NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency - How It Works & Why You Want To Use It

One year ago I published a video which caused quite a stir. • 40% Less Input Lag Wit...
Yesterday NVIDIA released their Reflex Low Latency feature which they claim fixes what I found last year. So lets find out how it works in todays video! :)
► Reflex Article:
➜ www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/...
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#nvidia #reflex #systemlatency

[@WayStedYou]

Nice to see nvidia took notice of your work

[@dramel12]

put my commentary here for visibility, WHY NVIDIA DONT IMPLEMENTS REFLEX WITH VSYNC ON? FUCKING IDIOTS... , most of vsync's lag comes from cpu prerender frames for example in this video takes ~95ms, the reason is 1 frame delay is = ~16 ms at 60fps because 1/60, tribuffer is 16.666*3 = 50ms, plus 3 cpu render ahead = 50ms, 50 + 50 = ~100ms, battlenonsense said with vsync is not gpu bounded, this is false because graphics card cant do the flip on the buffer because of monitor didnt read the backbuffer and cards needs to backpresure to cpu prerender ahead, this is why limit your framerate below monitor frequency reduces massives input lag because when graphics card finish drawing the frame monitor is more fast and can flip the buffers and dont backpressure to cpu

[@anhedoniac6390]

@- keeps him impartial with the way it is.

[@fwabble]

They should be paying him, his work is OUTSTANDING by KZbin standards. Or perhaps it's best they don't as I currently like trusting him

[@dinguth4695]

@- nah, they could just pay him an analyst fee. Being stuck in a corporations is ass.

[@GP-qb9hi]

This guy literally pushed NVidia to make proper drivers. Incredible!

[@MarcelloBranca]

huuuuge

[@weeedyy_]

the austrian in his forestcity did it 😏😂

[@ryan1696]

The drivers are proper already?! Stop spreading misinformation. Battle(non)sense found that only GPU loaded are helped with Low Latency. The drivers worked but it wasn't enough to help all kinds of users and actually hurt them.

[@Sam-cf9bv]

@@ryan1696 lmao

[@leirex_1]

@@ryan1696 PC games should normally be GPU bound. If your PC is CPU bound, or more commonly called bottlenecked then either the game is poorly optimized or your CPU is too slow for your GPU.

[@Danielfenner]

Really appreciate the work you've done. Helps me understand this very well. Cheers!

[@Isaax]

I wish you had tested with G-Sync on and off...

[@Avioto]

I agree. And with V-Sync turned on in Nvidia control panel instead of ingame.

[@MobyDickkook]

Yes!

[@benediktpaul8045]

Oh yes please - and thanks for all the great analysis content of yours!!!

[@andrej8861]

he already did in previous videos.

[@Mylez_]

I run V-sync forced on with Nvidia control panel and G-sync on WITH RTSS capped at fps 3 below max refresh. Would love to see him compare v-sync and g-sync on/off/mix of both with reflex

[@0verkilla]

We really appreciate your work Chris. It's amazing NVIDIA is taking notes and improving drivers for all of us thanks to your work and analysis done in the past.

[@parsley1978]

Wow this was good. Thanks man I was waiting for this one!

[@Jer0nMr]

4:12 - the information i was looking for a while :D. thanks and cheers!

[@drunkev]

Great work as always Chris! Looking forward to more of your content with various hardware configurations, settings (low/high) and games!

[@camaxide]

excellent work on analysing the issue from the beginning and for making these videos. it makes it easier for everyone else to make the right choices :)

[@Sr7Sr7Sr7]

One reason I can think of that you may want both the limiter and the Reflex mode on at the same time is if you want to keep power consumption/fan noise low and never tear on your G-Sync display (FPS limit), but there are areas in the game where you become GPU limited and drop below the framerate limit. In those areas you would want to keep the latency low (Reflex) and not let the game start to build up that render queue.

[@tristanwegner]

Makes sense

[@DomskiPlays]

LOVE IT! Much support from Österreich :)

[@cutiepatootie1609]

Your are awesome!!! Watching your videos for years now and I always know that these vids help me understand more behind the scenes of gaming. I increased my knowledge... thanks a lot!!!

