Input / Fps lag / polling issue / latency fix vault (valorant based)

[BlurWickd]

I'm creating this as a megathread of all the things that genuinely helped me to document them for others with similar issues as this forum was very helpful for me, if anyone has anything valuable please share it so people have easy access to things in one place. Please no snakeoil regedit etc, lets keep it things that have proven and are logical to have results. Apologies if this is a bit all over the place I'm writing it as I remember it. I will also share things I tried that didn't seem to make a difference or impacted worse.

Current rank: Immo3 EU


Input lag/latency/polling:
Using extreme/absolut profile on TestMem5 - Run these profiles to determine if you have any issues with your RAM, personally I didn't realise how many errors I got from using my XMP profile. Turns out either my ram is faulty or 4x16gb isn't able to be ran at such mhz at least for my setup so I had to lower it from 3200mhz to 3000mhz to fix this. Ram errors include things like heavy mouse suddenly becoming light, very floaty aim, almost feeling like your sens doubles at times. - Huge.

ram timings - seems to make a big difference, only mess about with this other than XMP if u know what ur doing

Overclocking is a no brainer, helps with latency a lot - as long as its stable.

Disabling virtualisation via bios (VT D) etc - definitely helps and unneeded

Legacy usb support - I noticed a definite change compared with on compared to off/auto - be careful with changing this to off because you may be unable to get back into your bios (my keyboard still allows me to but off/auto feel the same)

any spread spectrum - definitely a difference

static overclocks (disabling intel speedstep etc) - definitely more consistent/better

Win10 compared to win11 - definitely better overall everything in my opinion (I tested the rufus method for win11 iso and only noticed slight difference)

Using intel usb3.0 extensible host controller (cpu controller) - definite huge difference over asmedia controller ports, from testing the usb3.0 ports seem to work better than my usb2.0. I'll most likely be buying a pcie usb soon to know for sure if any improvements. Any recommendations would be great!

Hyperthreading off - big latency difference for me, mouse feels more consistent (not recommended unless u have 8+ cores) I personally have 18.

Samsung nvme controller version 3.3 - this driver has potential to cause a heavy mouse, I discovered this by accident on a new install after reading another members post.

Samsung magician - gives me heavy mouse off/on issues when installed

2.4ghz turned off on router, all phones away seems to help my wireless mouse significantly as my router is quite nearby.

Mouse cable not touching any other cable - I didn't think this would make as much difference as I thought it would from reading it but it does genuinely feel entirely different.

Short cat 8 ethernet cable with protection (i forget the name, if you need it let me know I can get you a link) - definite difference for my 1gb port

intel i219-v 1gb vs realtek 2.5gb (my mobo has both) - i219-v 100% has better results however the driver seems bugged on win11 as it doesn't allow RSS (they don't seem to support it anymore), the default driver installed on win10 allowed me to use RSS. On win11 turning off MSI mode and rss through tcp command provided the best results as i219-v comes with msi mode enabled by default however doesn't support it. The issue I had was that my internet would shut off after 15-20 minutes, I managed to fix this but unsure how but seems like others don't have this problem from researching it.

disable netbios over tcp/ip - not sure what difference but no harm from it
setting static ip - ping seems to be more stable (ask if needed)

exitlag - i thought this was honestly bullshit but it did seem to decrease my ping by 3-4 (24-20)

Disabling interrupt moderation, flow control, large send offload, power saving features etc - definitely a significant difference (if your nic supports RSS you'll need to keep some of the offloading enabled)

Increasing receive/transmit buffers - my default was 256 512 up to a max of 2048 2048, personally I noticed times where it would give me an advantage and other times I felt like it screwed me over. I left at default because I was getting tilted by potential placebo but I've seen many recommend maxing this out. Maybe someone else can share their experience?

Disabling powersaving on all HID, usb controllers etc - big difference

Disabling usb selective suspend and using powersettingsexplorer to enable the other USB features - big difference

Disabling the high definition audio device + controller connected to the pci port your gpu is on - seems like it makes a big difference

Disabling onboard audio in bios / wifi / bluetooth / 2nd nic - definitely a noticeable difference

Using nvcleaninstall - this seemed to help a lot with input lag, fps also improved (use driver 537.58 and previous the latest have a ton of issues with input lag, make sure to use DDU)

DeviceRemover - set it to show disabled/hidden and remove all the old, seems to make a big difference with anything possibly interfering

driverstoreexplorer to check for old drivers - can be a big difference if old driver is conflicting, seen a lot about this

autoruns - check if random old things are loading up, big deal since a lot of uninstalled things are still here

Using separate controllers for mouse + keyboard, huge deal if 1000hz+ keyboard/mouse

