Everyone knows that adding latency to your gaming experience is bad, but
[music] exactly how much latency is too much latency? At what point can you
legitimately blame the lag for being hard stuck at copper seven? To find out,
we've assembled a cracked team of four certified gamers that range in skill
level from absolute hack all the way to
god like. And we're going to tell you exactly how
much input latency it takes to measurably affect your KD ratio.
And all of this is possible thanks to ASUS who sponsored this video. We'll be
using their ROG gaming peripherals including their new [music] 27-in tandem
OLED monitor that can switch between 720p 720 Hz and 1440p 540 Hz using just
a hot key. And it can do all of that without relying on display stream
compression. But enough ado, let's
ado this. Every test subject will use one of the
three identical setups behind me. They use the same high-performance ASUS PCs,
the same low-latency gaming peripherals, and the same silky-smooth mousing
surfaces courtesy of these desk pads from lttstore.com. The real star of the
show today though is these black boxes.
Inside each one of these is an Arduino Leonardo that connects to this USB hub.
This setup allows us to add latency in 1 ms increments from 0 to 100 ms which I
remind you is 1/10 of a second.
That would be terrible. Or would it?
Each participant will complete three sets of tests while David here secretly
changes their latency in between and then benchmarks their gaming performance
using Aim Labs. It's important to note that we tested our base system latency
at about 12 and a quarter milliseconds which we will be adding to whatever we
have on our box which will give us our theoretical click to photon latency. We
did consider adding latency to different parts in the chain, but in our
preliminary testing we found that it didn't have a major impact and so we
decided to keep it in one spot to keep it simple and consistent. But enough
with the boring facts, let's game.
I'm a 30-year-old unk at this point.
I I go by baby no money.
>> [laughter] >> And I make music and I play video games
occasionally joke. My gaming ability out of 10, I used to be pretty good, but now
I'm garbage cuz all these these 12 12-year-old kids are just insane. I
don't really play much like competitive gaming anymore cuz it's just unhealthy.
Lock in, bro. Baby no accuracy.
>> 45, come on now. Did I have any latency
or no? No no no no no. WOAH. WOAH.
THAT'S WHERE YOU'RE MESSING WITH THE VARIABLES. >> WOAH. OH, MAN. Oh my god, I'm sweating.
Literally [music] dripping in sweat. Brother, he hit 50k.
High score. Wait, hold on. Wait, you're actually talking. Wait wait yo, crazy?
All right, this next one's going to be a doozy. Oh, this one this next one wraps
wraps the whole thing up. This is straight torture. It looks so easy when
you watch someone else do it and you're just like bro, just point at the thing.
Oh, that's >> We've reached new depths. Wow, bro.
>> New lows. It's got some tips. No, there's tips for you. There's tips.
There's tips. Keep it up. >> [laughter]
>> Yeah, and there's another tip on the bottom saying like yeah, we're getting weird latency issues.
>> [laughter] >> That was better. Hey, look at that. It's
suggesting you become a pro. Is that your arm hurting now? Oh, yeah.
It's getting real now. All right, what if I what if I lock in
like this? Okay. I'll share the screen. Less less input
delay closer, bro. Yeah, yeah. Oh oh, locked in position. I really
don't think this is going to help. All right, more. Definitely had latency
there, too. Okay. Okay, pro perspective though. Is this actually useful? This is
useful maybe 20% of the time in my
opinion. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
11 Oh, wait. The counting is off. Wait wait
wait wait, crazy crazy? Okay, over flicks under flicks perfect flicks.
I just want to be an okay flick. Now, there's too many unders. Yeah, there's a
lot of under. What does that mean? That means I'm shooting lower, right? >> tracking it, but you're shooting it
basically way too behind it. Yeah, good job. Good job.
Solid. Solid. Sorry sorry.
My name is Leon Kim also known as Kanata. I'm a professional Fortnite
player for Dignitas. I think I'm really good at gaming and like I can go like
basically go to any game and be good at it. [music] I think I'm like 8.5 OUT OF
10. >> [screaming]
>> I THINK YOU'RE UNDERSELLING YOURSELF. >> [laughter]
>> WHENEVER you are ready, go for it. [music] All right, bet. I'm starting.
Oh, he's going for a base score. This one's lucky easy.
