How to make game controls responsive at high settings?

But why is it so important? After all, when computers surpassed the 60 FPS bar many years ago, everyone immediately appreciated how smooth the animations and camera movement became. The visual difference between 60 and 120 FPS is harder for an observer to feel, not to mention higher frame rates. But the player himself feels that the movements are becoming more accurate, he reacts faster to what is happening on the screen and more easily hits the targets. After all, the frame rate in the game directly depends on how long it takes the computer to prepare the next frame. In other words, the response delay between pressing a key or moving the mouse and changing the image on the screen is reduced.

The overall lag in a computer is made up of many components. Even the mouse and keyboard take some time to process the press, and then, to put it simply, the CPU, the graphics card, and finally the monitor. The problem on the side of the monitor has already been solved by high-speed screens with a refresh rate higher than the standard 60 Hz. The newest monitors 1920×1080 reach a frequency of 360 Hz, matrices of the 2560×1440 standard stopped at 240, and 3840×2160 (4K) – 144 Hz.

For such refresh rates to make sense, the PC itself needs to be able to deliver higher frame rates. In undemanding games, such as CS: GO or Dota 2, you can wind up hundreds of FPS on almost any hardware, but this will not work with modern titles, especially when it comes to demanding projects with real-time ray tracing. We’ll have to rely on a frame rate within 100 FPS (provided a sufficiently powerful video card), or even less.

NVIDIA Reflex – what it is and why you need it

The good news is that you can still enjoy cutting edge graphics and low latency at the same time. Of course, the frame rate is closely related to latency, but this is not the only, and sometimes not the main thing that affects them. Returning in the illustration above, we will see that the computer’s central processing unit is the first stage after the input devices where latency occurs. If the CPU is powerful enough for the video card to not have time to process all its commands, the GPU will act as the bottleneck. After all, the central processor in this case prepares several frames for future use. As a result, because of such a “queue” the reaction of the game lags behind the user’s actions by several frames – the delay increases dramatically.

And if with games on DirectX 9 and 11 this problem can be partially solved by activating the driver of the “Ultra” mode of low latency in the control panel, which reduces the frame queue between the CPU and the GPU, then for games with DirectX 12 and ray tracing, a new solution at the engine level is needed games.

This is the use NVIDIA Reflex technology, which is already supported in some competitive games. Thanks to Reflex, the timing of sending commands to the GPU is dynamically adjusted so that the video card is ready to deal with the next frame just before finishing the previous one. And it shows itself more efficiently than the Ultra Low Latency Mode in the driver. At the same time, the delay, even with ray tracing enabled, becomes less than with lower graphics settings. And if the game does not support RTX, then even without it, Reflex will give a tangible result with the same graphics settings or a higher screen resolution.

The technology can work so efficiently that in the same game, the response lag when ray tracing is enabled with Reflex is not much different from the lag experienced by a system with lowered graphics settings without tracing, but also without Reflex. And in those games that do not support ray tracing, Reflex will allow you to switch to a higher screen resolution without harm to the reaction speed or simply reduce the delay with the same graphics settings, thereby providing the player with an advantage in the match.

Reflex also has an additional option called Low Latency Boost. If the lion’s share of the latency is on the CPU (as in undemanding games or on a system with a weak CPU), the graphics chip usually drops clock speeds, reducing power consumption and heating. But when the Low Latency Boost mode is activated, it maintains high frequencies in order to process commands coming from the CPU as quickly as possible.

At the moment, seven popular titles have already received support from Reflex. These are Apex Legends, Destiny 2, Fortnite, Valorant and three versions of Call of Duty – Black Ops Cold War, Modern Warfare and Warzone. In the future, Reflex will appear in Cuisine Royale, Enlisted, Kovaak 2.0 and Mordhau.

Another nice thing is that the technology works on all NVIDIA cards starting with the GTX 9XX series on the Maxwell architecture, so the owners of older cards will not be left offended.

How to measure response delay

We’ll check which games, what hardware and what graphics settings Reflex works best on. But first we need to tell you how we are going to measure the reaction delay and how the players themselves can do it. We will use a specialized NVIDIA LDAT device in our tests, which consists of a photosensitive sensor and a modified mouse. If you fix the sensor in the desired area of ​​the screen (for example, near the barrel of a weapon, where a flash occurs when fired), it will show with high accuracy how much time has passed between pressing the mouse button and changing the picture. Note that the program that controls LDAT can be run on a second computer, and then it will certainly not be able to learn anything about the test conditions – the game, settings and hardware configuration.

Recently, LDAT functionality has been built into the latest eSports monitors from ACER, Alienware, ASUS and MSI with 360Hz refresh rate and G-SYNC. To use them, it is enough to connect the mouse through the port on the monitor, select the area of ​​interest, and the reaction time will be displayed in the corner after each click. In GeForce Experience, there is an option that makes it possible to monitor the delays at different stages. It is supported by ASUS ROG Chakram Core, Logitech G PRO Wireless, Razer DeathAdder V2 Pro and SteelSeries Rival 3. If you use a different mouse, it doesn’t matter – just the reaction time will be calculated as the latency “inside” the PC and monitor, excluding the mouse (which for the listed models is 0.6 to 3.1 ms with a wired connection).

