Further CS2 Input Latency Testing 

The amount of hate fiction surrounding CS2 is astounding.

Watching this makes me realise why there were so few 3kliks videos about the cs2 beta and early release. So much work in testing a million different variables just for an update to release in the middle of testing meaning you have to start all over again. And then when all the testing is done it would only be relevant for a couple of days until it's outdated and worthless again. Makes total sense to wait until things started to settle down before doing testing like this

More Fluffykins in your vids please. She's a true gamer.

Have you tried testing if your ouija board will effect your mouse latency? My house is full of them and I think the seances are holding me down in competitive.

I do find it so fascinating how fast computers work.

something interesting is that in the rhythm game osu!, they have a newer version in development which has faster latency, and because of that people actually have issues playing it, because it feels off. it's too quick, too responsive, not what people are used to, and many people fall back on the issue of blaming it on extra latency, when it's actually the opposite. perhaps something similar is going on here

I've been playing CS2 since the big beta release just before it went live. I was playing when the shooting felt off, when the movement felt wrong, when the play models were broken, I even continued playing when people were randomly being vac banned, and I'm still playing it now. I don't think I'm that bad at the game either at rank 16k. I can happily say that cs2 has reached a point in which input latency is either not noticeable, or non existent and if people are still complaining about it are just doing so to find any reason as to why they couldn't hit a shot.

Having tearing appear only near the bottom of the monitor with G-Sync on and VSync off makes sense, as the fps limiter is *mostly* doing its job, and just sometimes letting frames get rendered slightly too early, i.e. just before the current frame scanout finishes. And the scanout always goes from top to bottom. Also, the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem doesn't apply here because the signal you are sampling, i.e. the pixel response of the monitor, is not a band-limited signal. For example, if you imagine a perfect monitor with instant pixel response times, and the image just changes between black and white on every frame, the result is a square wave, which is well-known to have infinite bandwidth. Intuitively: If you capture one sample where the pixel is perfectly black, and on the next sample it's perfectly white, there is no way for you to know at which exact instant between these two samples the change happened. And even if the theorem did apply, the result simply means that you can reconstruct the signal perfectly via interpolation, which is not being done here.

Optics/Electrical Engineering grad student here, glad you got to hear more about the Shannon-Nyquist theorem! Just a small nit-pick on your verbiage, the sampling theorem is still accurate, but because pixels don't update at the frequency of your refresh rate, the fundamental frequency you are trying to sample is larger. Hence, to obtain un-aliased measurements, you must sample at a frequency twice as fast as the frequency of the pixel updates to be able to fully measure how the monitor is displaying information. This is the essence of what you said, but the theorem doesn't have an issue, it just that the frequency components of the signal from the display updating exceed the monitor refresh rate because the monitor doesn't update globally. Sorry for being pedantic, just thought I would put a bit more precise language in a comment. I always love what you publish and admire the care you take to make accurate and informative content. No joke, your content has really inspired me with my academics because of how relevant the content I study is to the topics you discuss. It is very rewarding to see you apply concepts I see in textbooks, and you do it so well when (I assume) you are self teaching. You and your channel really are a gem Phillip. I can't thank you enough for the effort you take to analyze the technical aspects of gaming and how you clearly communicate this information to an nontechnical audience. Since your earliest mapping videos you have given so much to this community. Cheers!

Microwaves have decent enough isolation (seen this mesh in the window and wondered what it's for?) to not affect most cases, unless you're trying to study stars and get random sygnals out of nowhere and it turns out that someone was turning microwave on in the kitchen on the other side of the building at the same time sygnals were detected (true story)

Thank you for the work you do in researching and educating the fanbase. Even when parts of that fanbase are exasperating. Been watching your videos for years, even when taking a break from the game, and you've always been one of the best resources for information about CS.

