FEBRUARY 2021 PCWorld 87effectiveness of Nvidia Reflex, which kicks in
harder the heavier your GPU is being utilized.
But many competitive esports players play the
exact opposite way, cranking down all the
visuals to improve frame rates and response
times. How does Nvidia Reflex hold up versus
that standard? We tuned back Fortnite (with
ray tracing off) and Valorant to find out, using
the panel’s full 360Hz speeds.Fortnite, DX12,
Epic Preset
Average PC+ Display latency (milliseconds)
GTX 166060Hz
GTX 1660144Hz
GTX 1660360Hz
RTX 308060Hz
RTX 3080144Hz
RTX 3080360Hz
SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE50.2
46.5
44.7
47.2
22.9
21.8CSGO, High
Visual Settings
Average PC+ Display latency (milliseconds)
GTX 166060Hz
GTX 1660144Hz
GTX 1660360Hz
RTX 308060Hz
RTX 3080144Hz
RTX 3080360Hz
SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE24.6
20.7
18.5
22.9
17.9
16.5Valorant, High
Visual Settings
Average PC+ Display latency (milliseconds)
GTX 166060Hz
GTX 1660144Hz
GTX 1660360Hz
RTX 308060Hz
RTX 3080144Hz
RTX 3080360Hz
SHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE19.6
14.3
11.8
16.5
12.7
11.2that faster displays provide. We also threw in
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive because it’s
massively popular—and to drive home the
fact that Nvidia Reflex and Reflex Latency
Analyzer are mutually exclusive. CSGO
doesn’t support the Nvidia Reflex Low
Latency Mode APIs, but you can still measure
its latency (and the latency of any game) with
Nvidia’s tools. We tested all three games with
the highest visual settings possible, with
Reflex off and ray tracing disabled in Fortnite.
Latency scales down as refresh rates go
up, as you’d expect. While upgrading to a
360Hz monitor definitely provides more
responsiveness, 144Hz seems like the sweet
spot, with diminishing returns thereafter—
especially if you’re playing esports games
with an ultra-potent GPU like the RTX 3080.
Now let’s do something completely
different. We’ve been testing these titles with
maxed-out graphics settings to test the