[@IslamGhunym]

Watching your videos over and over again every month is amazing to remind myself about these things and know what to do to properly config my competitive games ♥️♥️♥️ The most usefull and interesting content that really matters for me on youtube. Keep it up because I really miss you when you stop doing videos for long time

[@TotalTonix]

Amazing work as always. After watching this I read the news article from NVIDIA introducing Reflex and in the first paragraph they give all of this research credit to their "NVIDIA Research Scientists" and give no mention of you or other community contributors. I think you definitely deserved a sponsorship or at least a mention in their blog post. Regardless, you haven't gone unappreciated by the REAL gaming hardware enthusiasts for your hard work.

[@ohmylawwwd2538]

I greatly appreciate you specifying what is required to use this feature. That was not mentioned anywhere easily accessible in the promotional materials. Good to know my current monitor and GPU setup will support it, if the game developer adds this feature to their game.

[@Anon.G]

What? It was clear as day in the promotional materials

[@ohmylawwwd2538]

@@Anon.G I would need to go back and check. I thought I recall seeing a page with a lot of screen space dedicated to promoting new high refresh rate monitors that "support Reflex" and kind of just shrugged and assumed it needed new hardware. I didn't look any further until I saw this video in my subscriptions. This video clarified my confusion and I greatly appreciate it.

[@Anon.G]

@@ohmylawwwd2538 The thing that those monitors support is a latency measuring tool.

[@Kriptoker]

@@Anon.G True, but they did not openly say thats all it was for. They 'Market' it via their 'Gamer' video as you need to have that Monitor and connect your peripherals to it, to take advantage of Reflex.

[@Anon.G]

@@Kriptoker if you actually read the material you'd see how they explained it was just a button implemented in a video game

[@kaddasixseven3581]

As soon as I heard about Reflex I was looking forward to your tests.

[@kwinzman]

I only trust new NVIDIA tech when it get's the Battle(non)sense seal of approval :D

[@CamelEnjoyer]

@@kwinzman Yeah this tech is incredible

[@mdb1010]

so if im using nvidia reflex for warzone can i keep latency mode off? or should i turn it on? thanks

[@alargebeaver]

Thank you. I had just rewatched your video from last year after I did a clean install of windows and was setting my system back up.

[@stoked9004]

Thanks Chris! I will actually try to get the reflex SDK in for my project, now that I saw your results.

[@DimaStefantsovCom]

Thank you for great test and explanations. it's all clear now. While it might not be useful for me, it's good to be up-to-date with modern tech :) Reflex is a good thing. Looks like they made a full circle: introduced render que some old time ago to make some things smoother, and now are not using que again to achieve lower latency. Well done :)

[@Moose78]

Great video as always, appreciate how you educate the community! And exciting to hear how your working with Nvidia on some things, congrats!

[@Hirens.]

Keep up the good work Chris!!

[@genAirRecc]

Dude... amazing stuff. It's awesome that 1.) you had the will to do all the testing and 2.) Nvidia didn't just try to shut you down, but actually listened and made what seems to be a great leap forward. What a crazy year this is

[@Aaron.Broomfield]

Insane video, so much credit due for the work in this video! Thanks for helping me understand! Absolute legend!

[@windexislife]

You are the best at what you do man. You achieve such incredible production value in every video you upload. You should be proud!

[@LilypadOW]

this has been super valuable research for every pc gamer, thank you so much!!!!

[@youp1tralala]

Thank you for this outstanding clear explanation. Was a surprise to discover than a frame limiter lowered latency that much

[@MrSouthernInfo]

Great video man. Keep up the good work!

[@chrisbenn]

Super nice video! :) And nice that you mentioned Blizzard and Overwatch! :)

[@FranAspa-gs6if]

That's an incredibly excellent video ! Thx a lot for that serious work.

[@ReaperHackz]

Thank you so much for this video i can't wait for more tests and mostly for the new cod cw.

[@fubarace1027]

Good information, glad I found this!

