A custom-built device has measured end-to-end latency in Linux gaming and found only minor differences between Wayland and X11 sessions. The results challenge long-standing claims that Wayland adds significant input lag.
Marco Nett conducted the tests on a gaming PC running Diabotical through Proton on CachyOS. The setup included an RTX 4070 SUPER graphics card and a 500 Hz OLED monitor.
His Click2photon tool recorded the time from simulated mouse clicks to on-screen changes. Eight main test configurations produced median latencies between 4.21 ms and 4.93 ms.
X11 showed a small advantage of 0.14 to 0.22 ms over native Wayland. Variable refresh rate reduced latency by 0.26 to 0.45 ms, while XWayland added 3.13 ms compared with native Wayland.
The findings suggest Linux gamers should enable VRR, use the DXVK-low-latency fork where possible, and run games natively on Wayland rather than through XWayland.