Speed of accessing ConVar values?

[Vioxtar]

If I plan on accessing a certain ConVar value repeatedly, say on a think hook, or even a draw hook - would it be faster to set the new ConVar value on a localized variable and use that instead, or will that have no speed benefit?

[Trackster]

performance wise? Nothing that you would ever notice

[tobiasxzz]

If you really want to micro-optimize, you can cache the values and refresh them every 1/6 of a second or something. For things like crosshairs that use a lot of convars and aren't changed too often, this would probably be the best solution, but even if you don't the performance cost probably won't be too noticable.

[polivilas]

Pretty hard performance impact.
Use local variable + callback instead.

[G😹nz😻]

local convar = CreateConVar("test_convar", 5, FCVAR_ARCHIVE)
local temp = nil
local alternative = 5
local now = SysTime()

for k=0, 100000 do
temp = convar:GetInt()
end

MsgN("ConVar time: ",SysTime() - now)

now = SysTime()

local now = SysTime()

for k=0, 100000 do
alternative = 5

end

MsgN("Manual assigment time: ",SysTime() - now)

Accessing 100k times a convar by it return

ConVar time: 0.0066550221105217
Manual assigment time: 9.4952056997499e-05

https://i.imgur.com/ymAgeuV.png

Other cases:

Writing in FCVAR_ARCHIVE:
ConVar time: 0.11833663855452
Manual assigment time: 9.5262357831416e-05

Without FCVAR_ARCHIVE:
ConVar time: 0.11539622779685
Manual assigment time: 0.00010395078129477

Read no cache
ConVar time: 0.0085528220465676
Manual assigment time: 9.1538747710729e-05

Writing no cache
ConVar time: 1.4873982174456
Manual assigment time: 0.00012815424702239

This is not a real world test, but it gives you an idea that it doesn't matter that much, but cache your convars