4:38 battlenonsense is correct here, the tearing at the bottom happens because framelimiters don't always delay the next frame long enough to meet or exceed your monitors refresh duration. even fps limited you will still get some frames coming in more quickly than your monitor can refresh a single frame, leading to the shown tearing at the bottom. vsync is needed to ensure it doesn't happen, which would lead to that single frame that was produced more quickly being shown a tad bit later, effectively waiting for the monitor to finish refreshing the previous frame. this also causes some small latency penalty when it happens

your videos are so technical but I always learn something with them, I have maxxed out the performance of several PCs I've had over the years just watching your content... + the background music is so good I even bought your music kit for CS, it's soooo calming. Love from Chile❤ don't ever stop making videos

Your cat looks like a sad old man with mumps in his eyebrows. I love it

I've really found this video entertaining and informative. Well explained and I really like the data you provided, presentation is enjoyable. Thank you 🙋🏻‍♂️

im one of the five people that would appreciate an in depth video about vsync also, i find your research about latency and efficiency interesting. i'm about to grab a 4090 and 7800x3d myself so i might want to dabble in this stuff too.

I love the fact that your cat always looks mad.

The microwave thing is quite interesting, I could see how a microwave could interfere with a mouse that uses wifi/other signals that are 2.4GHz. But I think with modern enough microwaves that prevent leakage, along with newer wireless technologies have mitigated this issue.

lol'd at "electrical infetterence" nice reference

Great video as always, I just love the way you present things & talk.

I love and really appreciate your long videos

Fun test with the microwave, however it depends on microwave model, and the wireless connection method, I used to have one that when turned off would slice my wifi signal, noticeable when watching videos and it suddenly started buffering when the microwave was on. It was 100% replicatable every time, but only ever with that specific microwave, the one I owned before and after never had any issues. Could be down to poor shielding, frequencies from the induction, I dunno. All I know is that the commenter pointing out it may be an issue can be correct, but probably most the time you'll be fine.

Afaik the gsync+nvcp vsync+fps cap thing originates from the blurbusters. They reccommend it as their optimal settings and in their faq they explain why.

I'd love to see a video on the fast vsync topic! it's very unexplored and having someone like you properly test it would be great

I don't know how but your cat somehow looks both really happy and really sad at the same time. Still, absolutely adorable. Oh, and good video too. Very informative.

I love technical breakdowns like this but the cat really pushes it into holy knowledge territory.

You won't believe it, I accidentally enabled that option last night, and thought it was a visual bug on CS, and now you've uploaded a video and explain what that box is/was HAHAHAH that's actually crazy.

i fucking lost it when the microwave was suddenly chilling on your desk xdd

Thank you for featuring Fluffykins, it is much appreciated. I have not had a cat in a while so I enjoy seeing other's cats. Genuinely fills me with so much joy. Also, yeah, I was wondering if that box was tied to the game or just your system. Because, since it is just a box, it seems disconnected to everything else.

I really like your cat Philip! And microwave bit was hilarious.

Your cat is adorable 🥰 that ending shot especially lol Great vid!

I gotta say I love your mad scientist approach to figuring shit out.

I waited the entire video for the bit with the microwave and you did not disappoint

Gsync does require vsync to eliminate all causes of tearing. Vsync does something blurbusters dubbed frametime compensation. You can try slowmo recording your screen in CS2 while using +forward;+turnright and you'll probably still observe tearing in the lower third of your screen with gsync on while is vsync is off. That is also true for other variants of VRR.

Your cat is an absolute angel, I always love seeing them pop up.

I was one of the people who wrote that I use Gsync + Vsync + Frame cap (alternatively nvidia reflex). From my understanding Gsync by itself does not prevent tearing, it only syncs the refresh rate to the framerate. Tearing can still occur because of individual frametime variances. Vsync should introduce little to no latency when gsync is used and the framerate is below the monitor's refresh rate. I assume you've read the blurbusters gsync article, but if not, I recommend giving it a look. But I do have to say this whole debate about the optimal gsync setup is very confusing and seems that everyone says something different. That's why people often refer to the blurbusters article, because they are quite a trustworthy authority on this, at least compared to anecdotal evidence and random Reddit comments.

I can't believe Flip microwaved his cat

So happy to see Fluffykins in another video 😊

Hey Philip, I noticed you actually take criticism very seriously and often go back to clear up things for the wise old keyboard people that game with their microwave next to them. I really love your content and regular all of your kliky channels, just bare in mind that most people leave comments only when they hate/disagree with something or it doesn't follow their personal narrative. I usually don't leave positive comments but cheer up, there is a lot more people that love your style of videos and content but would likely never tell you that! I think it's a fair topic to discuss on a single klik video!

the latency testing with the microwave being next to the monitor was such a 3kliksphilip thing to do haha love it mate

Please include Fluffykins even MORE in your next videos. I freaking love cats.

current title: CS2 - Microwave Gaming? AND MORE!

