XWayland Adds More Latency Than Every Setting Combined, Test Finds
A modified microcontroller with a photodiode logged frame-to-photon delay at 24 microsecond resolution on a 500Hz OLED monitor.
- X11 medians ran 4.21 to 4.79 milliseconds, Wayland 4.38 to 4.93, gaps of 0.14 to 0.22ms.
- Enabling VRR trimmed 0.26 to 0.45 milliseconds and narrowed jitter to 2.1 to 2.2ms.
- A low-latency DXVK fork cut 0.84 milliseconds uncapped, recovering most of XWayland's 3.13ms penalty.
Why it matters: One home-built sensor settled what years of argument could not: the shim cost more than the protocol.
Marco Nett (personal blog, click2photon latency tests) ↗ · Jul 14, 20267/14/26 · ✓ Checked✓ Check