CS2: FPS drop when enabling NVIDIA Reflex on a 360Hz G-SYNC OLED

[Bucking]

Hey everyone,

I’m trying to understand an issue I’m having with NVIDIA Reflex in CS2.

My setup:

* RTX 3080 Ti
* Ryzen 9 5900X
* Dell AW2725DF 360Hz OLED
* G-SYNC enabled
* V-SYNC enabled in the NVIDIA Control Panel
* CS2 running at 360Hz

With NVIDIA Reflex disabled, my FPS is basically locked at 360 FPS, as expected with my G-SYNC + V-SYNC setup.

However, as soon as I enable **NVIDIA Reflex**, my FPS drops significantly to around 280–300 FPS. This seems very strange to me and not intendend. If I remember correctly FPS should get locked to 324 or 328 with Reflex enabled?

Is this normal behavior for Reflex in CS2? Does Reflex actually reduce the achievable FPS this much, or could this be related to how CS2/NVIDIA reports FPS when Reflex is enabled?

Would you recommend:

* G-SYNC ON + V-SYNC ON + Reflex ON
* or disabling Reflex in this situation?

My main goal is the lowest possible input latency while still using G-SYNC properly at 360Hz.

Thanks!

[cuaderno]

Does this happen if you drastically lower your graphic settings?

[Bucking]

Settings are basically on very low.

Also if enable V sync in game instead of control panel it seems like neither the 360hz FPS cap nor any reflex cap works.
FPS stays unlocked

[cuaderno]

Settings are basically on very low.

Also if enable V sync in game instead of control panel it seems like neither the 360hz FPS cap nor any reflex cap works.
FPS stays unlocked

Reflex will dynamically reduce your fps to prevent high GPU load. To make sure that if this is what is happening try enabling steam telemetry (or another method you prefer to show GPU load% on an overlay) and notice the GPU load% values when reflex is disabled compared to enabled.

If you are at close to 100% GPU load with reflex disabled, then enabling reflex will reduce your fps and reduce GPU load. This is working as intended and the best way to reduce input lag. If you don't want your fps reduced so much by reflex, you need to lower your resolution.

To the second point, whatever vsync setting is on NVCP will override the in-game setting, So if you set vsync on NVCP to disabled, enabling it in game does nothing.

[Bucking]

GPU is under 50% even with reflex disabled.
With it enabled it's around 40% to 44% so basically the same.

But it seems to work better with vsync ingame instead of nvcp

[cuaderno]

Ok, here is what could be happening:

-- In CS2, the in-game limiter behaves weirdly in that if you set it to a value too low it goes even lower. This hides the sudden 64hz spikes (see the other thread in this forum), but it does sent your fps too low and adds input latency.

-- In my system, the point where it is too low is around fps_max 320. Ie., I set fps_max 320 but the fps stays floating wildly at around 300 or lower. If I se fps_max 400 it stays steady at 400 however.

-- If you set gsync+vsync+reflex, reflex automatically sets the in-game cap to fps_max 324. This could be triggering the behavior above.

-- Try disabling reflex, enabling gsync+vsync, and set the in-game fps_max to 337. Notice if the fps drops still happens. My guess it that it will stay steady at 337. Because reflex is disabled, you need to make sure you are not incurring in max GPU load and could enable ultra low latency as well.