NVIDIA Reflex shows up as a toggle in a lot of competitive shooters, usually labeled something like NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency.
If you’ve ever flipped it on and wondered whether it actually did anything, you’re in the right place.
Reflex is one of the few gaming settings that’s basically free performance, but the details matter.
Here’s what it does, when it helps most, and whether you should leave it on.
What NVIDIA Reflex actually is
Reflex is a software feature built into supported games that lowers system latency on NVIDIA GPUs. It does not raise your frame rate or improve your image quality.
Its whole job is to make your inputs feel more responsive. That’s it.
It works on GTX 900 series cards and newer, so almost any NVIDIA GPU from the last decade qualifies. The catch is that the game itself has to support it, because the feature is coded directly into the game engine.
You’ve probably seen it in games like Valorant, Counter-Strike 2, Fortnite, Apex Legends, Call of Duty, and Overwatch 2. It sits in the video settings with two options: On and On + Boost.
System latency, explained without the jargon
To get why Reflex matters, you need to know what system latency is. It’s the delay between the moment you click your mouse and the moment the result shows up on your screen.
This is not the same as network lag, which is your ping. You can have a perfect connection and still feel sluggish because of system latency, which people also call input lag.
That delay comes from a chain of steps. Your mouse sends a signal, your CPU processes it, your GPU renders the frame, and your monitor displays it.
Every link in that chain adds a few milliseconds. Reflex targets one specific link, and it happens to be one of the biggest offenders.
How Reflex reduces latency
In a normal setup, your CPU prepares frames and hands them off to your GPU to render. When your GPU is working hard, the CPU keeps racing ahead and stacking up finished work in what’s called the render queue.
Those queued frames sit and wait their turn. By the time the GPU finally draws one, the input that created it is already old news.
That waiting is where a big chunk of your latency comes from. Reflex keeps the queue short.
It tells the CPU to hold off and submit its work just in time for the GPU to render it, so frames spend almost no time waiting in line.
NVIDIA has an older version of this idea in the driver called Ultra Low Latency Mode. Reflex built into the game beats it, because it can control the pressure on the CPU side in a way the driver setting can’t reach.
Reflex On vs Reflex On + Boost
The plain On option does the queue-trimming described above. For most people, that’s the setting that matters.
On + Boost adds one more thing. It stops your GPU from dropping into a power-saving, low-clock state during gameplay, so it’s always ready to fire off the next frame at full speed.
The tradeoff is more power draw and a bit more heat for a small extra latency gain. Boost mostly helps when your GPU is sitting underused, and NVIDIA itself describes the benefit as slight.
It’s worth testing, but don’t expect a night-and-day difference.
When Reflex actually helps, and when it barely moves the needle
Reflex shines when your GPU is the bottleneck, because that’s exactly when the render queue piles up.
Crank your settings, push your GPU toward 100 percent usage, and Reflex can cut a serious amount of latency. This is the scenario it was built for.
When your GPU is barely breaking a sweat, the story changes. If you’re running an easy-to-render game at a huge frame rate and your CPU is the limiting factor, the queue is already short.
There’s not much left for Reflex to trim. The latency savings shrink, and a few players even measure slightly lower latency with Reflex off, since it can gently cap your frame rate to keep the pipeline tight.
That’s an edge case, not the norm. It’s just why “leave it on and never think about it” isn’t quite the full truth for high-end rigs.
For the vast majority of players in demanding competitive games, Reflex is a clear win.
A few catches worth knowing
Reflex is not a full replacement for a good frame rate cap. If you use G-SYNC or V-SYNC, you still want to cap your FPS a few frames below your monitor’s refresh rate to stay in the sync range.
Our guide on why games stutter on a good PC covers that frame cap trick in detail.
Reflex also only works in games that build it in. If your favorite game doesn’t have the toggle, you can’t force true Reflex, though there’s a fallback coming up in a second.
And if you’re on an AMD Radeon card, Reflex isn’t available at all. Turning on FreeSync in your monitor settings is the closest equivalent for keeping latency in check.
How to turn NVIDIA Reflex on
In a supported game, head to the video or graphics settings and look for NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency. Set it to On, or try On + Boost if you want to squeeze out the last bit and don’t mind the extra power draw.
If your game doesn’t support Reflex, open the NVIDIA app (or the classic NVIDIA Control Panel), go to Manage 3D Settings, and set Low Latency Mode to Ultra.
This is the driver-level fallback. It’s not as effective as true in-game Reflex, but it applies the same basic idea to almost any game.
Our breakdown of the best NVIDIA Control Panel settings for low latency walks through this and the other tweaks worth making.
Where Reflex 2 and Frame Warp fit in
NVIDIA announced Reflex 2 at CES 2025, and it adds a feature called Frame Warp. Instead of only shortening the queue, Frame Warp takes your latest mouse input and warps the finished frame to match it right before it hits your screen, with a predictive algorithm filling in any gaps.
NVIDIA showed off latency reductions of up to 75 percent, with Valorant and The Finals lined up as the first supported games and RTX 50 series cards getting it first.
Here’s the honest status as of mid-2026: Frame Warp still isn’t in a broad, official release. It’s turned up in demos and been quietly bundled into a couple of game builds, but it hasn’t rolled out widely to players.
If you’re on current hardware, keep an eye out. The version of Reflex you’ll actually use today is the original.
So, should you turn NVIDIA Reflex on?
For almost everyone playing competitive shooters, yes. It lowers input lag, it doesn’t cost you frames or visual quality, and it’s a single toggle. There’s no real downside to leaving plain Reflex On.
Boost is the one judgment call. It can help a little when your GPU is idling, but it runs hotter and hungrier, so flip it on, see if the game feels better, and switch back if you’d rather keep temps and power down.
The only players who might skip it are those already sitting at ultra-high frame rates in a CPU-bound game, where the gains are tiny. Even then, leaving it on rarely hurts.
If you want to feel every millisecond you can shave off, pair Reflex with a proper frame cap and a solid mouse polling rate, and you’re about as responsive as a PC setup gets.