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 bullsh*t 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 (f*ck 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?