[@codcouch1]

I think consistency is way more important than low-latency. While I agree with your methodology and you guys did a great job with Reflex Mode, you overlooked consistency of mouse movements. When I turn on Reflex Mode, I can notice a huge difference when I try to flick to a target. My flicks never go where they're supposed to. They always end up slightly too short or too far. I played for a couple of months with reflex mode on before I realized this inconsistency was happening. Once I turned Reflex Mode off, I instantly felt the difference. My flicks were way more consistent. Now if I miss, it's because I messed up or the enemy suddenly strafed the other direction, not because my cursor ended up in a different spot than it should have. This is ultimately the problem with Reflex Mode and why you shouldn't use it. I would suggest putting the mouse on a track or something and measuring mouse movement versus character rotation. I predict that you will find a huge discrepancy when Reflex Mode is enabled. Here you would get a much more important metric than just latency. Character rotation is way more important than low-latency clicks. Not knocking your findings so far, you did a great job, keep it up.

[@FangSuckTV]

I kinda partly agree with you, i perform better with On + Boost. I enable it all the time including to ULLM, but i never tested in deep myself

[@karlkarlsson9126]

Spot on. I noticed this as well, although I can't decide which one I should play with. Consistency gives you a calm and stability, it helps keeping you in place, while reflex/latency-mode makes things highly responsive but makes up for a very stressful experience without really having 100% control. So if you want to create flicks from muscle memory you would be better off with consistency, reflex/latency-mode have a tendency to get you quick kills but the flicks is not always reliable. It's a bit unfortunate that I have gotten used to latency mode and mouse acceleration in games, it feels weird when you try to test to play with consistency now, it's like the games becomes slow but at the same time so stable. But my recommendations for gamers out there is to stick with what you have been getting used to, and then slowly try to feel test your way into new things that may give you better results. The most important in games is to decrease input-delay and keep it responsive.

[@tritratrullala5892]

Regarding 2:06 , when using Vulkan there is a render queue presentation mode VK_PRESENT_MODE_MAILBOX_KHR which avoids that old frames pile up in the queue. Basically this mode replaces old (not yet used) frames in the queue with fresh frames which should avoid input lag. So you could still have a queue of size 3 to avoid stuttering while also avoiding sending outdated frames to the GPU at the same time.

[@tritratrullala5892]

I wonder if NVidia Reflex is just utilizing this presentation mode (DirectX should support similar presentation mode)?

[@Tri-Technology]

That's just quality content! Which tools are you using to make your footage? Your recordings looks so smooth and the graphics are so well done, too!

[@tech-daddy]

Excellent vidéo and results!

[@Hibitrate916]

Thank you so much Chris !

[@60atrws44]

This is amazing, great video!

[@Jo3yization]

Appreciate the testing but,, many gamers that care about 10ms-20ms of input latency are also going to be running competitive(low) settings at framerates 144fps+. Input latency reductions are much larger when comparing 60 to 120fps, but 60 vs 70fps is small to begin with. You _are_ showing a 22ms latency reduction from freeing up the render queue which is VERY helpful, but the FPS-related latency reduction is only 7ms at best since you're comparing only a 12fps difference, if you had been running low settings at *actual* high framerates the latency reductions or diminishing returns would be very interesting to see.

[@TonezzUK]

I think the point of it is to show it works and its an improvement. Meaning it will be an improvement at any level. Does it really matter by how much? Whatever it is, it will be the best you can get.

[@CamelEnjoyer]

It is still an improvement

[@terry-]

what people dont undestand what battlenonse explained in the series of videos related to latency and fps cap. is that reflex is just the same as capping you game with the ingame fps limiter. just cap your game to your max stable fps withing the game. and that is it. its a no hustle setting at best, but nothing new.

[@TonezzUK]

@@terry- But also shows if your CPU is decent enough to run with your GPU maxing out then going uncapped with Reflex on will lower latency compared to any cap you implement.

[@terry-]

@@TonezzUK yes but that is an inconsistent latency, meaning its not the best for competitive where you want always the same predictable and stable delay.

[@Defox.]

