Well, higher than non-composited, non-vsynced X11 (but yes there are fun solutions like trying to render at the end of a frame to let the clients run ahead). But any reasonable major DE was doing compositing, and even minimal WM enthusiasts typically ran xcompmgr/compton/whatever because we're not in the Windows 95 era. Comparing to that, Wayland is much better, with direct async communication between the client and compositor, instead of Xorg acting as a glorified IPC broker that can get busy processing stuff…

Yes, but there is work in progress to fix this:

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/wayland/wayland-protocols/-/m...

vsync always on doesn't have to translate to higher latency.

On NVIDIA/Windows, the recommended setting for lowest latency is VSYNC+GSYNC enabled.

https://blurbusters.com/gsync/gsync101-input-lag-tests-and-s...