Input lag — the delay between a mouse movement or button press and what appears on screen — comes from multiple sources. Some are in your monitor, some are in Windows, some are in your game. Here is where to look and what to change.
What Input Lag Actually Is
There are two things people often conflate:
Signal input lag — the processing delay inside the monitor between receiving the display signal and showing it on screen. Measured in milliseconds. Hardware reviewers like Rtings measure this directly.
System latency — the full chain from input device to display. Includes USB polling rate, CPU/GPU render time, driver overhead, Windows compositor, and then the monitor's signal lag. This is what you actually feel.
Reducing monitor signal lag is useful, but it is only one part of the picture.
Monitor-Side Fixes
Enable Game Mode / Low Input Lag Mode — Almost every gaming monitor has this. It disables post-processing pipelines inside the monitor that add latency. This is the single most important monitor-level setting. Check your OSD under Image, Display, or Picture settings.
Disable VSync in the OSD — Some monitors have a hardware VSync option in the OSD separate from the game setting. Disable it.
Use the correct input — DisplayPort generally has lower signal processing overhead than HDMI on gaming monitors. If you are using HDMI on a monitor that has DisplayPort, test the difference.
Check HDMI version/mode — HDMI 2.1 ports on some monitors require "HDMI 2.1 Mode" or "Enhanced" to be enabled in the OSD for the port to run at full bandwidth. Without this, the monitor may fall back to slower processing modes.
Windows-Side Fixes
Disable Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling (HAGS) — This helps on some systems and hurts on others. Try with and without. Windows Settings → Display → Graphics → Change default graphics settings.
High Performance Power Plan — Windows Power Options → High Performance. Prevents CPU clock speed throttling under light load.
Disable Xbox Game Bar — Windows Settings → Gaming → Xbox Game Bar → Off. Removes background overlay overhead.
Fullscreen Exclusive mode in games — Not Windowed Fullscreen. True fullscreen bypasses the Windows compositor (DWM) which adds a frame of latency.
GPU Driver Settings
Nvidia — Low Latency Mode — Set to Ultra in Nvidia Control Panel for the game profile. This reduces pre-rendered frames.
Nvidia — Max Frame Rate — Capping to slightly above your monitor refresh rate (e.g., 141 for 144Hz) reduces GPU queue depth and latency.
AMD — Radeon Anti-Lag — Enable in Radeon Software. The equivalent of Nvidia's low latency mode.
Adaptive Sync
FreeSync and G-Sync both reduce perceived latency compared to VSync by eliminating the frame delivery queue. Enable in your GPU control panel and your monitor OSD.
What Moves the Needle Most
In rough order of impact:
- Game Mode / Low Input Lag in monitor OSD
- True fullscreen in games
- Nvidia Low Latency Mode / AMD Anti-Lag
- High Performance power plan
- DisplayPort over HDMI where available
Stacking these brings measurable improvements to total system latency.
Measuring It
Rtings.com measures signal input lag for specific monitor models. If you want to know the lag floor for your panel, that is the most reliable public source.
For community settings specifically tuned to minimize input lag on your monitor model, BestSettingsFor.com has gaming presets with notes from users on the same hardware.