Disabling asus aura in device manager - definitely helped

Disabling corsair lighting node pro in device manager greatly helped my mouse

setting my pcie speed to gen3 rather than auto - big? mine doesn't support gen4 and I have a 3090 but definitely feels a lot more consistent


FPS:
HAGS + Gamemode - both negatively impacted my fps, sometimes it would give more but the lows were always more severe. More fps isn't always better its the lows that count in these sort of games.

nvidia hd audio - fps boost by removing this

realtek hd audio - fps boost/mouse input boost removing this

Nvidia scaling mode - I've tested no scaling, aspect ratio and full. From my testing between aspect ratio and no scaling they both equally were the same if not give or take better either way at times, try either and see what you prefer. (native res). I personally had best results using 1600x900 resolution with aspect ratio. No idea why but valorant seems to run a lot better on 1600x900 fps and hit reg wise. Any res other than a 16:9 res seems to have hit reg issues at times.

Bloatware like razer synapse, ghub etc - obvious fps hit - make sure you remove these properly as a simple uninstall doesn't fix it. Check autoruns, driverstoreexplorer, revouninstaller etc.

Remove any RGB software iCUE etc - huge fps hit, can use openrgb for keyboard if needed

Armory crate - default enabled to install within bios (disable this), may need OS reinstall if this is installed, in the past would always cause fps issues for me even if uninstalled (could be different now)

disabling gamebarpresencewriter (youtube a tutorial, btw it comes back every win update) - huge for stutters, every pc has it while playing games even with gamebar disabled (fuck u microsoft)

gamebar disabled (obvious)

not having geforce experience installed - huge

no discord overlay - huge

google chrome/discord set to no hardware acceleration - not sure but likely a difference

google chrome set to continue running background apps when closed (off) - big difference

edge set to same as above + startup boost disabled (this is the reason for edge being open even if you dont use it) - big

threaded optimization in nvidia - this varies person to person and affects mouse feel/fps in a significant manner

shader cache size - 10gb seems to work best for me

nvidiaprofileinspector - disabling force cuda p2, force disabling all gsync, disabling variable refresh rate, disabling antialiasing (predefined by nvidia), disabling raytracing, memory allocation policy set to moderate - seems to make a big difference for me (share your experience/potential other settings)

on or on+boost - on seems to give the most consistent aim, on+boost for flicks/slightly better latency

rawinputbuffer on/off - on if 1000hz+, on/off if below (personal preference, on seems to be slightly floaty but seems to have better hit reg at times, off is more consistent imo)

setting framecap ingame - for me it gives an insane desync, either cap in nvidia control panel or dont at all and disable all ingame frame caps seems to make a difference?

inspectre.exe - using this to disable meltdown/inspectre patches seems to give performance boost (not sure if placebo)

disabling core 0 for valorant - definitely improves mouse heaviness feeling, can feel a little too fast at times

high performance core priority - causes stutters in my opinion, leave it at normal and use processlasso to set other applications e.g discord/chrome to use normal/below normal priority

win32priorityseparation - personally I leave mine default, i spent too much time fiddling around with this - one day one would feel good the next itd be bad, i decided to leave at default to save any cope



probably forgot a bunch and left out a lot of the super basic things everyone here will know about, feel free to share anything!

has anyone tested windefender disabled etc?

[Kyouki]

-

This is a very nice detailed thread where I agree upon most of the things.
I'll give some experiences from my hand underneath yours.

---

Disabling virtualisation via bios (VT D) etc - definitely helps and unneeded
Legacy usb support - I noticed a definite change compared with on compared to off/auto - be careful with changing this to off because you may be unable to get back into your bios (my keyboard still allows me to but off/auto feel the same)
any spread spectrum - definitely a difference
static overclocks (disabling intel speedstep etc) - definitely more consistent/better

- Pretty much off unless used, and all of these often aren't required.

Win10 compared to win11 - definitely better overall everything in my opinion (I tested the rufus method for win11 iso and only noticed slight difference)

- I am still a bigger fan of Win10 due to UI design as well as that Win11 just doesn't differ much other than extra security features built-in and enabled by default.

Using intel usb3.0 extensible host controller (cpu controller) - definite huge difference over asmedia controller ports, from testing the usb3.0 ports seem to work better than my usb2.0. I'll most likely be buying a pcie usb soon to know for sure if any improvements. Any recommendations would be great!

- I've also noticed putting my mice in USB port 0 of the CPU controller is the best way possible.

Hyperthreading off - big latency difference for me, mouse feels more consistent (not recommended unless u have 8+ cores) I personally have 18.

- I rather would suggest HT ON and use Process Lasso to define applications that work best/better with only running off real cores/threads. This way you can have best of both worlds for games that do make proper use out of it!

