Latency
Latency is the only part of a gaming setup where the whole system can be modelled as a chain of measurable stages. That makes it the area where careful thinking pays off most, and where the biggest wins are usually free.
The four facts that matter
- The render queue is almost always the largest term you control, and it is a settings toggle rather than a purchase.
- 125 Hz to 1000 Hz polling removes more latency than upgrading a 144 Hz display to 240 Hz.
- Framerate shrinks two terms at once: input sampling and queue depth. Refresh rate shrinks one.
- Network latency is a separate budget, often larger than the whole local chain, and mostly outside your control.
Tools
- Input lag budget calculatorSix stages, ranked, with your worst link named.
- FPS and refresh calculatorFrame time and scan-out wait for your pairing.
The budget
| Stage | Typical cost | What it actually is | The lever |
|---|---|---|---|
| Human reaction (not part of the machine) | 180 to 250 ms | Simple visual reaction time. Everything below is what you add on top. | - |
| Switch debounce (mechanical mouse switch) | 0 to 8 ms | Firmware waits to confirm the contact is stable. Optical switches skip this. | Optical or low-debounce firmware |
| USB / wireless report wait | 0.06 to 4 ms | Half a polling interval on average. 1 kHz = 0.5 ms. | Raise polling rate |
| Wireless radio hop | 0.2 to 1 ms | Modern 2.4 GHz dongles. Bluetooth is 10x worse and unusable competitively. | Use the dongle, never Bluetooth |
| OS and game input sampling | 0 to 1 frame | The game reads input once per frame at a fixed point in its loop. | Higher framerate |
| CPU simulation + render queue | 2 to 30 ms | The biggest single variable. A deep queue at a GPU bottleneck dominates everything else. | Reflex / Anti-Lag, framerate cap below GPU limit |
| GPU render | 2 to 16 ms | Roughly one frame time when GPU bound. | Lower settings, higher fps |
| Scan-out wait | 0 to 1 frame time | The frame waits for the display to start drawing. Mean is half a frame time. | Higher refresh rate |
| Panel response (grey to grey) | 0.03 to 12 ms | OLED is effectively instant; slow VA can smear past the next frame. | OLED, or a well-tuned overdrive |
| Pixel to perceived brightness | 1 to 8 ms | Sample-and-hold blur, not a fixed delay, but it moves where you perceive the edge. | Backlight strobing, higher refresh |
Every guide in Latency
- Click to photon: input latency, stage by stageA stage-by-stage walk through what happens between your finger moving and a photon leaving your monitor, with typical millisecond costs and the lever for each stage.Updated September 3, 2026
- Nvidia Reflex and AMD Anti-Lag: what they actually doHow the render queue creates latency, exactly what Reflex and Anti-Lag change, when they do nothing at all, and the framerate cap that achieves most of the same effect for free.Updated September 2, 2026
- Frame time vs FPS: why 1% lows are the honest metricWhy average framerate hides the stutters you actually notice, what frame time graphs show, how to read 1% and 0.1% lows, and what to target for competitive play.Updated September 2, 2026
- Network latency, tick rate and peeker’s advantageHow server tick rate, client interpolation and lag compensation combine into the delay between your action and the server's version of reality, and why peeker's advantage is arithmetic rather than a bug.Updated September 1, 2026
- How to measure your own input latencyThree methods for measuring end-to-end latency, from a free high-speed phone camera test to hardware testers, with the procedure, the arithmetic and what each method can and cannot see.Updated September 1, 2026