Environment.TickCount vs DateTime.Now

Question

Is it ever OK to use Environment.TickCountto calculate time spans?

int start = Environment.TickCount;
// Do stuff
int duration = Environment.TickCount - start;
Console.WriteLine("That took " + duration " ms");

Because TickCount is signed and will rollover after 25 days (it takes 50 days to hit all 32 bits, but you have to scrap the signed bit if you want to make any sense of the math), it seems like it's too risky to be useful.

I'm using DateTime.Now instead. Is this the best way to do this?

DateTime start = DateTime.Now;
// Do stuff
TimeSpan duration = DateTime.Now - start;
Console.WriteLine("That took " + duration.TotalMilliseconds + " ms");

Answer 1

Environment.TickCount is based on GetTickCount() WinAPI function. It's in milliseconds But the actual precision of it is about 15.6 ms. So you can't measure shorter time intervals (or you'll get 0)

Note: The returned value is Int32, so this counter rolls over each ~49.7 days. You shouldn't use it to measure such long intervals.

DateTime.Ticks is based on GetSystemTimeAsFileTime() WinAPI function. It's in 100s nanoseconds (tenths of microsoconds). The actual precision of DateTime.Ticks depends on the system. On XP, the increment of system clock is about 15.6 ms, the same as in Environment.TickCount. On Windows 7 its precision is 1 ms (while Environemnt.TickCount's is still 15.6 ms), however if a power saving scheme is used (usually on laptops) it can go down to 15.6 ms as well.

Stopwatch is based on QueryPerformanceCounter() WinAPI function (but if high-resolution performance counter is not supported by your system, DateTime.Ticks is used)

Before using StopWatch notice two problems:

• it can be unreliable on multiprocessor systems (see MS kb895980, kb896256)
• it can be unreliable if CPU frequency varies (read this article)

You can evaluate the precision on your system with simple test:

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    int xcnt = 0;
    long xdelta, xstart;
    xstart = DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks;
    do {
        xdelta = DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks - xstart;
        xcnt++;
    } while (xdelta == 0);

    Console.WriteLine("DateTime:\t{0} ms, in {1} cycles", xdelta / (10000.0), xcnt);

    int ycnt = 0, ystart;
    long ydelta;
    ystart = Environment.TickCount;
    do {
        ydelta = Environment.TickCount - ystart;
        ycnt++;
    } while (ydelta == 0);

    Console.WriteLine("Environment:\t{0} ms, in {1} cycles ", ydelta, ycnt);


    Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();
    int zcnt = 0;
    long zstart, zdelta;

    sw.Start();
    zstart = sw.ElapsedTicks; // This minimizes the difference (opposed to just using 0)
    do {
        zdelta = sw.ElapsedTicks - zstart;
        zcnt++;
    } while (zdelta == 0);
    sw.Stop();

    Console.WriteLine("StopWatch:\t{0} ms, in {1} cycles", (zdelta * 1000.0) / Stopwatch.Frequency, zcnt);
    Console.ReadKey();
}

Answer 2

Use Stopwatch class. There is a decent example on msdn: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.stopwatch.aspx

    Stopwatch stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
    Thread.Sleep(10000);
    stopWatch.Stop();
    // Get the elapsed time as a TimeSpan value.
    TimeSpan ts = stopWatch.Elapsed;

Answer 3

Why are you worried about rollover? As long as the duration you are measuring is under 24.9 days and you calculate the relative duration, you're fine. It doesn't matter how long the system has been running, as long as you only concern yourself with your portion of that running time (as opposed to directly performing less-than or greater-than comparisons on the begin and end points). I.e. this:

 int before_rollover = Int32.MaxValue - 5;
 int after_rollover = Int32.MinValue + 7;
 int duration = after_rollover - before_rollover;
 Console.WriteLine("before_rollover: " + before_rollover.ToString());
 Console.WriteLine("after_rollover: " + after_rollover.ToString());
 Console.WriteLine("duration: " + duration.ToString());

correctly prints:

 before_rollover: 2147483642
 after_rollover: -2147483641
 duration: 13

You don't have to worry about the sign bit. C#, like C, lets the CPU handle this.