2.4ghz turned off on router, all phones away seems to help my wireless mouse significantly as my router is quite nearby.
Mouse cable not touching any other cable - I didn't think this would make as much difference as I thought it would from reading it but it does genuinely feel entirely different.
Short cat 8 ethernet cable with protection (i forget the name, if you need it let me know I can get you a link) - definite difference for my 1gb port

- Interesting, don't think I have ever noticed my two phones nearby my mouse make a difference. Though they aren't too close to it.

intel i219-v 1gb vs realtek 2.5gb (my mobo has both) - i219-v 100% has better results however the driver seems bugged on win11 as it doesn't allow RSS (they don't seem to support it anymore), the default driver installed on win10 allowed me to use RSS. On win11 turning off MSI mode and rss through tcp command provided the best results as i219-v comes with msi mode enabled by default however doesn't support it. The issue I had was that my internet would shut off after 15-20 minutes, I managed to fix this but unsure how but seems like others don't have this problem from researching it.

- I also have a Realtek 2.5G and a intel 1G NIC on my motherboard and also found intel to give me better results. I think I also recently discovered that RSS wasn't being used in the driver anymore and I still do have some minor networking problems to some services like gameservers hosted on AWS appear to give me packetloss for some reason. Didn't had the shutdown issue or disconnect. i211 chip if I remember correctly.

disable netbios over tcp/ip - not sure what difference but no harm from it
setting static ip - ping seems to be more stable (ask if needed)

- Agreed.

Disabling interrupt moderation, flow control, large send offload, power saving features etc - definitely a significant difference (if your nic supports RSS you'll need to keep some of the offloading enabled)
Increasing receive/transmit buffers - my default was 256 512 up to a max of 2048 2048, personally I noticed times where it would give me an advantage and other times I felt like it screwed me over. I left at default because I was getting tilted by potential placebo but I've seen many recommend maxing this out. Maybe someone else can share their experience?

- These I also have messed with a lot given the above situation and I haven't found a position where I find it comfortable or where I noticed no issues/or better results. Some gave me better results on bufferbloat testing - however would give me the above AWS problem of packet loss and rubberbanding towards those servers.
I've currently set them slightly higher from default with interrupt on Medium and the large send offloads enabled - as I read elsewhere this is actually a lot better. Though I still feel a bit like - leaving everything networking related to default is probably better and isn't magically going to make a lot of difference but give much more potential for headaches of certain niche problems.

Using nvcleaninstall - this seemed to help a lot with input lag, fps also improved (use driver 537.58 and previous the latest have a ton of issues with input lag, make sure to use DDU)

- I use the latest right now and it feels okay driver version speaking but do use NVCleaninstall as well with a minimal install of just the driver.
Disabled ansel, MSi mode, seperate affinity, EAC-friendly driver, etc.

DeviceRemover - set it to show disabled/hidden and remove all the old, seems to make a big difference with anything possibly interfering
driverstoreexplorer to check for old drivers - can be a big difference if old driver is conflicting, seen a lot about this
autoruns - check if random old things are loading up, big deal since a lot of uninstalled things are still here

- It's just nice to clean up and freshen left-over files.

Using separate controllers for mouse + keyboard, huge deal if 1000hz+ keyboard/mouse

- Proper first slot for the mouse, and preferably all other devices to any other HUB on the board.

Disabling asus aura in device manager - definitely helped
Disabling corsair lighting node pro in device manager greatly helped my mouse
setting my pcie speed to gen3 rather than auto - big? mine doesn't support gen4 and I have a 3090 but definitely feels a lot more consistent

- I did the same but noticed no differences.

FPS:
HAGS + Gamemode - both negatively impacted my fps, sometimes it would give more but the lows were always more severe. More fps isn't always better its the lows that count in these sort of games.

- This one is a mixed bag for me, yes at times it offers worse performance (but not often, not a lot anyway), in other times it is better. However I am under the believe to leave HAGS On + Resizable bar enabled + Game Mode on to be just the best 'overall' scenario. A game isn't going to magically use any of these until they do by adding in code into the render pipeline. Doesn't feel like any particular game in my scenario been worse(r) with it. Set and forget.

nvidia hd audio - fps boost by removing this
realtek hd audio - fps boost/mouse input boost removing this

- Didn't notice much from this but the devices are disabled in Device Manager.

Nvidia scaling mode - I've tested no scaling, aspect ratio and full. From my testing between aspect ratio and no scaling they both equally were the same if not give or take better either way at times, try either and see what you prefer. (native res). I personally had best results using 1600x900 resolution with aspect ratio. No idea why but valorant seems to run a lot better on 1600x900 fps and hit reg wise. Any res other than a 16:9 res seems to have hit reg issues at times.

