76 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2021REVIEWS TESTED: NVIDIA REFLEX
Valorant, and Fortnite. But Reflex is actually
Nvidia’s overarching brand name for a wide
range of new latency-obsessed tools. Yes, the
Low Latency Mode being added to games is
part of it, but on Tuesday, Nvidia and its
partners are also rolling out blisteringly fast
360Hz G-Sync Esports monitors with Reflex
Latency Analyzer built in. If you’ve invested in
compatible accessories, Reflex Latency
Analyzer keeps tabs on the entire pipeline
from the millisecond you click your mouse to
the millisecond the game renders your gun
shooting, helping you identify which parts of
your system are acting as a bottleneck.
Nvidia’s Reflex Latency Analyzer and the
Reflex Low Latency Mode being introduced
to leading esports games are two very
different technologies, with two very different
use cases, and perhaps two slightly different
audiences. But they’re both focused on the
same underlying goal: making your games
more responsive. You don’t need one to use
the other. And better yet, Reflex Latency
Analyzer’s powers let us evaluate the
effectiveness of both, as well as measure how
much faster your reactions would be if youinvested in a pricier graphics card (go.
pcworld.com/bggc) or a high refresh rate
monitor.
Studies have shown that lower latency can
improve your shot accuracy and kill-to-death
ratios in competitive esports. Today, we’re
going to quantify responsiveness across a
wide range of scenarios. Buckle up.NVIDIA REFLEX LOW
LATENCY MODE
First, let’s dig into the Nvidia Reflex Low
Latency Mode you may already be seeing in
the games you play. (For brevity, we’ll call the
software SDK “Nvidia Reflex” from here on
out.) If you’re just interested in raw benchmark
results for a wide variety of scenarios,
consider jumping straight to our
benchmarking section instead (see page 84).
Nvidia Reflex is an optional set of APIs that
developers can choose to implement in their
game to reduce latency. It works particularly
well in heavily GPU-bound scenarios—if
you’re playing an esports game on a higher-
resolution monitor, or crank up all the eye
candy, you’ll see the most significantHow Nvidia Reflex improves latency in games.