This is a common situation I've run into before with time counts in embedded systems. I would never compare beforerollover < afterrollover directly, for instance. I would always perform the subtraction to find the duration that takes rollover into account, and then base any other calculations on the duration.

Answer 4

You probably want System.Diagnostics.StopWatch.

Answer 5

Environment.TickCount seems to be much faster then the other solutions:

Environment.TickCount 71
DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks 213
sw.ElapsedMilliseconds 1273

The measurements were generated by the following code:

static void Main( string[] args ) {
    const int max = 10000000;
    //
    //
    for ( int j = 0; j < 3; j++ ) {
        var sw = new Stopwatch();
        sw.Start();
        for ( int i = 0; i < max; i++ ) {
            var a = Environment.TickCount;
        }
        sw.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine( $"Environment.TickCount {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}" );
        //
        //
        sw = new Stopwatch();
        sw.Start();
        for ( int i = 0; i < max; i++ ) {
            var a = DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks;
        }
        sw.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine( $"DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}" );
        //
        //
        sw = new Stopwatch();
        sw.Start();
        for ( int i = 0; i < max; i++ ) {
            var a = sw.ElapsedMilliseconds;
        }
        sw.Stop();
        Console.WriteLine( $"sw.ElapsedMilliseconds {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}" );
    }
    Console.WriteLine( "Done" );
    Console.ReadKey();
}

Answer 6

If you're looking for the functionality of Environment.TickCount but without the overhead of creating new Stopwatch objects, you can use the static Stopwatch.GetTimestamp() method (along with Stopwatch.Frequency) to calculate long time spans. Because GetTimestamp() returns a long, it won't overflow for a very, very long time (over 100,000 years, on the machine I'm using to write this). It's also much more accurate than Environment.TickCount which has a maximum resolution of 10 to 16 milliseconds.

Answer 7

Use

System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch

It has a property called

EllapsedMilliseconds

Answer 8

Here is kind of an updated&refreshed summary of what may be the most useful answers & comments in this thread + extra benchmarks and variants:

First thing first: As others have pointed out in comments, things have changed the last years and with "modern" Windows (Win XP ++) and .NET, and modern hardware there are no or little reasons not to use Stopwatch(). See MSDN for details. Quotations:

"Is QPC accuracy affected by processor frequency changes caused by power management or Turbo Boost technology?
No. If the processor has an invariant TSC, the QPC is not affected by these sort of changes. If the processor doesn't have an invariant TSC, QPC will revert to a platform hardware timer that won't be affected by processor frequency changes or Turbo Boost technology.

Does QPC reliably work on multi-processor systems, multi-core system, and systems with hyper-threading?
Yes

How do I determine and validate that QPC works on my machine?
You don't need to perform such checks.

Which processors have non-invariant TSCs? [..Read further..] "

But if you don't need the precision of Stopwatch() or at least want to know exactly about the performance of Stopwatch (static vs. instance-based) and other possible variants, continue reading:

I took over the benchmark above from cskwg, and extended the code for more variants. I have measured with a some years old i7 4700 MQ and C# 7 with VS 2017 (to be more precise, compiled with .NET 4.5.2, despite binary literals, it is C# 6 (used of this: string literals and 'using static'). Especially the Stopwatch() performance seems to be improved compared to the mentioned benchmark.