- Scaling mode is always set to full-screen + rendered on the GPU on all displays.

Bloatware like razer synapse, ghub etc - obvious fps hit - make sure you remove these properly as a simple uninstall doesn't fix it. Check autoruns, driverstoreexplorer, revouninstaller etc.
Remove any RGB software iCUE etc - huge fps hit, can use openrgb for keyboard if needed
Armory crate - default enabled to install within bios (disable this), may need OS reinstall if this is installed, in the past would always cause fps issues for me even if uninstalled (could be different now)
disabling gamebarpresencewriter (youtube a tutorial, btw it comes back every win update) - huge for stutters, every pc has it while playing games even with gamebar disabled (fuck u microsoft)
gamebar disabled (obvious)
not having geforce experience installed - huge
no discord overlay - huge
google chrome/discord set to no hardware acceleration - not sure but likely a difference
google chrome set to continue running background apps when closed (off) - big difference
edge set to same as above + startup boost disabled (this is the reason for edge being open even if you dont use it) - big

- Makes 100% sense to me.

shader cache size - 10gb seems to work best for me

- 100GB but I got a 1TB M.2 drive nearly empty. I also sometimes (every month or so, or some updates) clear out the shader caches.

nvidiaprofileinspector - disabling force cuda p2, force disabling all gsync, disabling variable refresh rate, disabling antialiasing (predefined by nvidia), disabling raytracing, memory allocation policy set to moderate - seems to make a big difference for me (share your experience/potential other settings)

- Yeah pretty much the same, though I leave mostly Gsync/AdaptiveSync/Variable Refresh Rates alone unless I know for sure the game I play I don't want any VRR on.

on or on+boost - on seems to give the most consistent aim, on+boost for flicks/slightly better latency

- On+Boost adds a auto-framerate capping feature if using Adaptive Sync (not sure what else it does/can do), if the game offers this I usually use this else NVCP -> LLM On. (Ultra can cause stutters unsupported games.)

rawinputbuffer on/off - on if 1000hz+, on/off if below (personal preference, on seems to be slightly floaty but seems to have better hit reg at times, off is more consistent imo)

- Raw input, no brainer to me.

setting framecap ingame - for me it gives an insane desync, either cap in nvidia control panel or dont at all and disable all ingame frame caps seems to make a difference?

- In-game in theory should be better for input latency, that is IF the game does a proper job at limiting it. Else the GPU-methods are really good for smoothness.

high performance core priority - causes stutters in my opinion, leave it at normal and use processlasso to set other applications e.g discord/chrome to use normal/below normal priority

- Same. + taking games off Core0/Core1 at least.

win32priorityseparation - personally I leave mine default, i spent too much time fiddling around with this - one day one would feel good the next itd be bad, i decided to leave at default to save any cope

- I got this one set to the smoothest one possible, always preferred it. Not home to check which value but it might've been 16. (I will edit when I am home to check)

has anyone tested windefender disabled etc?

- Yeah I have it fully removed, works great. I am a sysadmin by day so I know roughly what I need to download grab or use and ifnot I drop it into virustotal to double check or spin up a Windows Sandbox.
I've found that if you're not doing a manual scan every once in a while yourself, it'll do one on the background and sometimes with large 5 second interval 20% CPU spikes. Really annoying for gaming.

[rekaa02511]

Can you tell us what exactly you do with DriverStoreExplorer? I've never seen that mentioned before, thank you.

[Kyouki]

Can you tell us what exactly you do with DriverStoreExplorer? I've never seen that mentioned before, thank you.

Basically same with DeviceCleanup, both can clean up unused drivers.

[rekaa02511]

Can you tell us what exactly you do with DriverStoreExplorer? I've never seen that mentioned before, thank you.

Basically same with DeviceCleanup, both can clean up unused drivers.

How do I know which ones are unsused?

[eropsy]

Can you tell us what exactly you do with DriverStoreExplorer? I've never seen that mentioned before, thank you.

Basically same with DeviceCleanup, both can clean up unused drivers.

How do I know which ones are unsused?

you have to tap "select old drivers" and if any drivers highlightened, these are old/unused, then tick "force deletion" and tap "delete drivers"

[BlurWickd]

-

This is a very nice detailed thread where I agree upon most of the things.
I'll give some experiences from my hand underneath yours.

---

Disabling virtualisation via bios (VT D) etc - definitely helps and unneeded
Legacy usb support - I noticed a definite change compared with on compared to off/auto - be careful with changing this to off because you may be unable to get back into your bios (my keyboard still allows me to but off/auto feel the same)
any spread spectrum - definitely a difference
static overclocks (disabling intel speedstep etc) - definitely more consistent/better

- Pretty much off unless used, and all of these often aren't required.

