Why Thread.Sleep waits longer than requested when other apps are running?

Question

I have a small problem regarding threading in C#. For some reason, my thread speeds up from 32ms delay to 16ms delay when I open Chrome, when I close Chrome it goes back to

Answer 1

Basically, Thread.Sleep isn't very accurate.

Thread.Sleep(1000/60) (which evaluates to Thread.Sleep(16)), asks the thread to go to sleep and come back when 16ms has elapsed. However, that thread might not get to execute again until a greater amount of time has elapsed; say, for example, 32ms.

As for why Chrome is having an effect, I don't know but since Chrome spawns one new thread for each tab, it'll have an effect on the system's threading behaviour.