hey yall, papi optimizer here

tl;dr: if you have a lowend-midrange nvidia gpu (say, nvidia 16xx and back) and have messed around in the nvidia control panel, disable ultra low latency mode in there and let reflex inside valorant handle the job

optional: if youre on a super low spec pc, disabling nvidia reflex in game as well can help with your performance. prerendered frames are really important in cpu bound scenarios.

also optional: if your internet is relatively jittery, and ur ping is all over the place, increase network buffering to moderate or maximum in gameplay settings. this will cause an incredibly difficult to notice change in feel of movement, but eliminate any rubberbanding if you have no packet loss, only late packets from variable ping. this is adjusting the server interp and polling rate to your client, but giving u no server side advantages. basically its changing what the server considers late/lost packets, and is loosening up more along the lines of cs:go

so, i currently play the game on a computer thats nothing special. i7 2600k, a 970, 16gb ddr, samsung ssd

this sandy bridge processor has been killing new releases on medium - high for nearly a decade so ive never felt a need to upgrade. still dont. but i noticed something mad peculiar about valorant that i just wasnt experiencing in other games.

the internet is notoriously unstable, but a little bit of network jitter should be expected from clients to server and handled through interpolation, packet buffering, etc. after an exhaustive week of troubleshooting every connection in my networking setup and ensuring my connection was rock solid, i turned towards valorant which seems to be the only game i have these networking issues with

like small jitter != rubberbanding while jiggle peeking. thats crazy.

then as i continued to think about it, maybe its not? hear me out. nvidia reflex is a dev-side api that riot implemented that when turned on, optimizes the engine to deliver the request to render a frame right as, and only when its needed. great for reducing render to input latency for powerful computers.

but me being on a decent but still relatively weak pc, im always lookin to optimize baby.

so long ago i discovered the ultra low latency option in nvidia graphics settings, and set it global. it just sounded like something good, and ive seen many guides posted on this exact subreddit suggesting people to use it to reduce latency. but you gotta differentiate between latency and throughput. if your frames are often dipping below the server tickrate (128) or your monitors refresh rate (prob 144, maybe 60) then this option is doing you no favors.

low latency mode set to ultra means absolutely no prerendered frames for your gpu. meaning it can only render, the absolute second the application calls for it. i hope youre starting to see where im going with this. setting it to on is a good middle ground, as that caps prerendered frames at 1, but if youre seeing fatty fps dips you should just turn it off.

now the connection to networking. if you didnt know, packets are attached to frames. if youre getting less than 128 frames per second, regardless of your monitors refresh rate, youre sending updates to the server at a rate lower than everyone else and are objectively at a competitive disadvantage.

now you couple in the concept of your gpu refusing to prerender any frames AND any small amount of network jitter AND jiggle peeking a corner, constantly culling (not rendering) anything behind the box/wall and then constantly asking it to render again in an engine where this call is only made the instant its needed and no predictive rendering can occur (cat on ascent CT side box is a great place to imagine) it starts to all come together as to whats going on here

if you have a super fast cpu/gpu and stable as fuck internet connection, sure, enable ultra low latency mode and reflex in game. if youre anyone else, or anything like me, set that shit to off driver side, or at the very least to just on to keep it down to 1 frames. optional: if youre on a super low spec pc, disabling nvidia reflex in game as well can help with your performance. prerendered frames are really important in cpu bound scenarios. the change in latency will be negligible, but the increase in fps and smoothness of packet transfer will not be.