Win10 compared to win11 - definitely better overall everything in my opinion (I tested the rufus method for win11 iso and only noticed slight difference)

- I am still a bigger fan of Win10 due to UI design as well as that Win11 just doesn't differ much other than extra security features built-in and enabled by default.

Using intel usb3.0 extensible host controller (cpu controller) - definite huge difference over asmedia controller ports, from testing the usb3.0 ports seem to work better than my usb2.0. I'll most likely be buying a pcie usb soon to know for sure if any improvements. Any recommendations would be great!

- I've also noticed putting my mice in USB port 0 of the CPU controller is the best way possible.

Hyperthreading off - big latency difference for me, mouse feels more consistent (not recommended unless u have 8+ cores) I personally have 18.

- I rather would suggest HT ON and use Process Lasso to define applications that work best/better with only running off real cores/threads. This way you can have best of both worlds for games that do make proper use out of it!

2.4ghz turned off on router, all phones away seems to help my wireless mouse significantly as my router is quite nearby.
Mouse cable not touching any other cable - I didn't think this would make as much difference as I thought it would from reading it but it does genuinely feel entirely different.
Short cat 8 ethernet cable with protection (i forget the name, if you need it let me know I can get you a link) - definite difference for my 1gb port

- Interesting, don't think I have ever noticed my two phones nearby my mouse make a difference. Though they aren't too close to it.

intel i219-v 1gb vs realtek 2.5gb (my mobo has both) - i219-v 100% has better results however the driver seems bugged on win11 as it doesn't allow RSS (they don't seem to support it anymore), the default driver installed on win10 allowed me to use RSS. On win11 turning off MSI mode and rss through tcp command provided the best results as i219-v comes with msi mode enabled by default however doesn't support it. The issue I had was that my internet would shut off after 15-20 minutes, I managed to fix this but unsure how but seems like others don't have this problem from researching it.

- I also have a Realtek 2.5G and a intel 1G NIC on my motherboard and also found intel to give me better results. I think I also recently discovered that RSS wasn't being used in the driver anymore and I still do have some minor networking problems to some services like gameservers hosted on AWS appear to give me packetloss for some reason. Didn't had the shutdown issue or disconnect. i211 chip if I remember correctly.

disable netbios over tcp/ip - not sure what difference but no harm from it
setting static ip - ping seems to be more stable (ask if needed)

- Agreed.

Disabling interrupt moderation, flow control, large send offload, power saving features etc - definitely a significant difference (if your nic supports RSS you'll need to keep some of the offloading enabled)
Increasing receive/transmit buffers - my default was 256 512 up to a max of 2048 2048, personally I noticed times where it would give me an advantage and other times I felt like it screwed me over. I left at default because I was getting tilted by potential placebo but I've seen many recommend maxing this out. Maybe someone else can share their experience?

- These I also have messed with a lot given the above situation and I haven't found a position where I find it comfortable or where I noticed no issues/or better results. Some gave me better results on bufferbloat testing - however would give me the above AWS problem of packet loss and rubberbanding towards those servers.
I've currently set them slightly higher from default with interrupt on Medium and the large send offloads enabled - as I read elsewhere this is actually a lot better. Though I still feel a bit like - leaving everything networking related to default is probably better and isn't magically going to make a lot of difference but give much more potential for headaches of certain niche problems.

Using nvcleaninstall - this seemed to help a lot with input lag, fps also improved (use driver 537.58 and previous the latest have a ton of issues with input lag, make sure to use DDU)

- I use the latest right now and it feels okay driver version speaking but do use NVCleaninstall as well with a minimal install of just the driver.
Disabled ansel, MSi mode, seperate affinity, EAC-friendly driver, etc.

DeviceRemover - set it to show disabled/hidden and remove all the old, seems to make a big difference with anything possibly interfering
driverstoreexplorer to check for old drivers - can be a big difference if old driver is conflicting, seen a lot about this
autoruns - check if random old things are loading up, big deal since a lot of uninstalled things are still here

- It's just nice to clean up and freshen left-over files.

Using separate controllers for mouse + keyboard, huge deal if 1000hz+ keyboard/mouse

- Proper first slot for the mouse, and preferably all other devices to any other HUB on the board.

Disabling asus aura in device manager - definitely helped
Disabling corsair lighting node pro in device manager greatly helped my mouse
setting my pcie speed to gen3 rather than auto - big? mine doesn't support gen4 and I have a 3090 but definitely feels a lot more consistent

- I did the same but noticed no differences.

FPS:
HAGS + Gamemode - both negatively impacted my fps, sometimes it would give more but the lows were always more severe. More fps isn't always better its the lows that count in these sort of games.

