In a blog post detailing its new Reflex 2 technology, Nvidia showed off an RTX 5090 consistently delivering 800 FPS in Valorant at 1440p. The key highlight is not the FPS but the PC latency, hovering between an astonishingly low 2-3ms. Building on the existing framework, Reflex 2 can "warp" the frame to a newer camera position, considering quick mouse movements while an algorithm fills in the missing details.
It has almost become a tradition for Nvidia to announce a slew of new software utilities and tools with each generation of GPUs. Blackwell, or the RTX 50 series launched last week, introduced Multi Frame Generation, an update to a Transformer-based model for DLSS and Reflex 2. Reflex 2 works similarly to asynchronous reprojection, a popular technique incorporated in VR headsets to ensure responsive and consistent motion when your GPU cannot keep up with the target framerate.
Let's assume you're moving your mouse to the right to land a headshot, and this motion takes place across two frames. With Frame Warp, the GPU renders frame A but calculates the updated camera position of frame B in the render pipeline and "warps" or reprojects frame A to the newer camera position. It's simple, yet it works. As expected, this can introduce graphical anomalies, but Nvidia has addressed that issue through in-painting, which leverages a latency-optimized algorithm to paint in the missing details.
As such, Nvidia claims the RTX 5090 can run Valorant (without frame generation) at 800+ FPS with latency measuring under 3ms. Reflex 2 was also tested with THE FINALS, where the RTX 5070 dropped from 56ms at stock to just 14ms at 4K (DLSS Quality) with the highest graphics preset. Since these are first-party metrics, we'll need to perform our testing to evaluate the effectiveness of Reflex 2.
The good news is that Reflex 2 will not be exclusive to the RTX 50 series. Nvidia has promised support for "other GeForce RTX GPUs" in the future, which we assume includes all GPUs from Turing to Ada Lovelace (excluding the GTX 1600 series). Valorant and THE FINALS are among the first titles to feature Reflex 2, but support should expand to other games soon.