Thanks for the tests! I really want to see the tests comparing InGame "FPS limiter" vs "Nvidia FPS limiter" with "NVIDIA Reflex" enabled, pls! I would also very much like to see how "NVIDIA Reflex" affects the frame time stability in the scenario of the InGame "FPS limiter" and "Nvidia FPS limiter".

[@royhsieh4307]

i would say the limiters are more stable than the latency mode. but not as numerically attractive to improve pc response, i also had quite a bit of stability issues with the reflex/low latency mode.

[@Sanchez._]

Thank you so much for sharing!

[@99.99.9]

Love the dark themed charts! Thank you!

[@Leandru07]

Excelent video. Thanks!

[@JohnSmith-id6qm]

Keep up the good work mate you are doing an ace job

[@MouseLab]

Do the test in a game running at 144/240 FPS. The people who care about system latency plat at these frame rates.

[@Anon.G]

Yeah any competitive game should be run at 300+ fps to reduce latency

[@iLLicitNz78]

@_Nism0 Exactly how i run my pc

[@DSCAKTV]

@THE VOID that is the bios seetings my boy

[@narc0polo966]

@_Nism0 Good players don't care about all that.

[@1BlinkwithAngels82]

@_Nism0 Whats the difference in latency to a current windows 10 build? Seems like an insane level of work/sacrifice to achieve something probably minimal.

[@Collin4486]

This is all info Nvidia should have given us. Thank you for your work!

[@CarloLeonKolega]

I dont understand any topic before watching your videos but they are so damn good that I learn easy

[@LumpyPancakes]

This is really cool tech, but I have come to appreciate the consistency of gaming at a locked frame rate. I think even with this technology enabled, 200 fps will still feel significantly different than 120 fps, so I think I'll stick to capping fps for now. Nice video man!

[@iamone_]

Thank you for your time to analyse all that. I would like to know what is latency when you don't use gsync on because i like ULMB. And what is latency when you turn on Vsync + ULMB and reflex?

[@Eduardo1007]

Please produce more testing with other games and graphics cards! This is great information

[@ohdudez]

awesome video! im guessing playing with g-sync will have latency the same as vsync disabled then?

[@Avean]

Hopefully games will start to use this now cause its going to be a config nightmare until then. In Fortnite simply use Reflex, but in other games we have to still use frame rate limiter and for those high fps games where we are gpu bound low latency mode needs to be enabled.

[@MarcelloBranca]

very nice vid , as always 😀

[@jimez86]

Was waiting for this video, good job!

[@jordizaz]

best content on the subjet i wish you keep making some more videos

[@smin4089]

nVidia and Battlenonsense is a tech industry love story UWU Happy to see that the latency tool is accurate and making your life easier!

[@cordobadebear]

Excellent work!

[@johnpeap]

Great work man

[@slimal1]

Thank you for the explanation

[@eckooo000]

OMG I can't tell you how happy I am to hear that NVIDIA listens to Battle(non)sense. This is the only channel I trust.

[@Rosineren]

From your previous videos you've recommended the FPS-Capper from RTSS = Consistent frametime, Ingame FPS Cap = Less input lag. How is the frametime spacing with just the Reflex Low latency and no FPS cap?

[@vivaciencia9329]

THis is a paper worth research and effort fitted in a video. Thank you very much.

[@ScrapZero]

I'm impressed by how scientific you are in your testing. Thank you for doing the work. I know this takes time and greatly appreciate you. You deserve a much larger following!

[@Turboman750]

In the most recent driver revisions I see that with a G-sync/G-sync compatible display and G-sync enabled within the nvidia control panel, enabling V-Sync along with Reflex in game sets a frame rate limit below your monitors refresh rate (158fps on a 165hz g-sync display). I can only confirm this on a 30 series GPU. Do you have any confirmation that this does not add any additional input lag?

[@GOD4SENPAI]

Thank you 😊👍

[@umut2362]

Very informative, thanks. I use vsync on and cap the frame to 59.9 and triple buffering on and I dont notice any delays. So maybe you may want to cap frame rate to 59.9 and keep triple buffering on. Keep up the good work

[@Priorix1889]

If you stay below 60 fps triple buffering doesn't do anything. In an other video he showed that it is best to lock the frame rate ~3-5 frames below the refresh rate of the monitor which is why you see those 139 fps limits in his tests.

