.NET System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch issue (returns values too low)

Question

On my computer the Stopwatch is returning values way too low. For example, 200 ms when I specified Thread.Sleep(1000). The program is supposed to wait 1 second. I a

Answer 1

I know this an old question, but I thought I'd provide my 2 cents after struggling with the same problem:

I started looking at the Frequency as suggested by @AllonGuralnek and it did provide the accurate time in seconds, but it dropped the remaining milliseconds which I also wanted to capture.

Anyway, after a lot of back and forth and not getting anywhere with this, I noticed that the sw.Elapsed had a Ticks property and this one provided me with the accurate number of ticks and once converted back it provided me with an accurate time.

Code wise, this is what I ended up with:

Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();
sw.Start();

... DO WORK

sw.Stop();

long elapsedTicks = sw.Elapsed.Ticks;
Debug.WriteLine(TimeSpan.FromTicks(elapsedTicks).ToString());

When running a test, calling:

• sw.Elapsed.ToString() : "00:00:11.6013029"

• sw.ElapsedTicks : Returns "40692243" and converts to "00:00:04.0692243" when calling TimeSpan.FromTicks(sw.ElapsedTicks).ToString() which is inaccurate.

• sw.Elapsed.Ticks : Returns "116013029" and converts to "00:00:11.6013029" when calling TimeSpan.FromTicks(sw.Elapsed.Ticks).ToString() which accurate.

While I may be missing something, I feel it doesn't make sense that sw.ElaspedTicks returns a different value than sw.Elapsed.Ticks, so if someone wants to shed some light on this, please do, but from my point of view, I see it as a bug and if not, at least it feels very inconsistent!.

NOTE: Calling sw.ElapsedTicks / Stopwatch.Frequency returns 11 (i.e. seconds) but as I said, it drops the milliseconds which is no use to me.