My easy Tips to reduce Input Lag!

[hot_coffee]

I've been testing latency tweaks for some years now and here are my best tips for reducing input lag, that I was able to actually "feel" afterwards ingame. (No Placebo effects)

All tips are of course system and game dependent, but here they are: (they won't give the most FPS, but the least input lag feeling)

1. Only use one display, not multiples!
2. Don't use Screen Recording Software (deinstall GeForce Experience)
3. Don't use G/Vsync
4. Set your CPU-Affinity for your mouse on your least used core
5. Plug your mouse into your USB-Port which is directly connected to your CPU
6. Use the registry tweak to reduce your mouse buffer size in windows
7. Disable Explorer.exe while gaming
8. Play on lower resolutions
9. Reduce your Sharpness, Brightness setting of your monitor and additional monitor features like Shadowboost etc (You can test this by setting everything to max and then to min, it will feel much more instant. F.e. my 240hz Zowie with max Shadowboost will feel delayed compared to Shadowboost disabled)
10. CPU Undervolt
11. OC your GPU (f.e. with Afterburner)
12. RAM OC
13. Disable E-Cores
14. Use Windows Power Plan "Balanced"
15. Don't use a frame cap, play with unlimited Frames (highly game dependent!)
16. NVIDIA Reflex on/boost
17. Consider using only 1x RAM stick instead of 2x (also highly game dependent!)

System:
- AMD 7800x3D
- GPU: NVIDIA 3070
- RAM: 1x 16GB 6000Mhz G.Skill Ripjaws V5
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Gaming AX X

Personally, I don't use all the tweaks because it's a compromise between having a clear picture, a nice game footage replay etc and having the best performance.

What are your best tips for reducing actually perceived latency and system specs?

[kyube]

I've been testing latency tweaks for some years now and here are my best tips for reducing input lag, that I was able to actually "feel" afterwards ingame. (No Placebo effects)

All tips are of course system and game dependent, but here they are: (they won't give the most FPS, but the least input lag feeling)

A small subset of your "easy tips" are good.

1. Only use one display, not multiples!
2. Don't use Screen Recording Software (deinstall GeForce Experience)

MPO volatility gets reduced & less CPU resources taken.
I agree.

3. Don't use G/Vsync

This is extremely misleading.
G-SYNC & V-SYNC don't incur a input latency penalty to the total system latency chain if you know what you're doing

4. Set your CPU-Affinity for your mouse on your least used core

Most modern esports FPS games override this behavior. Affinities cause more trouble than they solve.

5. Plug your mouse into your USB-Port which is directly connected to your CPU

Negligible difference (<1µs aka <1000ns) between CPU vs PCH routing.
Irrelevant to recommend, focusing on DPC & ISR usage is a far better endeavour

6. Use the registry tweak to reduce your mouse buffer size in windows

Completely irrelevant and non-sensical remnant from the era of ESReality & OCN days of ignorance, where users placebo themselves into these arbitrary numbers.

7. Disable Explorer.exe while gaming

Sure, the arguement is that it will cause lower CPU overhead.
Disabling it isn't viable anymore and shouldn't be recommended in latest Windows versions (I believe it's not killable anymore past W10 1909)
Disabling or removing (using DISM or DISM GUIs such as NTLite) WinDefend & WinUpdate are viable paths to go for, however.
They're massive resource hogs, alongside voice communication user application software such as Discord.
Steam is also such a resource hog, but that can be somewhat mitigated using a particular github tool.
Epic Games & Battle.NET can be closed, thankfully.

8. Play on lower resolutions

Nvidia Reflex exists.
You're only nerfing your overall static image quality by using a lower image resolution in gameplay. Especially when lower (image) resolutions are paired with upscaling algorithms.
The arguement of "but lower res feels smoother!!!" can be attributed to:
• Smaller difference between static image quality (image resolution) & dynamic image quality (as there's no sharpness)
• Lower GPU usage (a somewhat misleading metric) leading to a smoother output.

9. Reduce your Sharpness, Brightness setting of your monitor and additional monitor features like Shadowboost etc (You can test this by setting everything to max and then to min, it will feel much more instant. F.e. my 240hz Zowie with max Shadowboost will feel delayed compared to Shadowboost disabled)

Any post-processing effect generally adds a microseconds-level delay to the processing latency part of the total display latency.
I'd attribute this to psychological / physiological effects rather than a HW electronics effect.

