NVIDIA Reflex is a new innovation designed to minimize input latency with competitive e-sports games. When it comes out later this month with patches to popular e-sports titles, such as Fortnite, Apex Legends, and Valorant, along with a GeForce driver update, the feature could improve system latencies even without any specialized hardware. System latency is defined as the time it takes for a user input (such as a mouse click) in a game to reflect as output on the screen, or the time it takes for your mouse click to register as a gunshot in an online shooter and appear on-screen. NVIDIA refers to this as "system latency." Reflex will be supported on the GeForce GTX 900 series and later.
NVIDIA briefly detailed how this works. On the software side, the NVIDIA driver co-operates with a compatible game engine to optimize the game's 3D rendering pipeline. This is accomplished by dynamically reducing the rendering queue, so fewer frames are queued up for the GPU to render. NVIDIA claims that the technology can also keep the GPU perfectly in sync with the CPU (1:1 render queue), reducing the "back-pressure" on the GPU by letting the game sample mouse input at the last possible moment.
NVIDIA is releasing Reflex to gamers as GeForce driver updates, and to game developers as the Reflex SDK. This allows them to integrate the technology into their game engine—providing a toggle for the technology—and also put out in-game performance metrics.
G-SYNC eSports 360 Monitors
NVIDIA developed the new G-SYNC eSports 360 gaming monitor standard with the likes of Acer, Alienware, ASUS, MSI, and GIGABYTE supplying compatible monitors. Going by the name, you have probably figured out that the highlight of this standard is its sweet 360 Hz maximum refresh rate, cushioned by NVIDIA G-SYNC technology. What you probably didn't know is that the 360 Hz is accomplished using IPS display panels, not TN-film panels that compromise on image quality. For IPS to sustain such high refresh rates, NVIDIA prescribes the use of dual drivers (two sets of panel electronics). These monitors have an extension of Reflex called the Reflex Latency Analyzer.
In G-SYNC 360 Hz IPS gaming displays, you will find a 2-port USB hub integrated into the display. You plug this hub into your PC via an included USB cable, and plug your gaming mouse into one of two downstream USB ports on the monitor. This can be any mouse, but an NVIDIA-certified mouse (ASUS, Razer, or Logitech) will offer additional features. With the mouse plugged in, you launch the Reflex Latency Analyzer utility from the monitor's OSD settings and run the game with the Reflex metrics toggle enabled. Each time you click on the mouse, the click is registered in the USB hub of the monitor, which then measures the time it takes for the "output" gun flash pixels to appear on the screen. You can train the utility to look for where the gun muzzle flash pixels appear. This way, you get extremely accurate measurements of not just input latency, but end-to-end system latency. Something like this required high-speed cameras and manual math to calculate in the past. Input latencies, coupled with end-to-end latency data, can be viewed in the Performance Metrics screen of the GeForce Experience overlay, when spawned in a compatible game.