Input latency is one of the most discussed and least understood concepts in competitive gaming. Players spend thousands on high-refresh monitors and then play on settings that add 50ms of avoidable latency. Understanding it helps you make better decisions about your hardware and settings.
What Is Input Latency?
Input latency (also called click-to-photon latency) is the total time between a physical input and the result appearing on your monitor. Lower is always better. The average unoptimized gaming PC has 60–100ms of total system latency. A well-optimized setup can achieve 15–25ms.
Input Latency vs Frame Rate
FPS and input latency are related but not identical. Two systems with identical FPS can have very different latency based on GPU queue depth, display mode, and driver configuration. Frame rate is the production rate; input latency is the total delivery time.
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See Services →Components of System Latency
- Mouse hardware: 1–3ms
- USB polling interval: 0–1ms at 1000Hz, up to 8ms at 125Hz
- Windows input processing: 1–5ms
- Game engine processing: up to one full frame time
- GPU render queue: 5–20ms
- Display pixel response: 1–5ms
- Display input processing: 1–20ms
Why It Matters for Competitive Gaming
At 20ms of system latency, your inputs are processed 20 milliseconds after you initiate them. More importantly, consistent latency matters as much as low latency. Variable latency makes your muscle memory unreliable because the relationship between your input and the on-screen result changes from shot to shot.