10. CPU Undervolt
11. OC your GPU (f.e. with Afterburner)
12. RAM OC
13. Disable E-Cores

These are the most dangerous recommendations in this thread.
It's a unnecessary rabbit hole for laymen to dive into. I'd strongly advise against any one of these.
Disabling E-Cores is also a bad advice, as W11 22H2 solved all issues in regards to heterogenous architecture CPUs.

14. Use Windows Power Plan "Balanced"

Ignorant claim, there's a lot of room for tuning in this section of Windows.

15. Don't use a frame cap, play with unlimited Frames (highly game dependent!)

In terms of the top esports games on the market:
LoL — game breaks past 300FPS (in-game frame rate limiter is terrible) IIRC, one has to resort to external limiters
CS2 — 'fps_max X (x>30)' has terrible frame pacing over VRR+VSYNC+Reflex with a 600Hz TN. However, it is a viable path if stuck on <500Hz displays.
Dota2 — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
Valorant — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
Fortnite — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
Apex — A viable path, as the game is locked to 300FPS.
Rocket League — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
PUBG — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
OW2 — A viable path, as the game is locked to 600FPS. An arguement can be made for +500Hz VRR displays. No, it doesn't add any processing latency to the total display latency chain.

16. NVIDIA Reflex on/boost

Funny one, as you recommended lower image resolution as well

System:
- AMD 7800x3D
- GPU: NVIDIA 3070
- RAM: 1x 16GB 6000Mhz G.Skill Ripjaws V5
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Gaming AX X

17. Consider using only 1x RAM stick instead of 2x (also highly game dependent!)

Seems to me as if you were unstable and then recommend single channel over dual channel
I still don't understand why users, which are oriented on consistency-first, don't resort to ASROCK or ASUS AM5 motherboards with ECC UDIMMs.

[hot_coffee]

I've been testing latency tweaks for some years now and here are my best tips for reducing input lag, that I was able to actually "feel" afterwards ingame. (No Placebo effects)

All tips are of course system and game dependent, but here they are: (they won't give the most FPS, but the least input lag feeling)

A small subset of your "easy tips" are good.

1. Only use one display, not multiples!
2. Don't use Screen Recording Software (deinstall GeForce Experience)

MPO volatility gets reduced & less CPU resources taken.
I agree.

3. Don't use G/Vsync

This is extremely misleading.
G-SYNC & V-SYNC don't incur a input latency penalty to the total system latency chain if you know what you're doing

4. Set your CPU-Affinity for your mouse on your least used core

Most modern esports FPS games override this behavior. Affinities cause more trouble than they solve.

5. Plug your mouse into your USB-Port which is directly connected to your CPU

Negligible difference (<1µs aka <1000ns) between CPU vs PCH routing.
Irrelevant to recommend, focusing on DPC & ISR usage is a far better endeavour

6. Use the registry tweak to reduce your mouse buffer size in windows

Completely irrelevant and non-sensical remnant from the era of ESReality & OCN days of ignorance, where users placebo themselves into these arbitrary numbers.

7. Disable Explorer.exe while gaming

Sure, the arguement is that it will cause lower CPU overhead.
Disabling it isn't viable anymore and shouldn't be recommended in latest Windows versions (I believe it's not killable anymore past W10 1909)
Disabling or removing (using DISM or DISM GUIs such as NTLite) WinDefend & WinUpdate are viable paths to go for, however.
They're massive resource hogs, alongside voice communication user application software such as Discord.
Steam is also such a resource hog, but that can be somewhat mitigated using a particular github tool.
Epic Games & Battle.NET can be closed, thankfully.

8. Play on lower resolutions

Nvidia Reflex exists.
You're only nerfing your overall static image quality by using a lower image resolution in gameplay. Especially when lower (image) resolutions are paired with upscaling algorithms.
The arguement of "but lower res feels smoother!!!" can be attributed to:
• Smaller difference between static image quality (image resolution) & dynamic image quality (as there's no sharpness)
• Lower GPU usage (a somewhat misleading metric) leading to a smoother output.

9. Reduce your Sharpness, Brightness setting of your monitor and additional monitor features like Shadowboost etc (You can test this by setting everything to max and then to min, it will feel much more instant. F.e. my 240hz Zowie with max Shadowboost will feel delayed compared to Shadowboost disabled)

Any post-processing effect generally adds a microseconds-level delay to the processing latency part of the total display latency.
I'd attribute this to psychological / physiological effects rather than a HW electronics effect.

