Measuring input latency on Linux: X11 vs Wayland, VRR, and DXVK - Marco Nett
https://marco-nett.de/blog/measuring-input-latency-on-linux-x11-vs-wayland-vrr-dxvk/Open linkView original on lemmy.worldSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on lemmy.worldhttps://marco-nett.de/blog/measuring-input-latency-on-linux-x11-vs-wayland-vrr-dxvk/Open linkView original on lemmy.world
21 replies
On the topic of why people still say Wayland is slow, it probably was much much slower and only years of successive improvement in both the DE and base library got it up there in speed.
Personally I joined Linux recently and don’t understand all the beef with Wayland, but it does seem to work very well for me, so I’m happy enough with it.
A lot of people are holding legacy grudges about issues that have long since been fixed.
NVIDIA drivers used to be absolute hell on Linux, now they work decently well outside of some specific, older, hardware. But, if you listen to social media commentors (the source of all wisdom), you'd think that trying to boot a Linux machine with an NVIDIA card is literally(-figuratively) suicide.
A Linux user would never hold a grudge!
Not even Torvalds himself would lash out at NVidia 😄
FYI, all the tests use Nvidia GPUS.
Totally not biased
I understand unplugging a second monitor to try and get the cleanest data possible, but Id be super interested in the data with the other monitor plugged in and even playing a video in the background.
It is super neat to have numbers on this.
So I skimmed the actual article, not sure if the author said this, but my guess as to why Wayland has a ... worse reputation generally in the latency department, than seems to be deserved?
At least for myself, there was a significant period of time where ... XWayland was the only way to actually run whatever game, on my system, with/via Wayland.
If this kind of thing was not just myself, and was generally common... well then XWayland = Wayland -> Wayland sucks.
Interesting read!
It would've been interesting too see how it compares to recent Windows versions as well.
Can 3ms actually be noticed? Like if you randomly select one mode and did a "blind" test to see if you can tell the difference which mode is on? This honestly sounds impossible to me.
If you're familiar with the setup and play something where latency matters (competitive FPS and rhythm games cone top mind) I guess it might be enough to their you off your game.
But on an unknown system, where you have no comparison, I'm not so sure.
I guess 3ms would not be noticeable to most people.
It would be interesting to see how this behaves at lower refresh rates. Loosing the same 1 or 2 frames at 60/144 Hz should be noticeable.
Yeah if it's always 1 or 2 frames it would be vastly more noticeable with a more typical gaming setup. I didn't even know people run games at 500 fps lol.
3ms by itself prolly not. But it adds up, if you add input lag, monitor lagetc.
The 3ms is the full end-to-end latency. From the click to the monitor updating with the result.
3ms isn't noticeable, even the worst performer (xwayland) only hit 8ms which wouldn't be noticed outside of very specific games.
Fighting games' frames are around 17ms and moves that require hitting a single frame are nearly impossible to perform consistently.
Wish the VRR on my 180hz monitor wasn’t flickery :(
VRR on every monitor/TV I’ve tried is flickery, outside of games.
And even with games its best to be mindful of the VRR range.
Cool shit, thanks.
Last time I tried pure wayland on Counter Strike 2 (a game where you can't use the Windows version online because it's blocked) this matters a lot because CS2's wayland native was glitchy with alt-tabbing and mouse grabbing with multiple monitors. Older source engine games you're also fucked because again proton is blocked and the Linux versions are (probably) stuck with XWayland for eternity.