His movements are so much more precise than mine. This guy's lucky messing with
the input delay over here. You can't really tell on this one though cuz this one's just easy. Like I could be on like
20 Hz type of thing and it'll be fine.
It's not that it's not that hard. It's too easy over here. Okay, this one
is crazy. This one like you're moving and you're not even moving.
Like I want to move, but it's like it's like I'm dragging through mud [music] type of movement.
It's like someone's holding my legs back in a race. Damn, dude.
How my reaction time go up? All right, next task. Oh yeah, this one
is bad. Yeah. Okay, that was terrible. Oh my god, that
was terrible. Tenses up your forearms too much. Last time I did it. Oh my god.
Oh, that's terrible. >> really bad. Like the pixels aren't even
working. >> [laughter] >> No, it's over. It's over. No, that one
that one was impossible. They were all the input delays actually it's actually
just affecting the whole thing. Okay, this one feeling good.
Okay. That one felt better. That one felt a lot better.
All right, last one. Damn, your arm actually does like tense
up, bro. Like it it it actually like messes you up.
How long is this thing? Okay. Damn, you're so close to 67%.
>> Oh my god, I hit 67. Oh no, you were. 67.
You guys are too old for this, man. >> [laughter] >> Okay, this one was cocked this one's
cocked. This one's cocked. This one's cocked. This one's cocked. Oh my god,
it's really bad.
>> [music]
>> As many of you will know, I'm Linus from Linus Tech Tips. Love technology, love
gaming. Not really as good at gaming as I am at
tech. I'm confident that I will be able to try my best. Lock in, bro.
Bro, I don't feel it. Oh, that one looks bad. >> to begin. Okay, you're not supposed to
influence the test. >> [laughter]
>> Okay. Pretty good. So theoretically, the more latency that
you add, the reaction time should just naturally go up. Well, here's the thing.
We're not adding so much latency that your human reaction time and movement is
likely to be a major factor. The latency we're adding is more likely to make it
so that you will overshoot things and you're not as It's like you're not
as connected to the machine. Are the routes the exact same? No. No,
it's they're randomly generated. >> Okay, yeah. How many other variables do
you guys have? No, no. Don't worry about that. >> [laughter]
>> Next task. Okay.
Pretty good. >> [laughter]
>> Hey, man. I'm trying to be positive reinforcement here.
>> [music]
>> So my name's Typical Gamer and I've been live streaming and making videos since
2009. So I'd rate my gaming ability out of 10
for Fortnite, I would put it at like a 8.5. I feel like there's got to be Yeah,
there's latency on this one already. [music] They pre-fired it. Yeah.
Don't even don't think about that though. Just do your best every time. >> Yeah, come on Typical, bro.
Oh, I'm still good. I'm still good. I'm still good.
Wait, hold on. Oh yeah, you're Oh, CHILL OUT.
56
UNK'S GOT IT. UNK'S GOT IT. UNK'S literally got it.
Oh my Oh, what is this? Oh, this is maximum delay.
That was you, though. Holy. That was so bad. All right, last one.
I'm bricked up right now. What?
What? That is a Fortnite term, though.
Bricked up? >> Bricked up? Yeah, it's when you [music] have max brick. No.
>> I don't know about that one, dude. >> Yo, can you can you give me your brick? I've never heard that one [laughter]
before.
>> [music] >> We have enough data at this point, but
one thing we thought would be kind of interesting would be to go head-to-head
and find out just how much latency it takes for
one of our more typical gamers to beat one of well, typical gamer, but also
like the better gamers. >> [clears throat] >> Are you interested to know?
Let's do it. I'm like actually I'm talking I know you're talking about
awareness. No, I mean you guys Leave a comment below if you want.
>> [laughter] >> All right, ready? Let's go. Come on, match starting. I'm locking Linus.
>> [laughter] >> All right, 3 2 1 peek. No. You saw him
on the left. I'm not going to. I don't want it. Move this way then. I could
stay alive. Go this way. Okay. Look down. I could be alive man.
I could be alive man. All right, 3 2 1 peek. No, I don't want it. You should
peek. I think it's a really good time to be Just peek.
>> [groaning] >> Wow, that was disgusting.
>> [laughter] >> Oh, okay. They they have nerfed me. I
will say. I TOLD YOU BRO.
I TOLD YOU. IT'S OBVIOUS. ALWAYS right side. It's
obvious, man. >> [laughter] >> Obvious right side right there. Okay,
this is Okay, now it feels a little wavy.
