Nowadays, it’s easy to see just how much of an impact resolutions and refresh rates have on your gaming experience, but getting a tangible feel for how latency can affect your gameplay is a little trickier. In its war on system lag, Nvidia has partnered with Kovaak’s to debut an aim training challenge that showcases how a lower latency could mean the difference between a win and loss in your FPS games. Better yet, you could bag yourself a fancy new mouse from Logitech, 360Hz gaming monitor from MSI, or even an RTX 3080 graphics card just by taking part.
Usually, the base game would cost you $10 / £10, or $15 / £14 collectively with its optional Tracking Trainer DLC, but it’ll be free from now until December 20. Both are also currently half price if you fancy using the aim trainer after the Nvidia system latency challenge comes to an end.
Although this lets everyone take part, there is a catch: you’ll need a graphics card that supports Nvidia Reflex for your scores to register on the leaderboard, such as the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1000 series and above. If you bleed red with an AMD GPU or sport a GTX 900 card or below, you’ll still be able to refine your skills, but your score won’t submit and you won’t be eligible for prizes because Reflex is needed to track everything accurately.
So, how does it work?
- Download Kovaak’s on Steam and launch the game
- Close the Nvidia system latency pop-up
- Select ‘Nvidia Experiments’ on the menu
Please note: this will undo any of your current challenges - Log into your Meta account, or create a new one via ‘register’
Your verification email might end up in your ‘spam’ or ‘junk’ folder - Choose either Latency Frenzy or Latency Flicking to participate
Both modes feature three stages that consist of a 15 second warm-up, followed by 45 seconds of action. Stage one gives you 25ms of latency, compared to stage two’s 55ms and stage three’s 85ms. In most cases, you should see your score diminish as you go, representing how latency can make or break your in-game performance, alongside why Nvidia Reflex is important in competitive games.
Latency Frenzy acts much like your usual aim trainer, with more dots cropping up each time you shoot one down. This intends to train quick gaming mouse movements as you switch targets. Latency Flicking, on the other hand, uses smaller dots and gives you a limited window to flick between them, which is better suited to practice headshots.
There are over $20,000 worth of prizes up for grabs, and unlike your favourite games, you don’t need to worry about cheaters topping the charts. Kovaak’s features EQU8 anti-cheat technology, Nvidia tells us it’ll monitor leaderboards for unseamly activity, and everyone that takes part is entered in the draw no matter where they score. Nvidia will choose the winners on January 10, so keep an eye on your inbox.