This is an example of results of 10 million repetitions in a loop, as always, absolute values are not important, but even the relative values may differ on other hardware:

32 bit, Release mode without optimization:

Measured: GetTickCount64() [ms]: 275
Measured: Environment.TickCount [ms]: 45
Measured: DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks [ms]: 167
Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedTicks [ms]: 277
Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedMilliseconds [ms]: 548
Measured: static Stopwatch.GetTimestamp [ms]: 193
Measured: Stopwatch+conversion to DateTime [ms]: 551
Compare that with DateTime.Now.Ticks [ms]: 9010

32 bit, Release mode, optimized:

Measured: GetTickCount64() [ms]: 198
Measured: Environment.TickCount [ms]: 39
Measured: DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks [ms]: 66 (!)
Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedTicks [ms]: 175
Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedMilliseconds [ms]: 491
Measured: static Stopwatch.GetTimestamp [ms]: 175
Measured: Stopwatch+conversion to DateTime [ms]: 510
Compare that with DateTime.Now.Ticks [ms]: 8460

64 bit, Release mode without optimization:

Measured: GetTickCount64() [ms]: 205
Measured: Environment.TickCount [ms]: 39
Measured: DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks [ms]: 127
Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedTicks [ms]: 209
Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedMilliseconds [ms]: 285
Measured: static Stopwatch.GetTimestamp [ms]: 187
Measured: Stopwatch+conversion to DateTime [ms]: 319
Compare that with DateTime.Now.Ticks [ms]: 3040

64 bit, Release mode, optimized:

Measured: GetTickCount64() [ms]: 148
Measured: Environment.TickCount [ms]: 31 (is it still worth it?)
Measured: DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks [ms]: 76 (!)
Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedTicks [ms]: 178
Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedMilliseconds [ms]: 226
Measured: static Stopwatch.GetTimestamp [ms]: 175
Measured: Stopwatch+conversion to DateTime [ms]: 246
Compare that with DateTime.Now.Ticks [ms]: 3020

It may be very interesting, that creating a DateTime value to print out the Stopwatch time seems to have nearly no costs. Interesting in a more academic than practical way is that static Stopwatch is slightly faster (as expected). Some optimization points are quite interesting. For example, I cannot explain why Stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds only with 32 bit is so slow compared to it's other variants, for example the static one. This and DateTime.Now more than double their speed with 64 bit.

You can see: Only for millions of executions, the time of Stopwatch begins to matter. If this is really the case (but beware micro-optimizing too early), it may be interesting that with GetTickCount64(), but especially with DateTime.UtcNow, you have a 64 bit (long) timer with less precision than Stopwatch, but faster, so that you don't have to mess around with the 32 bit "ugly" Environment.TickCount.

As expected, DateTime.Now is by far the slowest of all.

If you run it, the code retrieves also your current Stopwatch accuracy and more.

Here is the full benchmark code:

using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;
using System.Threading;
using static System.Environment;

[...]

    [DllImport("kernel32.dll") ]
    public static extern UInt64 GetTickCount64(); // Retrieves a 64bit value containing ticks since system start

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        const int max = 10_000_000;
        const int n = 3;
        Stopwatch sw;

        // Following Process&Thread lines according to tips by Thomas Maierhofer: https://codeproject.com/KB/testing/stopwatch-measure-precise.aspx
        // But this somewhat contradicts to assertions by MS in: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/dn553408%28v=vs.85%29.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396#Does_QPC_reliably_work_on_multi-processor_systems__multi-core_system__and_________systems_with_hyper-threading
        Process.GetCurrentProcess().ProcessorAffinity = new IntPtr(1); // Use only the first core
        Process.GetCurrentProcess().PriorityClass = ProcessPriorityClass.High;
        Thread.CurrentThread.Priority = ThreadPriority.Highest;
        Thread.Sleep(2); // warmup