10. CPU Undervolt
11. OC your GPU (f.e. with Afterburner)
12. RAM OC
13. Disable E-Cores

These are the most dangerous recommendations in this thread.
It's a unnecessary rabbit hole for laymen to dive into. I'd strongly advise against any one of these.
Disabling E-Cores is also a bad advice, as W11 22H2 solved all issues in regards to heterogenous architecture CPUs.

14. Use Windows Power Plan "Balanced"

Ignorant claim, there's a lot of room for tuning in this section of Windows.

15. Don't use a frame cap, play with unlimited Frames (highly game dependent!)

In terms of the top esports games on the market:
LoL — game breaks past 300FPS (in-game frame rate limiter is terrible) IIRC, one has to resort to external limiters
CS2 — 'fps_max X (x>30)' has terrible frame pacing over VRR+VSYNC+Reflex with a 600Hz TN. However, it is a viable path if stuck on <500Hz displays.
Dota2 — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
Valorant — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
Fortnite — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
Apex — A viable path, as the game is locked to 300FPS.
Rocket League — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
PUBG — A viable path, if one is stuck on a lower refresh rate display (<500Hz) and wants to ensure a low frame time.
OW2 — A viable path, as the game is locked to 600FPS. An arguement can be made for +500Hz VRR displays. No, it doesn't add any processing latency to the total display latency chain.

16. NVIDIA Reflex on/boost

Funny one, as you recommended lower image resolution as well

System:
- AMD 7800x3D
- GPU: NVIDIA 3070
- RAM: 1x 16GB 6000Mhz G.Skill Ripjaws V5
- Motherboard: Gigabyte Gaming AX X

17. Consider using only 1x RAM stick instead of 2x (also highly game dependent!)

Seems to me as if you were unstable and then recommend single channel over dual channel
I still don't understand why users, which are oriented on consistency-first, don't resort to ASROCK or ASUS AM5 motherboards with ECC UDIMMs.

Well, those are the tips which works for my system and my games the best, as I mentioned, it is dependent.
It doesn't mean "only A small subset of my easy tips are good", because those are the results of my testing in my gaming context, which work best for my system after tweaking it for several years. There is a lot of theory to this topic, but actually applying those tips and testing them ingame is always more revealing than just the plain theory.

[Slender]

if you affinity cores gpu and usb should be on same core.
kuobe lier, ecores cause mouse jitter.

[hot_coffee]

if you affinity cores gpu and usb should be on same core.
kuobe lier, ecores cause mouse jitter.

I thought most of my tips are already common knowlegde here, because they are mentioned in lot's of tweaking guides and tutorials (f.e. Calypto's guide) and are actually perceivable in games. Besides games I also play a lot of aimtrainers where you can actually feel the behaviour of those changes, maybe not everyone can feel it.

However I am still looking forward to other easy input lag tips

[Slender]

if you affinity cores gpu and usb should be on same core.
kuobe lier, ecores cause mouse jitter.

I thought most of my tips are already common knowlegde here, because they are mentioned in lot's of tweaking guides and tutorials (f.e. Calypto's guide) and are actually perceivable in games. Besides games I also play a lot of aimtrainers where you can actually feel the behaviour of those changes, maybe not everyone can feel it.

However I am still looking forward to other easy input lag tips

https://youtube.com/shorts/FyiaG6tJzL4? ... OOa4LfaO4M
https://youtube.com/shorts/VMz4ZLgfeGY? ... 7wibBvoudX

thats metods to check have already been 10 years, idk why someone on this forum not know about it.

[kyube]

https://youtube.com/shorts/FyiaG6tJzL4? ... OOa4LfaO4M
https://youtube.com/shorts/VMz4ZLgfeGY? ... 7wibBvoudX

thats metods to check have already been 10 years, idk why someone on this forum not know about it.

Surely, you must know the DPC Latency Checker doesn't work since Windows 7
Hillarious to see this tool mentioned even in 2025.

Laymen will do everything except learning 1st party resources (ETW-based data, which can be explored with WPA/MXA)

[Slender]

I think kuobe is an AI.
kuobe, that is kernel latency.
and it shows 100% correct.

[kyube]

I think kuobe is an AI.
kuobe, that is kernel latency.
and it shows 100% correct.

1.) Ad hominem doesn't make your arguement sound, it makes you look foolish.
2.) No, that tool does not measure "kernel latency", nor is there any tool which showcases that properly (LatencyMon isn't one of them)
The term "kernel latency" is ambiguous in the first place.
This amount of confidence you have with straight up wrong claims is abhorrent.

[Slender]

yes kybe, but for some reason disable ecores improve my aim in games, and, when im disable ecores im see difference in this programm. That is coincidence, koube?