THANK YOU. I have been struggling to play in cs2 and when I was watching this video I saw that you had less latency when you had Nvidia low latency mode off so I turned it off. Now I can finally play like before and Bunnyhop again. And I also noticed that I had less latency when I turned on the G-sync on my monitor and disabled it in Nvidia. AMD 5 2600 GTX 1060 6gb

The amount of effort put in testing this kind of stuff is simply astounding! Thank you! I think I caught a glimpse of a possible dell inspiron 7577 laptop in one of your videos, could it be possible if that is so, to ask you just how cs2 runs on it? Mine is pretty bad, on 720p with low everything I get mostly sub 60, around 47 or less fps and am wondering If maybe it is just my machine thermal throttling or something, since a 4 core 8 threads and a 6gb 1060 should I believe still offer a bit more performance in cs2 even though it is a 7 generation intel paired with a laptop 1060 maxq. With 32 of ram also. Maybe some else has the model and they see my comment and can reply with their experience. Anyway, thank you very much for the amazing content and for the lengths you go through to keep the community informed!

I believe it is the cat that negate the microwave interference with the mouse 😆😆

Came for microwave, stayed for cat

Thank you for answering my question!

Thank you for making videos.

great video once again

Love the content as always. Since it seems like you have a decent way of testing latency now, would you be interested in making a video on latency optimizations? Testing which work and which don't, etc.. Especially the ones in that one YT video titled "THE ONLY WINDOWS PC OPTIMIZATION GUIDE YOU WILL EVER NEED IN 2023".

Another great vid thanks philip :)

I see Fluffykins -> I click!

Enjoyed the music in this one

Cat in the end is gold 😂

very nice and constructive video Philip :3

your videos are so relaxing. i like to get stoned and listen to you talk about source engine. you and your cat are very cool, and i like cats. good video your delivery is so chill and when you go blah blah blah and leave mistakes in it makes it so human and you are a cool dude phillip. your content is nice to come back to because you are humbly just talkin about meaningless shit

lol, the microwave banter was great. I have had a hard time finding microwaves that interfere with any wireless communications in a hot minute, but I have had microwaves that fizzled my wifi long ago. Can't imagine there are any more produced too much nowadays since the majority of the world is online in some way.

4:36 - As far as I'm aware, that bottom of the screen tear it's there with G-Sync On and V-Sync Off (NV CPL), while with both G-Sync and V-Sync On, that bottom of the screen tear disappears, but adds to the latency.

Thanks for clarifying!

2 things that makes me think people might miss in latency is that internet speed/packets are set at a standard settings instead of peak like performance either in game or in windows. Also windows might overlap mutiple inputs in a single sub tick of the game, and cs2 averaging it out.

Thank you for testing the microwave latency, this is what we can to see!

Literally fell in love with this old cute cat. such a cute boy (:

Another good video sir!

i love the amount of Fluffykins in this video

I think the microwave test did not show any difference in your latency test results, because the LDAT is counting from when the click is received from the dongle. It's not counting the time the click takes to register between the receiver and the mouse, only whats between the receiver and the pc/game. As always love the content : )

this videois subtitles are quite funkyÖ like i am fascinated by how they happened

Hahaha! Microwave testing! Need more of it! XD Though the only case I can relate to that is when I turn on my electric heater, it actively reduces my phone wi-fi signal

this is the background music I prefer!

8:13 there is other theorem that states sampling any analog signal should be done 10x the frequency of that signal, so other way around should work too.. heck its even used in every sound card/setting (max hz that ppl hear is around 19-20khz, so thats why there is setting lets say in windows, that lets you select from 44k to 192k Hz sample rate, with higher the better quality)

I’ve heard that Reflex Boost runs your GPU at max clocks all the time to minimize latency, which would explain the higher power consumption.

"Infetterance" what a brilliant reference. Loved that!

Love the ending. 😂 Good stuff mr 3kliks!