What does a high refresh rate monitor do?

Reflex is a promising solution to the latency problem in games with modern graphics. But the greatest effect one way or another will give a fast monitor, while Reflex can be used as an add-on. A display with a high refresh rate will not only make the game more visually pleasing, but can also give you an edge.

Let’s check how this is expressed in terms of reaction time. Let’s take two light games in which it is easy to squeeze more than 500-700 FPS out of a modern computer – CS: GO and Valorant – and look at delays with refresh rates of 60, 144 and 360 Hz.

As you can see, if you enable vertical sync (that is, limit the frame rate to the refresh rate), a modern fast screen can reduce the lag by several times. But even without it, the benefits are tangible.

Impact of NVIDIA Reflex in Fortnite, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, Apex Legends, Valorant

First, a few words about the conditions of the experiment. We selected four games that support Reflex – two with ray tracing (Fortnite and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare) and two non-demanding PCs (Apex Legends and Valorant). They measured the reaction time on two video cards GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and GeForce RTX 3080. The test platform includes one of the best modern processors for games – Intel Core i9-9900K overclocked to 5 GHz.

We will take measurements at three resolutions – 1920 × 1080, 2560 × 1440 and 3840×2160 (4K), and the monitor was set to the maximum refresh rates they supported – 360, 240 and 144 Hz, respectively. Vertical sync has been disabled in all games and G-Sync has been enabled. In the monitor settings, we set the “esports” mode, which provides the lowest possible latency.

All measurements were taken with an NVIDIA LDAT sensor. Our main goal is to find out if the Reflex will be able to combat lag effectively enough to enable traced effects or go to a higher resolution. In this case, even with a loss of frames, the control delay should not change significantly.

Let’s start with Fortnite. Without ray tracing, this is a very undemanding game in which the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3080 easily hit hundreds of FPS. But it is worth enabling RTX even with DLSS scaling in “productive” mode, and the frame rate drops by half. But with the speed of reaction, this does not happen thanks to Reflex. Look, at 2560×1440, the latency on the RTX 3060 Ti didn’t change at all, although the frame rate dropped from 133 to 57 FPS! Or, if you look from a different angle, you can simultaneously turn on Reflex and go from 1920 × 1080 to 2560 × 1440 – the reaction speed is almost not affected if you play on the RTX 3080, and on the RTX 3060 Ti it will only improve.

Fortnite is great for demonstrating the effectiveness of Reflex technology. With ray tracing enabled, the game can power even the latest NVIDIA graphics cards. And it’s when GPU performance is critical that Reflex performs best.

In contrast, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and two related games on the same graphics engine (Black Ops Cold War and Warzone), such accelerators as the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti and RTX 3080, digest without much difficulty. Even the RTX 3060 Ti delivers at least 95 FPS at 2560×1440 with ray tracing and DLSS, while the RTX 3080 delivers 75 FPS in 4K.

But even in such conditions, there is still tangible benefit from Reflex, although for this it is better to load the video card harder. For example, if you enable RTX and DLSS on the RTX 3060 Ti in 2560×1440 mode, Reflex will maintain the same response time, despite the serious drop in frame rate, and on the RTX 3080 platform, the latency in 4K is significantly reduced.

There is no ray tracing in Apex Legends and Valorant. To load the video card (namely, at such moments, Reflex manifests itself most effectively) we set the maximum possible resolution – 4K. The RTX 3060 Ti has the most tangible result – control latency has decreased by about 1.5 times, although the frame rate remains the same. With the more powerful RTX 3080, the gain was not so big, but also significant.

Conclusion

With this technology, you can safely use ray tracing in games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and not pay attention to the fact that the frame rate dropped to 60-74 FPS. Reflex will help reduce the difference in input latency to a minimum, or even keep it at the same level. Reflex shows itself especially well in the mode when the video card is maximally loaded, as can be seen in the examples with the GeForce RTX 3060 Ti. But with the RTX 3080, gamers will also get a tangible effect, especially at 2560 × 1440 and 3840 × 2160 resolutions. In some cases, we can say that Reflex will shorten the response time in the same way as if you change from a monitor with a frequency of 60 Hz to 144 Hz.

Although, of course, Reflex is not a replacement for the modern gaming monitor. A combination of technology with refresh rates 144, 240, or even better 360 Hz will give the ideal result. The 360-hertz models are very recent and provide the fastest response possible. On such a screen, the motion picture looks sharper even when compared to 240 Hz, and changing the old monitor at 60 Hz to 360 Hz is the best thing a gamer can do in order to gain an edge in competitive games. In addition, the new monitors with G-Sync support have a built-in lag measurement module, with the help of which any user can estimate the reaction speed without the need for professional equipment and set up their system for the lowest latency.

NVIDIA Reflex technology can really improve response times, which means it can give the gamer an edge in the competition, even in light games where frame rates are well over 100.