Briefly: Overwatch has become the fourteenth game to support Nvidia Reflex, a reduction tool that can halve the system’s latency in optimal scenarios. It is now available in the Overwatch Public Test Region (PTR) and will be added to the primary client soon.
Nvidia Reflex is another addition to the GeForce feature set, similar to ray tracing and DLSS. Like both of these features, Reflex needs to be supported in the game engine, and this is a bit of a situation: in our preliminary testing in October last year, we found that it had the biggest impact when the game GPU was bundled and that its effectiveness varies between games through.
Nvidia claims that Overwatch is one of the best implementations we have seen so far. In their chart (below) their test systems are halved with an RTX 2060 Super and GTX 1660 Super and on an RTX 3080 system the delay is reduced by two fifths.
Admittedly, not many people pair a GTX 1660 Super with an Intel i9-10900K, and unless you do, your system will see a smaller advantage than the Nvidia chart shows. But in practical terms, if your internet connection is good and your monitor has a high refresh rate, you will see a reduction of only 10 ms and benefit from it.
Nvidia is also implementing a latency flash indicator in Overwatch to improve the accuracy of their Reflex Latency Analyzer tool. As the name suggests, the latter is a software tool that determines the latency of the system by measuring the time between the input of the mouse and a corresponding action on the screen – the activation of the latency flash indicator, which in the game when a small white square appears. It does require a compatible monitor, but it’s not too difficult to set up if you have one.
But enabling Reflex is even simpler. Download Overwatch Public Test Region (PTR); it is accessible to you under the Overwatch tab in the Battle.net client if your account is active and has good status. The link for Reflex is in the Overwatch client, under Options, in Video settings.