- This one is a mixed bag for me, yes at times it offers worse performance (but not often, not a lot anyway), in other times it is better. However I am under the believe to leave HAGS On + Resizable bar enabled + Game Mode on to be just the best 'overall' scenario. A game isn't going to magically use any of these until they do by adding in code into the render pipeline. Doesn't feel like any particular game in my scenario been worse(r) with it. Set and forget.

nvidia hd audio - fps boost by removing this
realtek hd audio - fps boost/mouse input boost removing this

- Didn't notice much from this but the devices are disabled in Device Manager.

Nvidia scaling mode - I've tested no scaling, aspect ratio and full. From my testing between aspect ratio and no scaling they both equally were the same if not give or take better either way at times, try either and see what you prefer. (native res). I personally had best results using 1600x900 resolution with aspect ratio. No idea why but valorant seems to run a lot better on 1600x900 fps and hit reg wise. Any res other than a 16:9 res seems to have hit reg issues at times.

- Scaling mode is always set to full-screen + rendered on the GPU on all displays.

Bloatware like razer synapse, ghub etc - obvious fps hit - make sure you remove these properly as a simple uninstall doesn't fix it. Check autoruns, driverstoreexplorer, revouninstaller etc.
Remove any RGB software iCUE etc - huge fps hit, can use openrgb for keyboard if needed
Armory crate - default enabled to install within bios (disable this), may need OS reinstall if this is installed, in the past would always cause fps issues for me even if uninstalled (could be different now)
disabling gamebarpresencewriter (youtube a tutorial, btw it comes back every win update) - huge for stutters, every pc has it while playing games even with gamebar disabled (fuck u microsoft)
gamebar disabled (obvious)
not having geforce experience installed - huge
no discord overlay - huge
google chrome/discord set to no hardware acceleration - not sure but likely a difference
google chrome set to continue running background apps when closed (off) - big difference
edge set to same as above + startup boost disabled (this is the reason for edge being open even if you dont use it) - big

- Makes 100% sense to me.

shader cache size - 10gb seems to work best for me

- 100GB but I got a 1TB M.2 drive nearly empty. I also sometimes (every month or so, or some updates) clear out the shader caches.

nvidiaprofileinspector - disabling force cuda p2, force disabling all gsync, disabling variable refresh rate, disabling antialiasing (predefined by nvidia), disabling raytracing, memory allocation policy set to moderate - seems to make a big difference for me (share your experience/potential other settings)

- Yeah pretty much the same, though I leave mostly Gsync/AdaptiveSync/Variable Refresh Rates alone unless I know for sure the game I play I don't want any VRR on.

on or on+boost - on seems to give the most consistent aim, on+boost for flicks/slightly better latency

- On+Boost adds a auto-framerate capping feature if using Adaptive Sync (not sure what else it does/can do), if the game offers this I usually use this else NVCP -> LLM On. (Ultra can cause stutters unsupported games.)

rawinputbuffer on/off - on if 1000hz+, on/off if below (personal preference, on seems to be slightly floaty but seems to have better hit reg at times, off is more consistent imo)

- Raw input, no brainer to me.

setting framecap ingame - for me it gives an insane desync, either cap in nvidia control panel or dont at all and disable all ingame frame caps seems to make a difference?

- In-game in theory should be better for input latency, that is IF the game does a proper job at limiting it. Else the GPU-methods are really good for smoothness.

high performance core priority - causes stutters in my opinion, leave it at normal and use processlasso to set other applications e.g discord/chrome to use normal/below normal priority

- Same. + taking games off Core0/Core1 at least.

win32priorityseparation - personally I leave mine default, i spent too much time fiddling around with this - one day one would feel good the next itd be bad, i decided to leave at default to save any cope

- I got this one set to the smoothest one possible, always preferred it. Not home to check which value but it might've been 16. (I will edit when I am home to check)

has anyone tested windefender disabled etc?

- Yeah I have it fully removed, works great. I am a sysadmin by day so I know roughly what I need to download grab or use and ifnot I drop it into virustotal to double check or spin up a Windows Sandbox.
I've found that if you're not doing a manual scan every once in a while yourself, it'll do one on the background and sometimes with large 5 second interval 20% CPU spikes. Really annoying for gaming.

Win10 is definitely better in all fronts of everything lol

For the usb port thing make sure to check with your mobo whether your USB ports are chipset/cpu ports as for my motherboard (x299-e gaming II) all ports are chipset however the usb 2 ports which are within a usb3 roothub definitely seem better than the 3.2. I'm currently ordering a pcie usb card to test further but my mouse graphs are pretty good for 4khz which I'm surprised about because I thought win11 was necessary to run above 1000hz to prevent lag.

