Help understanding lower latency - a question, should I do this?

[3080guy]

If my fps counter bounces around between 110 - 144 frames per second, whilst playing a game

Where 144 is my monitors refresh limit set in game
Where 144 is also the FPS cap I set in game
But where 125 may be my average fps (approximately)

... taking the above into account, would the frames I see be fractionally, marginally more up to date, and my latency fractionally lower, if I reduced my monitors refresh AND the games rendering FPS limit, to 120fps?

I would then be hitting and more often locking to that 120 fps limit.
Instead of my GPU and CPU trying to hit 144fps, and only managing it sometimes.

If I reaching/hit my target, then would the GPU prioritise and feed data in such a way that my latency was reduced?

- Where possible, I turn Nvidia Reflex with boost on. In games where I turn REFLEX on would make my question redundant, would it not? But where reflex is not available, is setting a cap which I more often hit going to give me a slightly lower latency?
Very grateful for enlightening replies, thank you.

 

[BUDFORCE]

I dont think you could get a faster but lower average frame rate.

Setting it to say 120 might give you a smoother experience with input and everything else, but there isn't that much in it between 120-144, I personally wouldn't bother.

You could look at the game specific graphics settings and see if there is a big hitter where you can adjust something for very little visual difference but big improvement on FPS, most games have that one settings somewhere.

Also set you FPS cap to 143/142 on a 144hz monitor I've read it's supposed to make it marginally smoother.

 

[alec]

The short of it: no, there is no benefit to locking monitor to lower refresh rate

The long of it: depends on so many variables
Do you have gsync/freesync
Do you care about frame tearing
You may want to look into lower game settings to make it run above 120 and 144 fps. There is a definite input lag improvement when GPU/CPU are not loaded to 100%

as far as I know, NVIDIA Reflex is a thing separate from this question. It tries to lower the amount of frames in flight. Sometimes there is a measurable latency improvement, mostly a gimmick.

The rabbit hole of it:
you may want to brace before going deeper, but BattleNonSense and blurbusters are excellent resources on input lag and related things.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BattleNonSense/videos
https://blurbusters.com/faq/benefits-of-frame-rate-above-refresh-rate/