Oh, okay Linus. He was locked in on that. It feels like
I'm like it's like a pendulum when I'm swinging.
Oh, eyes. Oh my. Awareness. It's a negative awareness, man. Now Did you
just call me negative awareness? That was negative awareness right there. What
kind of a thing to say is that? We are now at 75 ms.
OH MY >> [laughter] >> WOW. THAT'S A TOUGH GO.
All right, let's go, bro. >> Let's swap. >> Are we swapping? All right, we're swapping.
GG GG good game. GG.
Dude, this is probably the dopest lab I've ever been a part of.
Oh my, what the
Bro, why is Kenna actually nasty? Yeah, this is actually nasty, dude. You got to
find awareness on it. You saw that, right? You saw that shot? Yeah, but
that's that's just being better at it. That had nothing to do with awareness.
He knew where you were just as much as you knew where he was. You just are way
faster. All right, don't play with the same angle too much. You're doing great.
Okay, you need awareness. You guys are the worst coaches ever. He's never going
to peek it twice, all right? Unless right now. Then he's aware that I said that.
Oh, I had that. Dude, I had that.
>> [laughter] >> Like maybe like Okay, he's so sweaty,
bro. >> [laughter] >> He's actually not. He's actually not.
Now's maybe a good time to talk about the monitor. Tandem OLED that gives you
boosted brightness as well as better longevity according to ASUS. They've got
their true black glossy coating so you get that gorgeous OLED contrast and it
looks almost as good from the back. Oh, you Got transparent accents, RGB,
absolutely flipping gorgeous. It is gorgeous.
Oh, and don't forget that it has ROG OLED Care Pro which includes the Neo
Proximity Sensor which means the display will turn off when you step away and
back on when you step back to games. Okay, we're at 50 ms. 50 ms. No way.
Peek, bro. Peek that? Yeah, peek. Should I peek it? Peek it. You think so? Yeah, do it.
All right, 3 2 1.
>> [laughter]
>> NO. >> [screaming]
>> HOW'S THAT AWARENESS? AWARENESS, COACH. Maybe no chill. Yeah, you got clapped,
bro.
No, no, no, we're good. Yeah, give me some latency, bro.
Put it in the hands of God there for a second. I saw that.
Prayed it went the right way. Oh, I had that. I swear I swear you you hit him
through the wall like twice. Yeah, I know.
See that? See how I just did that? You think I would peek this thing?
LET'S GO. SIT ON. I JUST [laughter] SAT THERE. I SHOULD
HAVE JUST LET'S GO, DUDE. He's losing confidence.
Losing confidence, losing confidence, no awareness? Yeah, ego challenge. Ego
challenge. Every opportunity.
Oh. How much has he got now, David? 75. Give me like 100, bro. Oh, it's over.
Give me like 120 and that's it. >> It's over. You won. It's over.
A lot more analysis is going to be needed for the Aim Lab stuff, but what is clear from the 1v1 is whether you
call it awareness, whether you call it experience,
if you're not good at the game, >> [music] >> no amount of latency advantage is going
to make you good at the game compared to someone who's got it. It was a great
time. Um yeah, I mean it was a What day is today?
Wednesday? I think so. It's a good day to be a Wednesday.
It was a lot of fun. Yeah, I had a great time. That was pretty fun. I actually had a good time playing that Aim Lab
with the different latency. Like >> [music] >> I can see why it affects gaming heavily.
That was rough. Like I know that I'm average,
but standing next to someone who's not average just makes it so much more
apparent. >> [laughter] >> What surprised you the most about today?
That this is your guys' job. It's really sick. Yeah. [laughter]
Like the ability to basically just do science with the bros.
>> [laughter] >> It's sick.
So, how'd it go? Initial testing, it was super clear right away that input
latency has a big impact on gaming performance. At just 10 ms, we were
seeing almost a 7% drop and by 50 ms,
over 25% drop in scores on average.
Really, that is surprising to me because
as one of the test subjects, I would say that at just a small amount of input
latency, I didn't feel it. It didn't bother me.
