Question: I've noticed some strange behaviour that may or may not be specific to my system. (lenovo t430 running windows 8) With this script: import time now = time.time() while True: then = now now = time.time() dif = now - then print(dif) time.sleep(0.01)  I get the following output (what I would consider nominal) with a browser open.   However without a browser open I observe a severe per loop latency.   Obviously this is counter-intuitive as I think anyone would expect better performance when you have fewer concurrant processes.  Any insights or simple replication of these results would be appreciated. EDIT: Interestingly I observe similar latency with this code: import time now = time.time() def newSleep(mark,duration): count = 0 while time.time()-mark < duration: count+=1 print(count) while True: then = now now = time.time() dif = now - then print(dif) #time.sleep(0.01) newSleep(now,0.01)  While it does provide additional insight - that is some instances of latent loops are due to lack of processor availability (noted by a count of 0 being printed)- I still notice the 15ms behavior where the printed count will be as high as 70k... and 10ms behavior with counts around 40k.

Answer: I extra fired up Windows 7 to replicate your findings and I can confirm it. It's a Windows thing with the type of timer used and a default resolution of 15.6 ms (minimum 0.5 ms). Applications can alter the current resolution (WinAPI function: timeBeginPeriod) and Chrome does so.  This function affects a global Windows setting. Windows uses the lowest value (that is, highest resolution) requested by any process. Setting a higher resolution can improve the accuracy of time-out intervals in wait functions. However, it can also reduce overall system performance, because the thread scheduler switches tasks more often. High resolutions can also prevent the CPU power management system from entering power-saving modes. Setting a higher resolution does not improve the accuracy of the high-resolution performance counter.  An article from 2014 in Forbes is covering a bug in Chrome which would set the resolution permanently to 1 ms no matter what current load would require - a problem because it's a system-wide effect with impact on energy consumption. From that article:  In an OS like Windows, events are often set to run at intervals. To save power, the processor sleeps when nothing needs attention, and wakes at predefined intervals. This interval is what Chrome adjusts in Windows, so reducing it to 1.000ms means that the system is waking far more often than at 15.625ms. In fact, at 1.000ms the processor is waking 1000 times per second. The default, of 15.625ms means the processor wakes just 64 times per second to check on events that need attention. Microsoft itself says that tick rates of 1.000ms might increase power consumption by "as much as 25 per cent".  You can get the default resolution from Python with time.get_clock_info().  namespace = time.get_clock_info('time') namespace.adjustable # True namespace.implementation # 'GetSystemTimeAsFileTime()' namespace.monotonic # False namespace.resolution # 0.015600099999999999  You can get the actual resolution from cmd with the ClockRes applet.