        Console.WriteLine($"Repeating measurement {n} times in loop of {max:N0}:{NewLine}");
        for (int j = 0; j < n; j++)
        {
            sw = new Stopwatch();
            sw.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < max; i++)
            {
                var tickCount = GetTickCount64();
            }
            sw.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine($"Measured: GetTickCount64() [ms]: {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}");
            //
            //
            sw = new Stopwatch();
            sw.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < max; i++)
            {
                var tickCount = Environment.TickCount; // only int capacity, enough for a bit more than 24 days
            }
            sw.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine($"Measured: Environment.TickCount [ms]: {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}");
            //
            //
            sw = new Stopwatch();
            sw.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < max; i++)
            {
                var a = DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks;
            }
            sw.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine($"Measured: DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks [ms]: {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}");
            //
            //
            sw = new Stopwatch();
            sw.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < max; i++)
            {
                var a = sw.ElapsedMilliseconds;
            }
            sw.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine($"Measured: Stopwatch: .ElapsedMilliseconds [ms]: {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}");
            //
            //
            sw = new Stopwatch();
            sw.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < max; i++)
            {
                var a = Stopwatch.GetTimestamp();
            }
            sw.Stop();
            Console.WriteLine($"Measured: static Stopwatch.GetTimestamp [ms]: {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}");
            //
            //
            DateTime dt=DateTime.MinValue; // just init
            sw = new Stopwatch();
            sw.Start();
            for (int i = 0; i < max; i++)
            {
                var a = new DateTime(sw.Elapsed.Ticks); // using variable dt here seems to make nearly no difference
            }
            sw.Stop();
            //Console.WriteLine($"Measured: Stopwatch+conversion to DateTime [s] with millisecs: {dt:s.fff}");
            Console.WriteLine($"Measured: Stopwatch+conversion to DateTime [ms]:  {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds}");

            Console.WriteLine();
        }
        //
        //
        sw = new Stopwatch();
        var tickCounterStart = Environment.TickCount;
        sw.Start();
        for (int i = 0; i < max/10; i++)
        {
            var a = DateTime.Now.Ticks;
        }
        sw.Stop();
        var tickCounter = Environment.TickCount - tickCounterStart;
        Console.WriteLine($"Compare that with DateTime.Now.Ticks [ms]: {sw.ElapsedMilliseconds*10}");

        Console.WriteLine($"{NewLine}General Stopwatch information:");
        if (Stopwatch.IsHighResolution)
            Console.WriteLine("- Using high-resolution performance counter for Stopwatch class.");
        else
            Console.WriteLine("- Using high-resolution performance counter for Stopwatch class.");

        double freq = (double)Stopwatch.Frequency;
        double ticksPerMicroSec = freq / (1000d*1000d) ; // microsecond resolution: 1 million ticks per sec
        Console.WriteLine($"- Stopwatch accuracy- ticks per microsecond (1000 ms): {ticksPerMicroSec:N1}");
        Console.WriteLine(" (Max. tick resolution normally is 100 nanoseconds, this is 10 ticks/microsecond.)");

        DateTime maxTimeForTickCountInteger= new DateTime(Int32.MaxValue*10_000L);  // tickCount means millisec -> there are 10.000 milliseconds in 100 nanoseconds, which is the tick resolution in .NET, e.g. used for TimeSpan
        Console.WriteLine($"- Approximated capacity (maxtime) of TickCount [dd:hh:mm:ss] {maxTimeForTickCountInteger:dd:HH:mm:ss}");
        // this conversion from seems not really accurate, it will be between 24-25 days.
        Console.WriteLine($"{NewLine}Done.");

        while (Console.KeyAvailable)
            Console.ReadKey(false);
        Console.ReadKey();
    }

Answer 9

You should use the Stopwatch class instead.

Answer 10

I use Environment.TickCount because:

1. The Stopwatch class is not in the Compact Framework.
2. Stopwatch uses the same underlying timing mechanism as TickCount, so the results won't be any more or less accurate.
3. The wrap-around problem with TickCount is cosmically unlikely to be hit (you'd have to leave your computer running for 27 days and then try to measure a time that just happens to span the wrap-around moment), and even if you did hit it the result would be a huge negative time span (so it would kind of stand out).

That being said, I would also recommend using Stopwatch, if it's available to you. Or you could take about 1 minute and write a Stopwatch-like class that wraps Environment.TickCount.

BTW, I see nothing in the Stopwatch documentation that mentions the wrap-around problem with the underlying timer mechanism, so I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that Stopwatch suffers from the same problem. But again, I wouldn't spend any time worrying about it.

