VB2005 Environment.TickCount not accurate?

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G

Guest

Hi All,

I'm reading the Environment.TickCount property after a button click event to
create a basic stopwatch.

If I click the button as uniformly as possible, the resulting gap in
milliseconds seems to be far too even - ie. if I clicked the button 10 times
then there would probably be 2 or 3 intervals with exactly the same reading.
The chances of me being that accurate just by clicking a button are very low,
so either the environment.tickcount property is only accurate to 1/100th of a
second (in which case why is it trying to return a time to 1/1000th) OR my
button_Click event is only called with a set interval OR I am uniquely able
to time my finger movements to the nearest 1/1000th of a second.

If the first case is true - is there a more accurate timer available to me.

If the second case is true, can I increase the priority of button Click
events so they are more accurate?

If the third case is true does anyone have a phone number for Guinness Book
of Records?

I am coding in VB from Visual Studio 2005.

Many thanks in advance.
 
Environment.TickCount shows the milliseconds elapsed since the system started
It's a bit rough, because can't be less than 500 milliseconds.

Use DiteTime.Ticks for this reason

Woof said:
Hi All,

I'm reading the Environment.TickCount property after a button click event to
create a basic stopwatch.

If I click the button as uniformly as possible, the resulting gap in
milliseconds seems to be far too even - ie. if I clicked the button 10 times
then there would probably be 2 or 3 intervals with exactly the same reading.
The chances of me being that accurate just by clicking a button are very low,
so either the environment.tickcount property is only accurate to 1/100th of a
second (in which case why is it trying to return a time to 1/1000th) OR my
button_Click event is only called with a set interval OR I am uniquely able
to time my finger movements to the nearest 1/1000th of a second.

If the first case is true - is there a more accurate timer available to me.

If the second case is true, can I increase the priority of button Click
events so they are more accurate?

If the third case is true does anyone have a phone number for Guinness Book
of Records?

--
WBR,
Michael Nemtsev :: blog: http://spaces.msn.com/laflour

"At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not
cease to be insipid." (c) Friedrich Nietzsche
 
Environment.TickCount is probably using the system API call GetTickCount().
If so, the interval quantum will be about 55 milliseconds. The primary
clock hardware on a PC only interrupts the processor 18.2 times per second,
or about every 55 milliseconds. For more accurate timing, you will need to
use the MultiMedia API timers. I don't know if they are exposed via the
framework.

Mike Ober.
 
Check out this code. http://www.windojitsu.com/code/hirestimer.cs.html

He is using the QueryPerformanceFrequency and QueryPerformanceCounter
API calls to get a more accurate samlpe.

Unless there is something new in the 2.0 framework, this is the
prefered method of obtaining a more accurate sample.

BTW, my GetTickCount() seems to have a resolution of 15ms.
 
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