[@CamelEnjoyer]

Incredible work. You got nvidia to create this awesome technology from your testing

[@Aruhito_0]

Insane.. I remember times when removing Screen Tear was the most crazy shit ever.. But this is just next level another one on top

[@HappyBeezerStudios]

Those ultra low latency mode results are interesting. Means I keep it off as I'm usually CPU bound.

[@StevenMussels]

With an RTX 3090, this guide is golden. 4K 72Hz monitor and some titles just had insane latency that felt horrible while others did not. Using reflex and ULL where possible and a 69Hz FPS cap for everything else just works... everything is smooth. It feels more or less the same as my 165Hz panel despite the lower frame rates, because the system and render latency end up more or less the same... not much outside of Esports titles on low settings can maintain 160FPS without ever dipping.

[@heyguyslolGAMING]

Dude this is an awesome video, tyvm. I normally run Gsync + Fast Sync as recommended by Nvidia as I have run into screen tearing issues if I just run Gsync w/ a Nvidia CP frame rate limiter but if I use Fast Sync and no frame rate limiter I get no tearing. I'm curious does Fast Sync suffer from the same latency issues as normal Vsync?

[@kev2633]

Thanks Chris

[@DANNYonPC]

Danny: this is kinda made for Battlenonsense Someone from Nvidia: yea it kinda is lol

[@TechNicoe]

Thank you for this video! What about with G-Sync on?

[@stephenkamenar]

was waiting for this one. couldn't figure out wtf reflex was based on what nvidia said

[@BattousaiHBr]

nice heals at the end chris.

[@leobitencourt4719]

I'm actually very happy there's a quicker way for you to perform your tests now! I'm also very happy with the fact Nvidia is supporting this on the 900 series onwards. I saw that being announced and immediately thought about your video on GPU Load and was sure it had something to do with it, and was also sure it would a feature exclusive to 3000 series, but here we are. I didn't plan to buy any RTX 3000 GPU as my 1070ti is serving me very well, but that low latency thing made me reconsider, since I thought I wouldn't have it. I'm actually loosing my "nvidia is greedy" superstition a little bit...

[@tosemusername]

Hey Chris. 1- Thanks for the video; 2- You should test this with G-Sync to see how well it gets along with Reflex, more specifically, frame-capping the game to a monitor's native refresh rate with Reflex on and G-Sync enabled. Here's why this is THE biggest thing in PC gaming ever, and why Nvidia should be focusing on it instead of RTX and Ray tracing bullshit. There always have been some compromises made in PC gaming because every component (CPU, GPU, monitor) was doing their own thing, not to mention higher level problems, such as games with locked framerates. The rise of competitive gaming put the nail in the coffin of this last one, adaptive sync tied the GPU and monitor, but the CPU was still off the hook. Until now. The days of frame-pushing are numbered, along with the cons of frame-capping. This is the first time ever we can call PC gaming efficient. In theory, no component does more work than it needs to, which lowers power consumption and heat output, and yet it still retains all the benefits of low input lag, low delay to show a rendered frame on the monitor, and no tearing. This is it, guys, that breakthrough you hope it happens someday, kind of like what it felt to experience Pascal's performance. If Microsoft adds this to DX12 and/or Reflex/G-Sync works flawlessly on Linux, I feel like I can die in peace.

[@agoogleuser9025]

Glad that my oldy GTX 850M laptop still supports this feature, however, I'm confused, is it still better/smoother to use the in-game frame limiter or utilize NVIDIA Reflex at On+Boost and disable the frame limiter? I am running Valorant at very low and 144FPS cap for my 74Hz overclocked 1080P panel but using a non-native 5:4 resolution. Appreciate for any help with this one!

[@robkozura]

You make the games we play better. Thank you++

[@TheLomsor]

Thanks for the tests! Are there any indications what option is the most consistent when it comes to latency? It isn't really obvious if a fixed frame rate or the Reflex feature is better in that regard now. I could test in apex legends but I am pretty sure that 'feeling' alone won't be precise enough.