Answer 11

I was going to say wrap it into a stopwatch class, but Grzenio already said the right thing, so I will give him an uptick. Such encapsulation factors out the decision as to which way is better, and this can change in time. I remember being shocked at how expensive it can be getting the time on some systems, so having one place that can implement the best technique can be very important.

Answer 12

Overflow compensation

As said before, rollover may happen after 24.9 days, or, if you use an uint cast, after 49.8 days. Because I did not want to pInvoke GetTickCount64, I wrote this overflow compensation. The sample code is using 'byte' to keep the numbers handy. Please have a look at it, it still might contain errors:

using System;
namespace ConsoleApp1 {
    class Program {
        //
        static byte Lower = byte.MaxValue / 3;
        static byte Upper = 2 * byte.MaxValue / 3;
        //
        ///<summary>Compute delta between two TickCount values reliably, because TickCount might wrap after 49.8 days.</summary>
        static short Delta( byte next, byte ticks ) {
            if ( next < Lower ) {
                if ( ticks > Upper ) {
                    return (short) ( ticks - ( byte.MaxValue + 1 + next ) );
                }
            }
            if ( next > Upper ) {
                if ( ticks < Lower ) {
                    return (short) ( ( ticks + byte.MaxValue + 1 ) - next );
                }
            }
            return (short) ( ticks - next );
        }
        //
        static void Main( string[] args ) {
            // Init
            Random rnd = new Random();
            int max = 0;
            byte last = 0;
            byte wait = 3;
            byte next = (byte) ( last + wait );
            byte step = 0;
            // Loop tick
            for ( byte tick = 0; true; ) {
                //
                short delta = Delta( next, tick );
                if ( delta >= 0 ) {
                    Console.WriteLine( "RUN: last: {0} next: {1} tick: {2} delta: {3}", last, next, tick, delta );
                    last = tick;
                    next = (byte) ( last + wait );
                }
                // Will overflow to 0 automatically
                step = (byte) rnd.Next( 0, 11 );
                tick += step;
                max++; if ( max > 99999 ) break;
            }
        }
    }
}

Answer 13

TickCount64

Doing some quick measurements on this new function, I found (optimized, release 64-bit, 1000mio loops):

Environment.TickCount: 2265
Environment.TickCount64: 2531
DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks: 69016

The measurements for not-optimized code were similar. Test code:

static void Main( string[] args ) {
    long start, end, length = 1000 * 1000 * 1000;
    start = Environment.TickCount64;
    for ( int i = 0; i < length; i++ ) {
        var a = Environment.TickCount;
    }
    end = Environment.TickCount64;
    Console.WriteLine( "Environment.TickCount: {0}", end - start );
    start = Environment.TickCount64;
    for ( int i = 0; i < length; i++ ) {
        var a = Environment.TickCount64;
    }
    end = Environment.TickCount64;
    Console.WriteLine( "Environment.TickCount64: {0}", end - start );
    start = Environment.TickCount64;
    for ( int i = 0; i < length; i++ ) {
        var a = DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks;
    }
    end = Environment.TickCount64;
    Console.WriteLine( "DateTime.UtcNow.Ticks: {0}", end - start );
}

Answer 14

For one-shot timing, it's even simpler to write

Stopwatch stopWatch = Stopwatch.StartNew();
...dostuff...
Debug.WriteLine(String.Format("It took {0} milliseconds",
                              stopWatch.EllapsedMilliseconds)));

I'd guess the cosmically unlikely wraparound in TickCount is even less of a concern for StopWatch, given that the ElapsedTicks field is a long. On my machine, StopWatch is high resolution, at 2.4e9 ticks per second. Even at that rate, it would take over 121 years to overflow the ticks field. Of course, I don't know what's going on under the covers, so take that with a grain of salt. However, I notice that the documentation for StopWatch doesn't even mention the wraparound issue, while the doc for TickCount does.