Input Lag & Click-to-Photon Latency Simulator

Deconstruct the full latency pipeline: Mouse Polling -> USB Controller -> OS Kernel -> Game Engine -> GPU Frame Queue -> Display Scan-Out.

Interactive Physics SimulationClick-to-Photon Latency Lab

Input Lag & Refresh Rate Latency Simulator

Witness how display refresh rate (60Hz vs 144Hz vs 240Hz) fundamentally cuts system scanout delay, shrinking aiming error and physical cursor drag during high-speed competitive flicks.

Active Preset:144 Hz (6.94 ms frame)
60Hz (34ms)144Hz (15ms)240Hz (9ms)
Flick Velocity:900 px/s
400 (Tracking)1100 (Brisk Crosshair)1800 (Flick)
Playback Rate:1.0x (Realtime)
Slow-mo reveals discrete frame stepping
The Ghost Line represents your True Real-Time Mouse Position (0 ms delay). Observe how far behind the rendered crosshair lags at 60Hz vs 144Hz vs 240Hz!
True VectorRendered Hitbox
60 Hz
Lag Offset: ~34.0 ms
Display updates every 16.7ms (Noticeable stutter and large trailing drift)Severe Aim Error Window
144 Hz
Lag Offset: ~14.8 ms
Display updates every 6.94ms (56% less lag than 60Hz)Competitive Standard
240 Hz
Lag Offset: ~8.8 ms
Display updates every 4.17ms (Crosshair feels physically glued to input)Tournament Grade Precision

The Click-to-Photon Latency Pipeline Breakdown

Measured from physical mouse microswitch click to photon emission at screen center (NVIDIA LDAT baseline).

240Hz is 25.2 ms faster than 60Hz
60 Hz Panel34.0 ms
USB Mouse Polling:1.0 ms
Engine Sim / Frame Gen:16.7 ms
GPU Render & Queue:5.5 ms
Display Scanout (Half):8.33 ms
Pixel GtG Transition:3.5 ms
⚠️ 34ms delay causes overshooting and phantom hits when flicking against moving opponents.
144 Hz Panel14.8 ms
USB Mouse Polling:1.0 ms
Engine Sim / Frame Gen:6.9 ms
GPU Render & Queue:2.8 ms
Display Scanout (Half):3.47 ms
Pixel GtG Transition:1.6 ms
✓ Cuts latency by 19.2ms (56%). The essential baseline for Counter-Strike 2 and Valorant.
240 Hz Panel8.8 ms
USB Mouse Polling:1.0 ms
Engine Sim / Frame Gen:4.2 ms
GPU Render & Queue:1.8 ms
Display Scanout (Half):2.08 ms
Pixel GtG Transition:0.8 ms
★ Sub-10ms tournament response. Crosshair placement lands with near-zero perceptual delay.
Core Knowledge Base

Common Performance FAQs

Hard-won engineering truths regarding frametime pacing, input latency, sub-timing latency, and competitive OS tuning.

Standard in-game FPS counters only sample the mathematical average across thousands of frames over a full second. They do not tell you when individual frames take significantly longer to render.

If your monitor refreshes every 4.16ms (at 240Hz), but a cache-miss, background Windows service, or shader compilation causes a single frame to stall for 18ms, your eye perceives a distinct micro-stutter. The FPS counter might still show "235 FPS", but your 1% and 0.1% lows plummeted to 55 FPS.

To fix this: optimize memory sub-timings to eliminate memory-bus stalls, cap framerates to keep GPU utilization under 97%, and eliminate background DPC latency spikes using LatencyMon.

Key Takeaway:

Focus on 1% Lows and frametime consistency rather than peak average FPS for butter-smooth tracking.

Need more details on this optimization layer?Master Zero-Latency Checklist