Everyone knows that adding latency to your gaming experience is bad,
but exactly how much latency is too much latency?
At what point can you legitimately blame the lag
for being hard stuck at Copper 7? To find out, we've assembled a crack team
of four certified gamers that range in skill level
from absolute hack all the way to Godlike.
And we're gonna 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 27 inch tandem OLED monitor
that can switch between 720p, 720 Hertz,
and 1440p, 540 Hertz using just a hotkey.
And it can do all of that without relying on display stream compression.
But enough ado, let's do 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 one millisecond increments from zero to 100 milliseconds,
which I remind you is one tenth 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 AMELabs.
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 go buy a baby no money.
And I make music and I play video games occasionally jelk.
My gaming ability out of 10, I used to be pretty good,
but now I'm garbage because all these 12 year old kids
are just insane. I don't really play much like competitive gaming anymore
because it's just unhealthy. Ready? Lock in bro.
Baby no accuracy. I mean 45, come on now. Did I have any, latency or no?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. That's part of your best in the variable.
Whoa, man. Oh my God, I'm sweating. Literally dripping in sweat.
Brother, he hit 50K. High score. Wait, hold on, wait, you're actually tall.
Wait, wait, yo, crazy. All right, this next one's gonna be a dude.
Oh, this one, this next one, wrap the whole thing up.
This is straight order. It looks so easy when you watch someone else do it.
You're just like, bro, just point at the thing. Oh, 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.
Okay. Yeah. And there's another tip on the bottom saying,
like, yeah, we're getting weird latency issues.
That was better. Hey, look at the, it's suggesting you become a pro.
Just the arms hurting now. Oh, it's getting real now.
All right, what if I, what if I walk in like this?
Closer to the strain, less input the light closer. Yeah, yeah.
Oh, locked in position. I really don't think this is going to help.
Oh, wait, 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.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight,
nine, 10, 11. Oh, wait, the counting is going to fail.
Wait, wait, wait. Wait, hold on. Crazy, crazy. Overflicks, underflicks, perfect flicks.
I just want to be an okay flick. There's too many unders. Yeah, there's a lot of under.
What does that mean? That means you're shooting lower. You're tracking it, but you're shooting it
basically way too behind it. Yeah, good job, good job. All right.
Solid, solid, solid, solid. Solid, solid. That's solid.
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.
I think I'm like 8.5 out of 10.
I think you're underselling yourself. Okay. Whenever you are ready, go for it.
I bet, I'm starting. Always going for a big 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,
cause this one's just easy. Like I could be on like 20 Hertz type of thing
and it'll be fun. Damn. It's not that, it's not that hard.
Yeah, it's too easy over here. Okay, this one is crazy.
This one like you move and you're not even moving.
Like I want to move, but it's like, it's like I'm dragging through mud type of movement.
It's like someone's holding my legs back in a race. Damn dude.
Pop my reaction time go up. All right, next test.
Okay, this one is bad. Oh 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. Oh, this one's really bad.
Like the pixels aren't even working. No, it's over, it's over.
No, 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 actually like messes you up.
How long is this thing? Damn, you're so close to 67%.
Oh my God. I hit 67. Oh no, you were at 67.
You guys are too old for this man. Okay, this one was cuck, this one's cuck.
This one's cuck, this one's cuck, this one's cuck. Oh my God, it's really bad.
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.
Locking, bro. For I don't feel it. Oh, that one looks bad. I click to begin.
Okay, you're not supposed to influence the test.
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, there's randomly generated.
Okay, yeah. How many of the variables do you guys have? No, no, don't worry about that.
Next task. Okay.
Pretty good.
Hey man, I'm trying to be positive reinforcement here.
So my name is 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 gotta be, yeah, there's latency on this one already. 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 so good.
I'm still good, I'm still good. Okay. All right.
Damn. Wait, hold on. Oh, yeah, you're good.
And watch all out. And watch all out. It's 56.
Damn. Whoa. Unks got it, Unks got it.
Unks literally got it. Oh my, oh, what is this?
Oh, this is maximum delay. That was easy. Holy.
That was so bad. All right, last one.
Bricked up right now. What? What?
That is a four-night term though. Bricked up? Yeah, it's when you have mass break.
Oh, I lost a break? I don't know about that one, dude. Can you give me your break?
I've heard that one before.
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 be one of, well, typical gamer, but also like the better gamers.
Are you interested to know? Let's do it.
Actually, I'm talking, let's do it. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're talking to your viewers.
No, I mean, leave a comment below if you are. All right, ready?
Let's go. Come on, match starting. My lock-in Linus.
Ready, three, two, one, peek. You saw my left. No, I'm not gonna.
I don't want it. Move this way. I could stay alive.
Go this way. Okay, look down. I could be a live man.
I could be a live man. Ready, three, two, one, peek. No, I don't want it.
You should peek. I think it's a really good time to peek.
Just peek.
Whoa! Oh! Wow, that was disgusting.
Okay, they have nerfed me, I will say.
I told you, bro. Oh! I told you.
It's obvious. Always right side. It's obvious, man.
