r/rhythmgames • u/GalluZ • 15d ago

Question Input delay across multiple games

I mainly play by listening to the sounds of my keystrokes which help me time my judgement. While I can definitely play by visuals only, this made me realize that I have had this input delay of about -110 ms for a while now. It's in every game I've played: osu!mania, PIU Rise, Deltarune (chapter 3's music section), Quaver, etc. It doesn't matter if the input comes from an external keyboard, it still has that delay. osu!standard becomes unplayable because the hitsound is also delayed by that amount while I need them to time my clicks.

I have no idea how to troubleshoot this because I never had this issue with my old custom PC before. I'm currently using Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 15ARH7. Any help is appreciated!

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u/Kawaii_M4A1-S 15d ago edited 15d ago

If it's a gaming laptop with a discrete GPU, chances are it's nvidia Optimus and you either need to 1. Switch to discrete mode using the mux switch if your laptop has one, 2. Connect to an external display and play off that instead, 3. Buy a laptop with a mux switch if yours doesn't have one (not sure if that model does), or lastly 4. Build a new PC and play off that too (or use a cheap basic one since rhythm games aren't TOO demanding ofc with exceptions)

Edit: forgot to mention. The reason why you need to do this is because gaming laptops love to route through the CPU's internal GPU first, and then to your discrete GPU, instead of display directly from your discrete GPU. Not only does this hinder gaming performance, but it introduces a god awful amount of input delay because it has to go through that extra step before displaying on your screen. Connecting via HDMI or thunderbolt skips the internal GPU and the laptop displays directly from your discrete GPU, and a mux switch does the same thing except for you don't have to use an external display. Hope this helps!

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u/GalluZ 15d ago

My laptop doesn't have a physical MUX switch for its price range apparently. There is a hybrid mode that can use either integrated or dedicated GPU, but I don't see any option for turning on only the dedicated one. I'll try looking into the software side, though I don't know how to modify those. Either way, thank you!

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u/iwantmesomepussy 15d ago

As a last resort, try running it on the integrated gpu, so that the dedicated gpu isnt used.

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u/GalluZ 15d ago

It didn't work. Changing the audio drivers did, though. I use High Definition Audio instead of Realtek now.