Special K can drastically reduce latency

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[Simon95]

Did anyone released a guide to Special K? How to use it to get the lowest input lag etc.

[Meowchan]

My understanding is that you shouldn't use it in competitive games currently unless you want to get banned from said games.

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[Chief Blur Buster]

For competitive gaming use, it's generally best to use an in-game framerate cap. They may not be smoother for enjoyment's sake.

Fortunately if you are a VRR user -- precision framepacing isn't needed for VRR as long as the engine is able to make "gametime-to-photontime" consistent, much how randomly fluctuating framerates can look smooth when that specific criteria is met. Also see the Framerate Struggle Near Max VRR demo.

Some Present()-hooking software (streaming software, even RTSS, etc) is whitelisted as acceptable by some games, but Special K is far less common, so it may be automatically blocked/banned since all hooks are potential banned performance enhancements (e.g. AI enemy recognition in software that does autoaiming). Be warned that even RTSS may not be whitelisted in all game anticheat measures, so doublecheck first with your specific competitive game.

[Kaldaien]

Just FYI, timing is really the least of what Special K brings to the table.

There are still benefits to limiting even w/ VRR engaged due to certain forms of V-Sync not properly regulating CPU/GPU work submission rate. Maybe not benefits intrinsic to traditional third-party framerate limiters, but Special K's limiter manages the health of the render queue when you turn it on; the only similar software in existence is NVIDIA Reflex, and that's an API/driver level utility.

Allow me to demonstrate with Yakuza: Kiwami 2. Its engine is creating a 15-frame render queue (evidently it thinks it is video software ). Unfortunately ... it s behavior is not limited to video playback and without Special K limiting frames, mouse input latency is ~300 ms at the main menu independent the actual display rate.



With Special K's limiter turned on, it fixes the game's SwapChain, G-Sync engages the correct the way and I kill 14 frames of input latency.

>> 297 ms present-latency @ 48 FPS becomes 15.2 ms present-latency @ 48 FPS. Timing didn't do this, there's more wrong with games than just their clock.



SK includes a bunch of fixes to common engine problems that are so polished at this point that I just apply them systematically to get the highest-performance path-to-scanout when you turn the framerate limiter on.

[Chief Blur Buster]

15-frame render queue!

Yes, the overly-excessive swapchain and the ability for hooks to eliminate that waste.

[Nawafwabs]

Do you know how to use it for overwatch ?

[Meowchan]

Do you know how to use it for overwatch ?

I second the request.

[deama]

Did anyone released a guide to Special K? How to use it to get the lowest input lag etc.

https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Special_K

then scroll down till you find "Manually install local wrapper DLLs" and it will describe to you how to install it manually.