It takes control of the DirectX swap chain, and it provides options to improve latency and frame pacing depending on the DirectX version and what version of Windows you’re using.

This frame rate limiter is a lot more extensive than you probably expect. Reflex is an option through Special K’s frame rate limiter. It helped in Lies of P, as well, though mostly as a way to confirm when I actually didn’t Perfect Guard an attack. Flipping on Reflex nearly halved my latency in Starfield, making the game feel much more responsive. There are a lot of Nvidia Reflex games, but most of them are multiplayer shooters where latency is paramount. I’ve also used it a lot to turn on Nvidia Reflex. I’d rather tweak the look of a game to my display than flip on HDR and hope the in-game adjustments provide enough bandwidth. You can tweak the saturation and the midpoint of colors, and even get a readout of color coverage to see if your display can show everything on the screen. Turn on Special K, flip on HDR, and both games are looking better than ever.Įven in games that support HDR, Special K provides much more customization.

Just in the past three weeks, I’ve played Starfield and Lies of P, both of which lack native HDR. Most games just don’t have great HDR, or they lack HDR entirely. I have an Alienware 34 QD-OLED, and I bought the monitor specifically for the inky blacks that look stellar in HDR games. I’ve found it most useful for HDR, though. And, for PC nerds like me, it provides extensive monitoring tools that no other app can match. It breaks down the walls set by developers in PC games, allowing you to force certain features and customize how you play.

Make custom modifications to particularly problematic games like Starfield, Elden Ring, and Nier: AutomataĪnd would you believe me if I said it can do even more? Hopefully, you can see why Special K is so useful in so many games.

Offers an extensive frame limiter with options to improve consistency.

Monitor system performance on a highly granular level.

Set focused and unfocused maximum frame rates.

Load DLL files like ReShade from in the game.

Disable, enable, and customize inputs for games and other windows (i.e., unlock your mouse cursor, keep your keyboard and mouse active on one screen, but not another).

Customize your Steam achievement notifications.

Cache textures in DirectX 11 games to improve performance.

Inject customizable HDR into DirectX 11, DirectX 12, and OpenGL games.

You may have heard of Special K, but you probably have the same question as a lot of folks: What does it do? It’s such a pervasive question that the top three questions on the Special K Wiki’s FAQ all cover the features of the app.īroadly speaking, here’s what you can do with Special K: It can do everything Jacob Roach / Digital Trends I’m building a new PC - here’s how I chose the components for it The success of AMD’s FSR 3 hinges on this one feature I can’t get excited about AMD’s next version of FSR anymore

Half life source pc