Felipe (F.A.

Q)
Frequently asked questions and more

Disclaimer
This is based on my experience and expertise, that also means I am human and I can make mistakes. The
content is not just my authorship, I will probably have many inspirations from other people. SALT to some
exaggerations.

What is really Important?

People have been told that LatencyMon, Powerplans, MouseTester are relevant, but actually not quite. People
are often over reacting and giving too much importance to those. It’s nice to have a parameter to compare and
things to test, but there are a lot of flaws in many of these. What really is important is:
- HARDWARE AND HIS CONFIGURATION(i.e BIOS)
- 0.1% FRAMETIMES AND LATENCY

Windows 11
First and most important, all new versions of windows aren't new.. Surprise, they are all a Reskin of something
very old and the old stuff are TIED/DEPENDENT on the code. So it's always “Bloat”. Windows 11 is even worse
because it's not modular as his old versions, for example you disable Notifications and will brick Audio selection
and Network selection panels. There is Direct Storage that is new and promising but it will also come to Windows
10. As far as your compatibility needs, on Windows, the older the better.

Custom Windows ISOs

Whoever creates Custom Windows ISOs publicly are all RETARD, except EXAMPLE Ameliorated that made
Open-Source.
Because there is many HUGE PROBLEMS:
- Most ISO creators use laptops or pre-builts and have zero knowledge of anything that would be good for
low latency gaming, and trust the very same persons to validate his claims.
- ISOs are compiled closed source images that can have any kind of malware or anything BAD inside.
- They are made for universal use(all kinds of users) which is terrible.
- Post-Install > NTLite, you can do everything and more after installing a legit windows image from
Microsoft. (Also customizable to each person! OMG)

CPU Architecture (by @CaIypto)

(..)Avoid Ryzen CPUs: AMD used a special interconnect architecture in order to make CPUs with lots of cores for
a low price. This is great if you want a workstation PC, not a gaming PC. Ryzens consist of two sets of cores in
one die and are connected via the Infinity Fabric. The Infinity Fabric is fast, but not fast enough to not have
noticeable performance loss in games as well as general high latency due to driver and OS code being executed
on both “sides” of the CPU. Ryzens also have higher memory latency. Expect 1-3ms of extra input lag on a Zen
system. Minor performance improvements were made in Zen 2, but it is still a worse buy than 10th gen. Intel
CPUs for latency-sensitive tasks like gaming. Starting with Zen 3 (Ryzen 5000), each CCD (core complex die)
has an 8-core CCX (core complex) which greatly helps reduce intercore latency, and unifies the split L3 cache
previous generations had. This brings good performance improvements in games, but unfortunately the memory
latency still suffers due to the memory controller being located on the IOD (I/O die)(..)

Hyper-Threading/SMT (by @CaIypto)

(..)This feature allows the operating system to see a physical core as two virtual cores. Although good for highly-
threaded loads such as rendering or compiling, this feature massively increases the system’s latency. This is
because cores only have one execution unit, which is exacerbated by the operating system attempting to spread
the load across both virtual processors of the same core, which creates a stall while the core’s execution unit is
busy with the second virtual processor.(..)Another benefit to disabling SMT is lower power consumption, which
raises overclocking headroom.(..)

GPU Architecture
Based on Tile-based Rasterization in Nvidia GPUs with David Kanter of Real World Tech, we can have a valid
example made by an expert. Modern GPUs tend to use more tiling rasterization and feel less responsive. Thanks
to KGCT more people know this. His, and other people's guesses are that NVIDIA Kepler(7xx) are responsive
and Maxwell(9xx) and higher aren't. AMD are all responsive, RDNAs will probably be the last low latency focused
AMD too, as the next generation have dual dies..

Average Frametimes are USELESS (by @siegerQL)

(..)FPS are a meme. The most important metric is latency. Lower latency results in smoother feeling gameplay.
Please stop comparing FPS in games. It is near meaningless.
The only facet of FPS that's relevant is 0.1% minimum fps.
Compare your 0.1% against the delta from your average fps and that's it. The delta means the difference
between average fps and your 0.1% fps. The more the gap is, the worse your smoothness will be.
The reason hardware reviewers focus on FPS is because the market is programming you - the consumer - to
only care about frames since they are so easy to inflate. Also these reviewers are not capable of measuring what
is important.
Overall, FPS means nothing. You shouldn't worry about your FPS and instead you should be concerned about
your system's latency. You can "cheese" FPS by just increasing "pre rendered frames." Sure, this will increase
your framerate, but at the expense of your games feeling responsive.
The goal is to have the lowest latency and the smoothest gameplay experience so you can dominate your
opponents before they even know what happened.(..)