For me, there was very much a threshold, but you're saying that across our four
subjects, even a little bit clearly matters. Yes, even before you can feel
it which everyone sort of made comments at about 35 to 50 ms about you can cuz
it's so yeah, jiggly. [music] Even before then, it's a pretty clear line
down. And then what I also found interesting was that each task had a
different difference from the input latency. The biggest difference was the
The second king one. Everyone had a very clear decline across all skill sets. The
third one was a pretty similar linear. And the thing I found really interesting
about the first test is that its secondary measurement was just reaction
time and I assumed that the more input latency I added would linearly add to
the reaction time score, but it seemed like it kind of compounds. When you
added like 50, it would increase by 100 ms. So there's kind of like a
compounding effect in the tracking aim click. But one thing that I realized was
that 10 to 50 ms [music] was not granular enough. I chose those
metrics because when I was testing, that's when I could start to feel it. So
I was like, oh, that's going to be, you know, the the thing. So that's what you were doing the second time.
>> We did a second round of testing with 3 ms increments. Surely you're not going
to be able to tell a difference from like 3 to 6 ms.
The first round of this ad hoc testing was really interesting where there is a
clear pattern down to about
7 8 9% at the 9 ms range, but there was
a weird jump at 6 ms performance where at 6 ms of added input latency,
the average performance was higher than zero which made zero sense. Not
logically, not intuitively, but I wasn't really satisfied with that so I tested
another like 14 15 people. Oh. >> Those results were
weirder. And so it goes down at 3 ms, up a little
bit again at 6 ms and then down to almost the same at 9. So 9 and 3 are
almost identical. So I started to wonder, does [music] it not matter below 10 ms?
But then I separated top performers from bottom
performers. Oh. [music] And in the top performers, it's a super
clear line. Like undeniably just 3% each
added 3 ms. >> So if you're any good,
then functionally speaking, there is no limit to how low you want your latency
to be. [music] >> Yeah, we could try to get a system that would get us
less than the 12 and a half that we were testing with, but it's not a realistic
scenario in any game. >> gamers though, that [music] could potentially make a difference. See, I
was not expecting this. Me neither. I was hoping that this video would
>> [music] >> tell people that it's really your gaming skill that's the problem. Like your
peripherals are fine, but what I found out is that >> is Wait, and that is true to a degree. I
mean you saw how much latency we had to add to
either Kenna or typical gamer, right?
For me to have any shot of hitting them. But
if you have the game sensor What did What [music] did Kenna call it? Uh
awareness. You got to find awareness on it. You saw that, right? You saw that
shot? Awareness. It's a negative awareness, man. Then there is no limit
functionally that we found. >> No, we can confidently say that as
little as 3 ms impacts gaming performance for high
not even high, above average gamers. Huh. It's a It's the takeaway that I
find interesting is that most peripherals now are pretty low latency.
Gaming mice are sub 1 ms. Sub 1 ms if they're good, but I bet there's a lot of
you out there that are playing competitive games on Bluetooth mice or on the wrong monitor mode. Monitors are
often the biggest source of input latency. If you're gaming on a display
that also has a film mode, make sure you are off that because that's how you get
to like 100 ms of delay. And like that was enough to get you on on level with a
pro gamer. >> Right. [music] And so When we say source of input latency, we mean because
technically it's not the input, but it's the input to your eyes that will affect
when you put your input in. It also makes sense that all the esports teams
are all in the same cities because that 25 ms extra of LA to Dallas is enough to
drastically affect your performance. Well, there it is. I
mean ASUS will be happy about [music] that. PC gaming, is it pay to win?
Well, if you have the awareness, then yes.
If you don't, then there's not much you can do about it. No. I was kind of
hoping there'd be some ambiguity here because
you know, obviously ASUS sponsored the video and it's in their best interest for lower latency, high performance
peripherals [music] to make a difference to gaming. Just like we would, sponsored
or not. All we're doing is giving you guys the results that we have, semi-scientific as
they are. Uh you can check out we'll have maybe some uh downloads of the
graphs if you guys want to see them down below. >> sure. Yeah, we'll have a little package for you guys. We'll also have links to
all the products that we used down there in the video description. Uh or you can
check out the LTC Labs website for our growing database of in-depth testing of
gaming peripherals including latency measurements of mice and keyboards.
Huge thank you Typical Gamer, Baby No Money, and [music] Canada for joining us
today. I had a ton of fun, at least as much fun as the last time we did a video
like this, which maybe you should check out. It was more focused on how many
frames per second you need before it affects gaming performance.
>> [music] >> And the results may surprise you.
If you completely weren't paying attention today. >> [laughter]
>> Turns out more is better. Shh.