The process lasso thing works but in general my whole pc is more responsive with it disabled. This is probably different for others but I have a i9 10980xe which isn't a gaming cpu I forget why but the latency is higher than average. I prefer it disabled entirely and even chose to disable 4 of the 18 cores within the bios as from my stress testing those were the cores that seemed to be giving the highest temperatures so to reduce power/allow me to overclock further I disabled them.

I decided to stop using wireless mice, I don't know why or what is causing the interference but they just don't seem to play well with my system. I ended up switching to the razer deathadder v3 wired edition since it allows up to 8khz wired and everything is completely fixed. When I was using wireless mice I often got the heavy mouse/stuttery feel that would come and go but switching to wired theres no issues at all.

I realised after further testing that although RSS displayed as enabled on the driver - it wasn't actually enabled. I don't know why but if I disable MSI mode on the i219-v my internet will completely go off after 20-30minutes sometimes longer sometimes shorter and will only come back online after a PC reboot and it keeps repeating the same thing. I managed to bug it at one point where it seemed to work the whole time but after tweaking something else within MSI util the problem returned. I decided to switch to my realtek 2.5gbe nic as it supports RSS, rather than latest version I'm using the one listed on the asus site for my mobo. Seems to be working really well, I also notice I get 100-200mbs increased download speed on it, on the i219-v since its a 1gb nic I get roughly 850mb/s down but on the realtek 2.5gbe I get 1100 down which is interesting as I only pay for 1gb. I still play around with the advanced settings like the receive/transmit buffers etc but I think default is honestly the best for them. I disable interrupt moderation (recommended by intel for lowest latency and also games don't provide enough for it to work seems to also alter mouse movement for me, large send offload, flow control and most of the other features. I've left most of the off load features enabled as I think you need them enabled for RSS to work but I might be wrong. I'll continue tweaking and if I notice any improvements I'll put them on this thread.

I also stopped setting a static IP as my router doesn't allow me to set an ip outside of the DHCP range so I just left it as is. I think I'll look to purchase a new router as I'm currently using the ISP one, I'm the only person who uses ethernet and the wifi sucks within my house, maybe I'll get some improvements with ethernet I'm not sure.

To further add to what I said regarding the corsair commander pro etc, these are using my internal usbs on the main chipset usb ports that I'm sharing my mouse with, with them enabled I notice a difference over disabled. I've even tried removing them from device manager entirely and notice a further difference. I'll be moving to a pcie usb card once it arrives so my mouse isn't sharing anything which should hopefully give the best improvement.

I tested further what you said regarding hags on etc, after my testing I use resizable bar on with gamemode and hags disabled. Game mode seemed to alter mouse movement and not provide any reliable extra fps and hags I got results similar to what you said, sometimes it'd be great sometimes not however hit reg and overshooting definitely worsened with hags enabled. I think for a normal gamer they're worth it but if you play at a high level on valorant/csgo etc definitely not. It could definitely be PC dependent as I'm bottlenecked by my CPU which is interesting as I think hags is supposed to help in scenarios like that? I tested for placebo too as it was over a few day period, with hags enabled I often missed easy shots that without a shadow of a doubt would usually hit. Since I disabled it, no issues. No real fps drop at all either, I think with hags the highs are improved but the lows are worsened which isn't good for me since I use 360hz so the drops feel very bad.

Tested further nvidia hd audio compared to windows default audio, disabling them and the controller next to the gpu every time. Definite fps boost uninstalling nvidia hd audio even when it was disabled (20-30fps).

Tested scaling mode you said further, its definitely monitor dependent but it seems like to me there is definitely a difference between GPU and display in input lag. However it seems with GPU the input lag is more consistent whereas display is lower but varies? Graphics/blurriness definitely improved using GPU scaling at lower 4:3 resolutions. I decided to go back to native resolution and no scaling (display). Can I ask why you use fullscreen/gpu if you're playing in native? or do you use a different res?

I also have a 1tb m2 for shader cache but seems to me like 10gb works best, could just be placebo. I tested 10gb/100gb/unlimited and I played better on 10gb. I doubt it matters too much.

I don't use any adaptive sync, gsync etc as it all adds input lag - I need to test further with frame capping though. I don't play any other games other than valorant so I don't really bother with anything else like ultra etc so no experience with it.

Raw input buffer in valorant isn't actually rawinput, valorant by default has rawinput because of the game engine - rawinputbuffer is riot games technology of how they process mouse inputs. It shouldn't make a difference on 1000hz or below but it definitely seems to give mice a more floaty/icey feeling and hit reg improves. This seems quite random though, as from what I've researched about it in a way it acts like a queue - if you shoot someone at the exact same time they shoot you and you're both using rawinputbuffer whoever is at the top of this 'queue' will kill first. I might be wrong about this but yeah since I use above 1000hz currently I leave it on, 1000hz with it off definitely gives more consistent aim and results but you'll lose 1v1s to people with it on at times.

