How to Reduce Input Lag on a Windows PC

6 min read

Input lag is the delay between moving your mouse and seeing the result on screen. It's the sum of many small delays across your display, peripherals, Windows, and the game. You can't remove it entirely, but you can shave milliseconds at every stage — and it adds up to a noticeably snappier feel.

Start with your display

• Run the monitor at its highest refresh rate (Settings → System → Display → Advanced display). Higher Hz means a fresh frame reaches your eyes sooner.
• Turn on the monitor's 'Game Mode' or lowest-latency picture preset — it disables image processing that adds delay.
• Prefer a low-latency sync setting. Uncapped or a high frame-rate cap with a variable-refresh (G-Sync / FreeSync) setup usually feels more responsive than traditional V-Sync.

Configure your mouse correctly

• Turn off 'Enhance pointer precision' (mouse acceleration) so movement is 1:1 and predictable.
• Set a high polling rate (1000 Hz or higher if your mouse supports it) for more frequent position updates.
• Use raw input in games that offer it, so the game reads the mouse directly instead of through Windows' pointer pipeline.

Reduce system-level latency

Windows itself adds latency through power management and coarse timing. These changes tighten it up:

1. 1

   Use a High Performance power plan

   Balanced power settings let the CPU idle down between frames, adding jitter. High Performance keeps clocks up so input is processed immediately.

2. 2

   Raise the timer resolution

   A higher system timer resolution improves scheduling granularity, which smooths frame pacing and shortens the gap between input and render.

3. 3

   Enable Hardware-accelerated GPU Scheduling

   On supported GPUs this lets the hardware schedule its own work, trimming a layer of driver-side latency.

4. 4

   Close overlays and background capture

   Recording overlays, browser tabs, and chat apps all inject latency and steal CPU cycles. Shut down what you don't need while playing.

Don't forget in-game settings

• Enable any 'low latency', 'reduce buffering', or NVIDIA Reflex / AMD Anti-Lag option the game exposes.
• Lower settings that hammer the GPU; a GPU pinned at 100% usage adds render-queue latency, so cap FPS slightly below your max.
• Play in exclusive fullscreen when available — it generally has lower latency than borderless windowed.

Automate the system-side tuning

The display and in-game settings are yours to set once. The Windows-side changes — power plan, timer resolution, GPU scheduling, mouse input, background cleanup — are exactly what SurgeFPS applies (and reverts) in one click, with each tweak's latency impact explained. It's free to download and try.