I love your cat, they're so adorable.

iirc "Fast" vsync is analogous to the "VK_PRESENT_MODE_MAILBOX_KHR" setting available in Vulkan, it essentially works by maintaining more than one backbuffer and swapping the one last drawn to with the frontbuffer on vblank locally on the gpu (rather than halting the calling thread), this means that the game can write to images as fast as it can produce them and it (almost) never gets stalled by an ongoing swap, and the game's rendering code never needs to wait for a vblank, but the GPU can still ensure that images are not swapped in the middle of a vertical refresh cycle.

i was expecting this video to be about cs2 playable through an LED microwave

There is one question.. Monitor's pixels going from black (0,0,0) to full white(255,255,255) takes some time obviously. And that device that measures latency is added with this little latency too. Going from white to black is almost instant where monitor just have turn off those pixels. So i think black to white box have more latency than white to black box..

The cat is the true latency. They distract you with snuggles while you are trying to game. You should do a test to see how you do in a match without the kitty vs how you do with the kitty!

I just love the cat cameos haha

If you're cpu limited you could try disabling hyperthreading, making each thread faster, though halving your thread count.

Heyo king of the klik empire, awesome video as always but I do have this wish list request. Did you happen look at if running CS2 using Vulkan rather than DX11 makes any difference to your findings? i made this switch before the reflex fixes were done as it improved my perceived performance (yet placebo is one hellavofa drug). I'm mostly interested to see if im hindered myself at all doing this, i should note that im just running uncapped no reflex atm w/ a 3070ti + 6900HS laptop. It can be forced on windows using the -vulkan start up arg.

Classic 3kliksphilip move wearing a bath robe at all times.

I own the same microwave! I'm glad to see it's gaming certified!

Oh thats good, cut to the confused cat wondering why there is a microwave in his favorite place to annoy you

Cant wait for Macrowave gaming

Microwave testing answers questions we all had

Is the latency sensor sensitive enough to notice a disappearing digit in the ammo count? For example, you have 10 rounds then fire and it becomes 9 with the second digit disappearing. You could increase HUD scale and set the colour to white to help. Even if the Reflex test box is tied to the game, to me it introduces another layer of uncertainty. What if the game has a bug which delays input processing inside of the engine itself? How could any external tool capture that? I understand that Reflex is implemented in-engine via an API but that gives no assurance that the game receives and handles the input immediately. Given your cross-checking, it does appear to tie up for CS2. It might not for another title, or if a new bug is introduced.

Mr. Fluffykins appears to have a very long input (headpats) latency.

The Nyquist theorem is the minimum needed to reconstruct a sine wave. For anything else like e.g. a square wave you need a lot more as the frequency contents are higher.

Love the Operation Flashpoint Easter Egg ❤

Wireless mice can frequently be interrupted if you have a router close to the dongle that has a powerful wifi signal. I had that issue with my superlight because I plugged the usb receiver directly into my pc, which is close to a router. I was getting tracking that was skipping and getting interrupted. Plugging the usb receiver in to the lightspeed dongle and putting the dongle further away from the router fixed it. It's not even an unusual scenario. In some apartment buildings for example there will be dozens of routers of varying strengths all blasting into your apartment. You will often notice wifi being so unreliable in that scenario you are forced to use a network cable to get playable gameplay. That same interference will potentially lead to your wireless mouse having a similar issue as the completely verifiable one I mentioned.

great video fluffykins is hella weird tho, they look like a human trapped in a cat

Your cat is adorable

I will say that a *poorly shielded* microwave once disrupted my 2.4ghz wifi A LOT. Like knocked it offline every time. Switching to 5ghz seemed to help a lot, and replacing it with a properly functioning microwave made the problem disappear. But on the off chance someone has a malfunctioning microwave, it certainly could interfere with 2.4ghz wireless connectivity.

i love the arc caboosing is on, literal gaslighting

Excellent video! Could you please make a video about the few cases of auto overwatch banning people with high DPI? It is easily reproducible, and your attention/video might make valve notice.

As someone who uses microwave as a mousepad, I appreciate your last test a lot ty

quality cat, thanks.

Fluffykins? I love Fluffykins!

Im curious about the latency between the shot and the feedback of a kill. Sound cues of a headshot, killfeeds, visuals, etc both on and offline.

cool video, but now I need more of your cat in the next one too