I stopped disabling core 0 as even though mouse seemed to become more responsive it almost felt too much at times like an accel type of feel. My computer is very bloat-free and modified so I don't have many things running in the background on core 0 so this could be why it feels fine for me on core 0.

I tested again with the win32priorityseparation, probably will do some further testing but I tried 40,42,14,16 etc and got good results but my aim just didn't feel always consistent. Back to default before I do more testing however I may just leave it since my rig seems to be completely fixed now.

I've tested with windefender disabled (not fully disabled just turning it off) it does seem to help fps etc. I just turn it off before I play and it turns itself back on later anyway.




Things I did/tested over the last week that seem to have completely fixed my issues:
Threaded optimization off in NVCP - This is huge and I don't see many people talk about it at all. Most just leave it as auto which is the default but this alone is one of the biggest difference in mouse input across the board. I couldn't barely find any research into why certain pcs are better on each, however these are my results:
On - Better fps however mouse has a sort of restrictive feel ingame sorta like you're moving it and its trying to push you back. Great for micro adjustments bad for consistency.
Auto - Feels inconsistent, sorta like on/off at times which I guess is why its called auto. I assume this is nvidia screwing up about setting the right one at times?
Off - Slightly lower fps however mouse input feels flawless in game, wherever you move it its controllable - theres no feeling of overshoot or restrictiveness.

Went deep in terms of ram timings, overclocking CPU/ram etc:
Ram timings without a doubt changes everything. Previously I was using 4x16gb corsair platinum rgb 3200mhz quad channel but I'd have to set it to 200mhz below XMP whilst using the same ramtimings (cl16 16-18-18-36 2T) for it to be stable. I decided to remove 2 sticks and try it dual channel at XMP assuming that maybe my IMC is just overloaded. Wow. The difference is night and day literally 100-150 fps, could be because I increased the cache ratio on my cpu or possible faulty ram? I tried it at 3400mhz but I'm kinda sick of all the stress testing so leaving it at XMP for now and seems perfect.

Disabling IDLE -
This requires you to have HT disabled and cstates disabled (i assume). It basically forces everything to use C0 over C0/C1 so cpu is at 100% always. Since my ram was now stable I worked on my CPU overclock, decided to downclock from 4.7ghz to 4.5 as well as disable 4 of my hottest cores so I'm only running 14 cores and turned idle on. I have good cooling so my IDLE temps only went from 35 to 55 and around 65-70 under load which I'm fine with but wow. The difference is insane. This could just be because my processor isn't necessarily a gaming cpu and it suffers with high latency in general since the switching between c0/c1 in cpus is supposed to be insanely fast but the difference in mouse latency is literally night and day.

Disabled unnecessary windows services following this guide https://www.blackviper.com/service-conf ... gurations/ & followed calyptos guide on disabling unnecessary stuff in device manager like intel management engine, microsoft gs wavetable synth etc- don't know if it made any difference but why not if I don't use them or need them.

Tried english (philipphines) keyboard language from some stuff I read about US/UK causing lag? - don't know if it makes a difference but everything feels great currently.

Followed this guide: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=9977 - Big difference actually. Didn't even know this was a thing

Tried markc mouse fix - definitely made my mouse feel a lot better on desktop but ingame it just felt weird. Pretty odd because valorant is supposed to use rawinput but I could definitely tell the difference without a shadow of a doubt on vs off.

1khz vs 4khz - wow the difference after all these changes, even on the desktop its unreal how smooth it is. I didn't bother using 8khz because the downsides aren't worth the upsides but damn.

Disabling TPM 2.0 and secureboot - I saw a post on here regarding this showing a yt video showing 3ms decreased latency from disabling these. I forgot I enabled them to upgrade to win11 but since I'm on win10 now its not necessary. Disabled these in bios and it definitely made a difference.



Results after everything:
Latency mon average dpc is like 1.2 and highest is 70 from nvidia if I remember right, using latest nvidia driver which is apparently not the best for latency so could improve even more after future updates. Seems like I finally fixed everything. Will update if I remember anything else I did but I didn't do any crazy regedit tweaks or anything like this just different windows, disabling features etc I don't need and getting stable OCs. My fps has went from 300-360 avg to 400-600 avg in valorant, honestly crazy how smooth it is now on 360hz compared to before.


Apologies if this is a bit of a mess lol hard to remember everything.

[xShino]

Disabling IDLE -
This requires you to have HT disabled and cstates disabled (i assume)

Can you please elaborate on how you have disabled idle?

Edit: In other words.. Did you disable idle by disabling HT and cstates, or did you disable both and then disable idle with another step? That is unclear to me.