20ms "ping time" or 20ms "display latency"? There's a huge difference between the two.

Using an unbuffered switch with a rather long run of ethernet I have consistent 0.5ms ping. ~20ms display latency is completely normal though.

I'm specifically talking about the streaming latency. Playing any game, I am actually getting 20-60ms Streaming Latency. My "ping time" is 1.2ms...that isn't my concern...it is the Streaming Latency. That affects when I press "B" on the controller, it takes 20ms to actually see the result of me pressing that button. On my Computer, there is obviously some latency, but it is not noticed whatsoever (must be under 5ms).

It takes 20ms to "see" your result, but it's only taking about 1.2ms + input latency (usually around 1-1.2ms) for that button press to actually register in game. You press B and 2-2.5ms later the game is reacting. Also your computers monitor has a response rate that is most likely far above 5ms. 8-12ms for top of the line monitors, more likely yours is 16-25ms.

I wouldn't recommend streaming games that require extreme timing at all.

Test it with some different Ethernet cables, Some cables are very poorly made and suffer from interference. The 20m Cat5E cable I ran gives me 1 to 3ms latency while streaming games.

Simular specs, hight end router wired connection ( 1Gb ) still crapy quality and unplayble lags.

And where i can find my Steam Link latency ?

I just got my Steam Link today and have set it up to connect to my i5 4590, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 960 4GB running Windows 10 over my TP-Link Powerline Ethernet Adapters. Also using a Wireless Xbox 360 Gamepad.

My computer is setup with dual screens, with one monitor plugged into the Nvidia card via DVI and the other monitor plugged into the IGFX (Intel graphics).

At first when playing Batman Arkham Knight (which I've managed to get to play surprisingly well despite all the noise) I was getting a very noticeable lag on the controller. My display latency was coming in around 30-45ms and input (I think) was listed at about 3ms. Looked ok but the lag on the controller was really bugging me.

I then tried enabling "game mode" on my TV (Recent Samsung TV) and it reduced the noticeable lag on the controller by quite a lot - much more playable now. However, when I enabled Game Mode on the TV, the picture quality did seem to suffer a bit so I just had to re-tweak the TV display settings to get them back (mostly) to how they were.

I've since been looking into whether the Nvidia encoder or the Intel Quicksync encoder would be best or might help with the Display latency but currently mine seems to default to the Nvidia encoder. I do wonder though (I've read somewhere else) that for me there may be an issue with dual displays attached and Steam Streaming figuring out which encoder to use or else it might be affecting latency somehow. Would be nice if we could choose the encoder from within the Steam settings though to test which gives us the best image/performance.

So take a look at your TV's settings for enabling a "game mode" or else something that would reduce the input lag of the TV itself. This made quite a significant difference for me.

Originally posted by HonZuna:

And where i can find my Steam Link latency ?

When using a Xbox 360 controller, I think it was Start+Y to display all of the latency information.

Originally posted by Diagonali:

I just got my Steam Link today and have set it up to connect to my i5 4590, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GTX 960 4GB running Windows 10 over my TP-Link Powerline Ethernet Adapters. Also using a Wireless Xbox 360 Gamepad.

My computer is setup with dual screens, with one monitor plugged into the Nvidia card via DVI and the other monitor plugged into the IGFX (Intel graphics).

At first when playing Batman Arkham Knight (which I've managed to get to play surprisingly well despite all the noise) I was getting a very noticeable lag on the controller. My display latency was coming in around 30-45ms and input (I think) was listed at about 3ms. Looked ok but the lag on the controller was really bugging me.

I then tried enabling "game mode" on my TV (Recent Samsung TV) and it reduced the noticeable lag on the controller by quite a lot - much more playable now. However, when I enabled Game Mode on the TV, the picture quality did seem to suffer a bit so I just had to re-tweak the TV display settings to get them back (mostly) to how they were.

I've since been looking into whether the Nvidia encoder or the Intel Quicksync encoder would be best or might help with the Display latency but currently mine seems to default to the Nvidia encoder. I do wonder though (I've read somewhere else) that for me there may be an issue with dual displays attached and Steam Streaming figuring out which encoder to use or else it might be affecting latency somehow. Would be nice if we could choose the encoder from within the Steam settings though to test which gives us the best image/performance.

So take a look at your TV's settings for enabling a "game mode" or else something that would reduce the input lag of the TV itself. This made quite a significant difference for me.

What did it reduce the milliseconds to when tweaking the TV settings?

Originally posted by Diagonali:

What did it reduce the milliseconds to when tweaking the TV settings?

Well I think the actual latency of the Steam Link was another issue aside from the TV input lag. Changing the settings on the TV to Game Mode made a big difference and turned it into almost not playable to close to instantly responsive.

I'm still not entirely happy with the blocky stream quality and have found that reducing the resolution of the game to 900p seems to help with that so guessing the encoder isn't doing a great job. Hopefully Valve will improve things quite a lot now that people have these things in their homes as it's a little rough around the edges which is to be expected I suppose.

Yeah!!! thx! To switch on the game mode on the TV made it finally playable!

My lag was resolved after setting TV to "Game Mode". This stops the extra processing of the video by the TV which slows down it being displayed to the screen. Now, I can't tell any lag when looking at my monitor and TV side-by-side.

Originally posted by Whoopassatron:

My lag was resolved after setting TV to "Game Mode". This stops the extra processing of the video by the TV which slows down it being displayed to the screen. Now, I can't tell any lag when looking at my monitor and TV side-by-side.

If you have a Samsung TV rename the HDMI input to "PC", that will drop the latency even more. - http://www.samsung.com/au/support/skp/htg/16327