Raw Input Buffer in Valorant: How to enable, benefits, and more

Input statistics and performance play an important role in competitive shooter games, and Valorant isn't any different. Since the hero shooter's launch, players have been increasingly focused on improving hardware performance to get the best results. To support such motives, Riot Games introduced Raw Input Buffer, a specialized in-game setting built to reduce input delay with gaming mice.

Valorant receives continuous attention from its developers at Riot Games via patch updates. New features, agent updates, quality-of-life improvements, and more are common aspects that the developers regularly address through new patches.

Patch 3.07 was released in Episode 3 Act 2 and brought about some influential performance improvements and some minor agent updates. Raw Input Buffer was one such feature added to the game through this patch, giving players an additional option to improve input delay and boost their performance metrics.

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Exploring Raw Input Buffer in Valorant: How to enable it and utilize its full potential?

Valorant has run on 'Raw Input' since its launch. This prevents system/operating system settings from influencing your mouse's in-game performance.

With Valorant being a competitive shooter game, it's always recommended to use worthy hardware for an edge over enemies. Metrics like input delay, FPS, and more play a massive role in determining your match results. As you climb the ranked ladder, focusing on performance metrics is necessary for a seamless gaming experience.

Many first-person shooter games (Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Rainbow Six Siege, and more) choose to process raw mouse inputs to reduce system interruptions and input delays.

Riot Games took the benefits of Raw Input a bit further by introducing Raw Input Buffer. This setting helps adjust the APIs used to process raw inputs directly from the mouse.

Enabling the Raw Input Buffer will immediately introduce a slight boost in performance when used with standard keyboards and gaming mice. However, input latency will remain the same for available devices.

Only gaming mice with a polling rate of 8KHz or more can help utilize the full power of the Raw Input Buffer, introducing massive performance and input latency improvements.

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Here's how you can enable Raw Input Buffer in Valorant

To enable this popular in-game setting, follow these steps:

1. Open Valorant.
2. Select the cog icon on the top-right of the lobby screen to open in-game settings.
3. Now, click on the General tab if not there already.
4. Under the Mouse sub-tab, you'll find the Raw Input Buffer setting.
5. Click to enable it.

That's it - you'll have Raw Input Buffer enabled in the game. Try it out in a Deathmatch or Spike Rush to see the difference.

Despite Riot's claims, the difference and performance boost may not be noticeable. However, there's no harm in enabling the input buffer. It will only improve the situation, be it a general gaming mouse or a premium 8k Hz gaming mouse.

That said, low-end machines that struggle to offer 60Hz refresh rates in the game may not do well with Raw Input Buffer. In this case, you can try playing with the input buffer enabled and keep an eye on the performance metrics simultaneously. Disable the feature if the result isn't favorable.