Be careful about PLACEBO (by Zoyata)

(..)"Placebo is anything that is not DISTINCTIVELY better or worse than the other available options."
"Placebo is anything that is a temporary 'fix' and must be repeated over and over to achieve similar results."
"Placebo is anything that you do not understand enough to make an educated decision outside of "feel"."
"Placebo is anything that can not be measured via controlled testing."
"Placebo is anything that when weighing available options, you're unable to tell the difference due to
uncontrollable factors impacting results.”(..)
DO NOT FALL FOR PLACEBO

Be careful about Affinities

I want to make it clear that doing Affinities is something very advanced and should be done ONLY if you have
experience and know what you are doing. Testing is also very time consuming.

“Threads randomly get assigned to cores,

Affinities is pretty pointless unless you take the game/programs off of said cores
The only reliable "one fits them all" method is keeping interrupts on core 0 and moving away games/apps to core
1-X.”

This quote is generalized since it depends on the apps and also AMD apparently interrupts all cores but it's an
example on how careful you should think about doing an affinity.
You can easily change for the worse if you don't do it correctly.
DON'T CHANGE DEFAULTS IF YOU ARE NOT SURE. REALLY SURE.

Disable ALL Security features

On everything, they usually decrease performance. Use NSudo and disable those services: WdBoot, WdFilter,
WdNisDrv, WdNisSvc, WinDefend, wscsvc, sense, MsSecFlt, SecurityHealthService, SgrmAgent, SgrmBroker.

Disable ALL Power savings

On everything, stuff is made to perform, not to last.

MINIMALISM is Key (by Felicity)

(..)“On the contrary, less is more. You don’t want more changes, you want to take out what was bloated in
Windows, minimize your impact on the integrity of your OS, avoid too many changes that are borderline placebo,
and then go back to playing the game and practicing. The longer you spend trying to make the game feel perfect,
the worse it will feel, and the less you will play. Do a few simple changes, make it feel good, and then enjoy your
game of choice. If you find the optimization process fun and want to learn more about it than you want to learn
playing the game itself, then that is also fine. It is your choice and your time. However, do not be so focused on
making the game run well that you forget to play the game. This was my mistake and many others made this
error and continue to. By the time we had our game running perfectly, we hated the game and all its problems.
This is an argument for paying for services to help you do this, as it saves you the time and anxiety of learning to
alter your OS and learning optimization in general."(..)
DON'T CHANGE DEFAULTS IF YOU ARE NOT SURE. REALLY SURE.

Most Youtubers SUCKS

They want numbers and will follow the youtube algorithm. They literally do scam thumbnails and garbage
content. Almost all content related to hardware is questionably or poorly done. I trust very few youtubers and
even on them I still filter the content in my head. You should do this as well. BattleNonSense is one of my
favorites.
Almost NO ONE do properly Benchmarks
Make sure you have a solid foundation, solid hardware configuration 100% stable
Try to benchmark scenarios that are consistent and 100% replicable, many times and long periods.
And specify changes and full details of hardware.

About Testing Methodology (by KGCT)

(..)it all comes with knowledge of how things work Let's analyze the primary basic requirement of a testing
scenario: A-B-A testing (aka back and forth) it means testing with the original setting, then with the new setting,
then back again with the original setting --------- the reason we do that is because we don't know if there are
unknown variables that may impact the test due to knowledge, one educated guess is dirty power say you do test
A at 1 am test B at 2 AM test A again at 3 AM that can be a lot of variance simply from power quality
================= now Sampling theory Just because you did an A-B-A test (back and forth) doesn't mean
you tested correctly if you use for example a multiplayer game that obviously has variable networking load over
the course of a day you are forced to repeat the ABA testing a minimum of 2 more times and ideally 4 or 6 more
times the need to repeat more and more lessens as the amount of repeats increases because it goes beyond the
50% reliability in results percentage p.s. it is not a problem to do aba bab aba bab aba bab testing instead of only
aba aba aba aba aba and it's actually recommended ====================

then it boils down to the quality of the testing scenario which means using applications that give reliable and
consistent results with little variation ============ then we have a 4th issue which is incorrect assumptions
one such assumption is that 0.1% lows have anything to do with input delay they do, but only represent a
component of it frametime variance matters more but it's still just a component a fifth issue the big "placebo"
issue these are actually issues 5 and 6 as reasons for placebo actually i will just keep writing issue 5 of placebo -
people usually say something it's placebo because they can't notice it that doesn't make them retards
automatically they simply haven't optimised the systems enough AND SET THEM UP PROPERLY in order to be
able to notice the differences of the "placebo tweaks" you can't tell 500hz vs 1000hz on a mouse when you play
at 30 fps with vsync on -----