[@Megaranator]

based on those graphs he showed having reflex on is better even if you are limiting frame rate

[@pasi123567]

Everything is stable when it comes to latency. Just look at the numbers. The longest delay and shortest delay differences are similar in every case

[@drakedbz]

The thing I'd really like to see is how this affects latency with g-sync on/off with fps limiters below, at, and above the refresh rate of the monitor.

[@elvoandro7087]

your videos are perfect for someone like me who has thousand of other obligation but still would like some nice monitor or mice when i have free time to play and i do not have to do day long research on the thing, thank you from an ship navigation officer.

[@naughtyboy8565]

Is there any way we could see Reflex tested vs Radeon Anti-Lag in a high-framerate scenario? As many have pointed out, the people most interested in latency optimisation play competitive titles at high refresh/framerates - from that perspective, it's important to know which manufacturer has the better latency-reduction solution when deciding what card to buy

[@playnvanilla5176]

@Battle(non)sense, can you confirm or deny if using a second monitor during testing affects the results?

[@G5U5]

excellent question

[@ojikakun]

I'd also like to see the test (like other) on high frame rate gaming and low settings

[@centric3073]

I wonder how apex will be affected? I was following your work for almost 3 years now and the delay on that game (following your data) is much more delayed than others of course we need to forget the network delay (Still work to be done) but hope you will do a test on that game when it comes to system delay when reflex is enabled? Great content as always keep up the great work. Thanks........

[@ColdHawk]

Thank you for the phenomenal video! That was an impressive, elegantly simple explanation.

[@prasaddd]

Superb video

[@larryt1004]

This guy is so smart that I'm so lost as to what I need to do. Lol can you just tell me what settings I should do?

[@lHawkee]

Awesome video again Chris! But I'm really sad that game developer need to implement this feature because that means older games like BF4 or BF3 will not get it T__T

[@Pfsensepluss]

@Chris I love and appreciate your videos and shared knowledge, I have one Question, can you share a little about yourself, what is your background that you have all this knowledge, I'm asking out of curiosity and mean no disrespect. Thanks keep up the great work.

[@TheNikjay]

My guess would be he spends a lot of time reading articles, manuals, instructions, forums and tests it himself to find the right answer

[@davidpinheiro5295]

Thats awsome! All we need now is more games supporting this and a simillar feature for radeon users or something open-source. Even single player games would benefit from this, everything is better the lower the latency!

[@MagdyDoze]

Overwatch has dropped the feature in the PTR...looking forwards to the tests!

[@clatzeo]

This is the exact video I wanted to watch when searching about nvidia low latency. I have noticed that "Boost" can create some glitch in scenarios, as I'm running 720p, 60hz. I am not sure what "Boost" does over the ON. I have seen great performance around 250-300fps with Nvidia Low Latency=ON (no boost). Like the latency is so much reduced for us potato gamers, so it helps us compete the 120Hz gamers. There's only internet-delay that could give any "technical" damage at this point, but most of the time all of the players are hovering over 30ms (In most of my games), and rarely someone's getting 20ms. Given that, I'm 100% in favor of ALWAYS turning N-latency ON, in-game if present. If your GPU getting jetty, then instead lower the resolution and other graphical settings. I have read somewhere in comments, that Boost is only giving performance improvements on 2K or 4K monitors.

[@grambo1980]

There is digital foundry and then there is battle nonsense. Good stuff man

[@RiasatSalminSami]

Driver nvidia low latency is still important. On games with Vsync on, setting it to on at least reduces the pre rendered frames to 1 which reduces input lag on vsync on games, noticed especially with resident evil 6.

[@GrundleStiltSkin]

can you do a video explaining all of those settings in nvidia control panel, use cases and scenarios thanks dude

[@TwoCenk]

May you also test CPU bound with Nvidia Reflex? We might still need ingame FPS cap for it.

[@mox9574]

Best video on the subject

[@djlimited04]

What's the outro song? Other than that, very informative video!