cs2 has actually higher input latency in the engine or can the perception of more lag come just from the lower fps.

Nah, This is IMPOSSIBLE. I just like minutes ago went to your channels wondering where u were or you took a small vacation for Valve to update the game.

i don’t play CS anymore, but I loved this video. super interesting. Nice job

As a game dev and hardcore cs2 player , I cannot stress the value of the video: great job !

18:14 There actually is one scenario where (double-buffer) vsync can be used with the express purpose of minimizing input lag, and that is when it is paired with variable refresh rate modes (freesync/gsync.) Battle(non)sense covered this in detail in his videos. However you also must cap your frame rate to slightly below your maximum refresh rate in this scenario. If you prefer to play at an unlimited frame rate, then instead you avoid vsync and free/gsync and instead use nvidia ultra low latency or AMD anti-lag to keep the input lag down.

comment for algorithm, love your vids 3klikls, I could never go such in dept in any of these topics so having it available in a video is invaluable. thanks.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS VIDEO MATE

The weapon sway probably also adds to the illusion of increased latency, I remember turning it off in css for it to feel/look more responsive

You can enable V-Sync to avoid tearing without a latency penalty if your game + hardware + screen combination supports both G-Sync and NVIDIA Reflex (and you enable all three) Source: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Gub1bI12ODY.html

Thanks for the vid. Really informative and helpful. edit: + u saved me hours of search.

Seeing those clips of 1999 Unreal Tournament at the end sent me straight back to high school....

Always wonder about 'power management mode' on nvidia control panel. Yes it won't be big difference when it comes to FPS, but how about latency *by maintaining gpu clock speed in CPU bound scenario? Will 'prefer maximum performance'+ just reflex be same as reflex + boost?

Phillip after testing input latency using specialized expensive hardware and very complicated software techniques: CS2 is fine and its impossible for humans to notice input latency as long as your pc itself is build correctly, meaning there's nothing you can do to make your latency better or worse. Random CS pro after doing zero tests and basing his entire knowledge on random reddit posts: Yeah CS2 is broken guys it takes 1000 years to shoot idk bad gamve valve pls fix.

honestly amazing vid, up to the level to that of million subs youtubers

YESS an LDAT, maaan would I love to have one of those, such a cool piece of tech to have around

You forgot a mention for Reflex, Reflex is also acting as a FPS limiter, to prevent the card using too much of the BUS or the graphic card itself, because a maxed BUS or GPU cores increase drasticaly the inputlag, Reflex is preventing that and is keeping the GPU and BUS usage in line to not bottleneck the card, Battlenonsens made a pretty good analysis of this and how FPS cap, Reflex, GSYNC settings alone or mixed reduce or not the inputlag, even just limiting the FPS from 10-20% away from your max FPS reduce the inputlag massively, even on high end hardware. Also, IIRC, VSync SHOULD BE ON on the Nvidia control panel when using GSYNC (NOT IN THE INGAME SETTINGS).

Meanwhile AMD users got banned for using AMD's attempts at reflex, because it triggered VAC.