Why does ElapsedTicks * 10 000 not equal ElapsedMilliseconds for .NET's Stopwatch?

Question

I am trying to performance test some code. I am using a stopwatch. When I output the number of milliseconds it always tells me 0 so I thought that I would try the number of ticks. I am seeing that the number of ticks is about 20 000 to 30 000. Looking at the MSDN at TimeSpan.TicksPerMillisecond it says that is 10 000 ticks per millisecond. In that case why are the elapsed milliseconds on my stopwatch not appearing as 2 or 3?

What am I missing? I have even outputed the result on the same line. This is what I get.

Time taken: 26856 ticks, 0 ms

And it is constant.

This is my code which I have running in a loop. I realize that I am creating a new stopwatch every time which isn't very efficient but I don't see how it could skew my results.

Dim SW = New Stopwatch()
SW.Reset()
SW.Start()
MethodCall()
SW.Stop()
Console.WriteLine(String.Format("Time to increase counters: {0} ticks, {1} ms", SW.ElapsedTicks, SW.ElapsedMilliseconds))

Please post your actual code, rather than just a description of it and the output. — Adam Robinson, Jun 09 '10 at 15:51
hey, had the same pb, have no clue why.. did you find anything ? — nicolas, Jun 17 '12 at 15:41
Does this answer your question? [Are Stopwatch.ElapsedTicks and Stopwatch.Elapsed.Ticks always the same?](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1017608/are-stopwatch-elapsedticks-and-stopwatch-elapsed-ticks-always-the-same) — Wai Ha Lee, Sep 29 '21 at 13:43
@WaiHaLee The answer provided by Joe answered my question. That is why I click accepted on his answer. — uriDium, Oct 01 '21 at 14:39

score 10 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 29 '21 at 13:44

10

Stopwatch ticks are different from DateTime Ticks.

The length of a Stopwatch tick depends on the Stopwatch frequency (one tick is one second divided by the frequency, as described in the MSDN documentation for Stopwatch.ElapsedTicks.

It could be argued that Stopwatch.ElapsedTicks was a poor choice of a name for this property because of the potential for confusion with DateTime ticks. I would have preferred something like ElapsedRawTicks, or some other suitable adjectival qualifier to hint that these are not standard Ticks.

edited Sep 29 '21 at 13:44

Wai Ha Lee

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answered Jun 09 '10 at 15:54

Joe

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Oh, I was using TimeSpan.TicksPerMillisecond. Thanks for the link. – uriDium Jun 09 '10 at 15:57

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 09 '10 at 15:51

0

Ensure you're actually starting a Stopwatch and that you're using either Stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds or Stopwatch.Elapsed.TotalMilliseconds.

answered Jun 09 '10 at 15:51

Anton Gogolev

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Why does ElapsedTicks * 10 000 not equal ElapsedMilliseconds for .NET's Stopwatch?

2 Answers2