Most of us focus on the average frames per second (FPS) while gaming, but that number doesn’t always tell the full story. You could be running some competitive titles at over 200 FPS and still feel like the game isn’t smooth enough. For instance, when I played Battlefield REDSEC recently, I could immediately tell the game felt jittery during intense gunfights, even though I was getting over 130 FPS. That’s because high frame rates don’t automatically guarantee consistent frame delivery or near-instant input response.
In such cases, you could lower your graphics settings to improve your average FPS, but that wouldn’t necessarily fix the problem. The game might still not feel smooth because of poor frame pacing, microstuttering, and inconsistent responsiveness. That’s why it’s important to look beyond the average frame rates and focus on what actually affects perceived smoothness. Below, I’ll share exactly what I did to make several games run smoother on my PC without directly boosting my average FPS.
Improving 1% and 0.1% lows
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Consistent frame pacing matters just as much as your average FPS
If you’ve ever wondered why your game feels choppy even at high frame rates, your 1% and 0.1% lows are probably to blame. Unlike your average FPS, the 1% and 0.1% lows represent the average of your lowest frame rates while gaming. For instance, if you’re averaging 200 FPS, but your 1% lows are hovering around 80, that means one out of every hundred frames takes over twice as long to render. As a result, you’ll experience subtle hitches and microstutters that break perceived smoothness, especially when you move your mouse around.
In my experience, upgrading to the 5800X3D helped improve 1% and 0.1% lows significantly across most titles, even though my old 5900X had more cores and advertised higher boost clocks. The 5800X3D’s massive L3 cache made a big difference in keeping frame times consistent, especially in CPU-bound competitive games like Valuing. However, you don’t necessarily need a new CPU to improve these lows a bit. Minimizing background processes, using an FPS limiter, enabling game mode, and keeping your GPU drivers updated can also help reduce frame time variance.
Enabling G-Sync or FreeSync
Variable refresh rate can fix screen tearing and help with microstutters
Most modern mid-range and high-end gaming monitors support variable refresh rate technologies like Nvidia G-Sync or AMD FreeSync. Basically, they synchronize your monitor’s refresh rate with the rate at which your GPU renders frames, which helps eliminate the timing mismatch that causes screen tearing on standard monitors with a fixed refresh rate. They work as long as your frame rates stay within the monitor’s supported VRR window. So if your FPS drops below or above that range, you may experience tearing or stuttering for a moment.
When I enabled G-Sync on my 175Hz OLED monitor for the first time, I immediately noticed the improvement. Even when my frame rates dipped from 160 to 95, motion still looked smooth and consistent instead of feeling stuttery. G-Sync and FreeSync don’t raise your FPS, but they make each frame arrive exactly when your monitor is ready to display it. This really makes a difference when FPS typically dips during demanding scenes. However, if your frame rates exceed your monitor’s refresh rate, enabling VRR won’t make a difference, so it’s worth capping your FPS to stay within the supported range.
Reducing latency
Enabling Nvidia Reflex and low-latency modes helped smooth things out
Another major factor that affects how smooth a game feels is input latency. Even if your FPS is high and frame pacing is consistent, delayed responses between your keyboard or mouse inputs and what happens on screen can make the game feel sluggish. That’s why I always enable the Nvidia Reflex setting whenever it’s available. It reduces render queue latency by preventing your GPU from pre-rendering too many frames, which helps your inputs reach the screen faster. For games that don’t support Reflex, I set the Low Latency Mode to “Ultra” in the Nvidia Control Panel, which has a similar effect, although it operates at the driver level instead of within the game engine.
On top of that, I make sure my mouse and keyboard are running at their highest polling rates to minimize peripheral delay. For instance, my Keychron M4 supports a 4KHz polling rate, which means it sends input data to the PC four times more frequently than a standard mouse, which is limited to 1KHz. The difference isn’t all that dramatic, but in competitive titles like Valuing and Counter-Strike 2it can make aiming and tracking feel a little bit more precise and connected, at least for me. It’s also worth limiting your frame rate slightly below your monitor’s refresh rate to keep latency consistent and prevent the render queue from backing up.
Sometimes, consistency matters more than average FPS
As much as I love chasing higher frame rates, I have to admit that those numbers alone don’t always make games feel smoother. You can lower the graphics settings or enable DLSS upscaling and frame generation to increase your average FPS by a significant amount, but if your frame pacing is inconsistent or your input latency spikes during intense scenes, the game can still feel stuttery even at over 200FPS. That’s why it’s worth keeping an eye on 1% and 0.1% lows and enabling features like G-Sync or Reflex whenever possible. There’s nothing wrong with pushing your hardware to its limits, but do that without overlooking other factors like consistency and responsiveness, since they can easily make or break your experience.