Obvious right side right there. Okay, this is, okay, now it feels a little wavy.
Oh! Okay, Linus. He was locked in on that.
Yeah, it feels like I'm like, it's like a pendulum when I'm swing.
Oh my. Awareness, it's a negative awareness, man.
Now? Did you just call me negative awareness?
What kind of a thing to say is that? We are now at 75 milliseconds.
Oh! Oh my God! I don't know how to do that. Wow, that's a tough go.
All right, let's go, bro. Let's swap. Are we swapping? Yeah, let's swap in.
GG, GG. Good game, good game. GG.
Dude, this is probably the dopest lab I've ever been a part of.
What is this? Oh my, what the?
F***. No, why is he not actually nasty? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, this is disgusting.
You gotta find awareness on it. You saw that, right? You saw that shot?
Yeah, but 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 the same way you're doing too much, you're doing great. Okay, you need awareness.
You guys are the worst coaches ever. He's never gonna peek it twice, all right?
Unless right now, that he's aware that I said that.
Oh! Got that, dude. I had that.
F***. Maybe like, okay, he's so sweaty, bro.
He's actually nuts. He's actually nuts.
Now is 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.
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 Neoproximity 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 milliseconds.
50 milliseconds. No way! What?
Peek, bro. Peek that? Yeah, peek. Should I peek it?
Peek it. You think so? Yeah, do it. All right, three, two, one.
F***. F***. F***. F***.
No! Oh! Let's go!
Awareness. Awareness, coach. Maybe no chill.
Yeah, get clapped, bro. He's got to hit it all.
Bam! Give this guy more latency.
No, no, no, we're gonna work it, we're gonna work it. Give this guy more latency. Yeah, give me some latency, bro.
One more? Give him more. Give him more latency. Put it in the hands of God there for a second.
That's all that. Prayed it went the right way.
Oh, I had that. I swear, I swear you didn't put it in the wall like I was.
Yeah, I know. See that?
See how I just did that? You think I'll repeat this thing? Oh!
Let's go! F***! He just sat there, like, 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, I swear.
It's over. 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,
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.
Yeah, I mean, it was a... What day is it today? Wednesday?
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 Labs with a different latency. Like, 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.
What surprised you the most about today?
That this is your guys' job. It's really sick.
Like, the ability to basically just do science with the bros.
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 milliseconds, we were seeing almost a 7% drop,
and by 50 milliseconds, 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 milliseconds about,
because it's so jiggly. Even before then, it's a pretty clear line down.
And what I also found interesting was that each task had a different difference from the input latency.
The biggest difference was the second one. Distraction 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,
it 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 milliseconds. 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 milliseconds
was not granular enough. I chose those metrics because when I was testing,
that's when I could start to feel it. So like, oh, that's gonna be, you know, the thing.
So that's what you were doing the second time. We did a second round of testing
with three millisecond increments. Surely you're not gonna be able to tell a difference
from like three to six milliseconds. The first round of this ad hoc testing
was really interesting, where there is a clear pattern down
to about seven, eight, nine percent
at the nine millisecond range, but there was a weird jump at six milliseconds performance
where at six milliseconds 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 three milliseconds, up a little bit again at six milliseconds,
and then down to almost the same at nine. So nine and three are almost identical.
So I started to be wonder, does it not matter below 10 milliseconds?
But then I separated top performers from bottom performers.
Oh. And in the top performers, it's a super clear line,
like undeniably just 3% each added three milliseconds.
So if you're any good, then functionally speaking,
there is no limit to how low you want your latency to be.
Yeah. We could try to get a system that would get us less than the 12 and a half that we were testing with.
Right. But it's not a realistic scenario. And for the best gamers though,
that could potentially make it ever. See, I was not expecting this. Me neither.
I was hoping that this video would 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.
And that is, wait, and that is true to a degree. Yes.
I mean, you saw how much latency we had to add to either Canada or a typical gamer, right?
For me to have any shot of hitting them. But if you have the game sense or what did,
what did Canada call it? Oh, awareness. You gotta find awareness on it.
You saw that, right? You saw that shot? Awareness, just a negative awareness.
Then there is no limit functionally that we found.
No, we can confidently say that as little as three milliseconds
impacts gaming performance for high, not even high, above average gamers.
Huh. It's the takeaway that I find interesting
is that most peripherals now are pretty low latency.
Gaming mice are. Sub one millisecond. Sub one millisecond, 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 100 milliseconds of delay.
And that was enough to get you on level with a pro gamer.
Right. And 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 milliseconds extra of LA to Dallas
is enough to drastically affect your performance.
Well, there it is. I mean, ASUS will be happy about 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.
I was kind of hoping there'd be some ambiguity here because obviously ASUS sponsored the video
and it's in their best interest for lower latency, high performance peripherals
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.
You can check out. We'll have maybe some downloads of the graphs
if you guys wanna see them down below. Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, we'll have a little package for you guys.
We'll also have links to all the products that we use down there in the video description.
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 Kanata 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. And the results may surprise you
if you completely weren't paying attention today. It turns out more is better.