issue 6, still tied to placebo just because something works for you doesn't mean it will for others, and the reason
is simple: TOO MANY VARIABLES --------- issue 7, not entirely placebo, it's more like 2 issues in one but it's still
a biggie people don't always know what to look at, and what to look for. Sometimes they may not even be
sensitive enough (sensitivity can sometimes be trained via experience). IF THAT WASN'T ENOUGH, that also
implies the REQUIREMENT OF KNOWLEDGE Specifically Vocabulary and technical repertoire for example if
you tell someone "look how the smoothness feels", they don't know what that is without some prior visual
example that illustrates stuttering if that wasn't enough just because you know how stuttering looks like doesn't
mean you are capable of imagining what microstuttering feels like --------------------

issue 8, which is more like a reminder: remember we are dealing with a BLACK BOX in the end and that we are
still going off of a lot of ASSUMPTIONS. THE TRAP IS THAT a lot of the times we ARE NOT AWARE of the
assumptions we make a simple example is assuming win32priorityseparation has definitive impact in real time -
when in actuality it has to be benchmarked with system restarts/reboots too p.s. i always assume "facts'' are just
"hey this is something that may work for you" "feeling" or 1000fps cameras are the only real deal because they
sample the entire pipeline no tools do that software* edit: some clarifications for potential questions (which come
from not understanding what's in the input-output pipeline): frametimes can't measure network stutters nor your
mouse click latency nor USB processing time.(..)

Monitor Refresh Rate, the more the Better?

Not always, you should see big reputation reviews like RTings and analyze each model, there is much more in
panels than just Refresh Rate, specially in gaming you will be worried about Motion Blur and Response Times.
Debloated GPU Drivers and Basic Tweaks
Has no Radeon Bloatware or NVIDIA Bloatware
NVIDIA 441.41 (for old games):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/187pnoYDaLCx2QJuT4BnvWh9-CMwu9XiZ/view?usp=sharing (Windows 7/8)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/16GSzEuv8dgVRCf5yR76LUL0xqoPw-i7v/view?usp=sharing (Windows 10/11)
NVIDIA 456.55 (for reflex/new games):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RImu3XghJw6lm4uha4O4wYaq1bUkWDTO/view?usp=sharing (Windows 7/8)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hRiL7KixY9Ddior-4VU9GxDspJVSw2he/view?usp=sharing (Windows 10/11)
NVIDIA 472.12 (for ampere cards):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kXMT6C6fp3oBBmRltAUe-oPb4Ic0GAV0/view?usp=sharing (Windows 7/8)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1nus0ySGLd3ldezOGFbISMHo2Sj7zeuf6/view?usp=sharing (Windows 10/11)
AMD 21.5.2:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1DdNuenlqe5YNDb3vPZP9ot4Yz32cG2CK/view?usp=sharing (Windows 7/8)
AMD 21.10.1:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kz-gBESZMyQtfW36x4afzKOM_XCyETOx/view?usp=sharing (Windows 10/11)

NVIDIA REG: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/762398293686485024/896415464102694922/nvidia.reg

NVIDIA .NIP: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/762398293686485024/894960194163970088/Profile.nip
AMD REG: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/762398293686485024/896412492044062800/amd.reg

Who make legit “Tweaking Services” (YOU DON'T NEED ONE)

There is NO person that has high knowledge and wants to sell tweaks, PERIOD. There are a few non-scam
people that can help, I am one and ATU is another(this is not sponsored and they probably don't even want
advertising/promotion).
Why do good services don't even like advertising/promotion? Because we feel ashamed of doing so. I only
continue my service because of hate, yes you read it right.. I hate all those scammers and try to do an legit/no
scam service. And it helps me buy hardware to continue researching.

Don't turn yourself into a MANIAC

Live your life normally, PERIOD. EMF is documented and proven, Self-improvement and Pills are documented
and proven, but you can live without worrying so much about them, you won't die :) And most people are heavily
exaggerating on its impact, you won't feel superman just cause you are now taking iodine or whatever. People
have been looking for magical answers since the beginning and that doesn't exist. It's a compilation of so many
things! I am not saying you should beam your head everyday with radiation, just don't go insane.
What makes a pro player is dedication and talent, hardware is literally the last thing.
They also know nothing about hardware.. Stop following pros advice, unless you can filter and create your own
opinion after that.

You can find me in dsc.gg/felipe for anything, or Felipe#5555

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