SIM/LAT spikes and smoothness

Hi, I am experiencing these weird spikes in SIM and LAT values. (See https://i.redd.it/yhbtaqy4kb221.png). Also I frequently get the “bad connection” symbol. I feel that this is affecting the smoothness of the game. When the symbol appears the game suddenly feels a lot “heavier” and less responsive.

A WinMTR run yields the following:

|------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
|                                      WinMTR statistics                                   |
|                       Host              -   %  | Sent | Recv | Best | Avrg | Wrst | Last |
|------------------------------------------------|------|------|------|------|------|------|
|                           192.168.178.1 -    0 |   14 |   14 |    0 |    0 |    1 |    0 |
|                   No response from host -  100 |   14 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |
|ph-7113a-ubr10k-02-te-1-2-0-1020.xxxxxxx -    0 |   14 |   14 |    0 |   13 |   32 |   15 |
|           de-fra04d-rc1-ae7-0.aorta.net -    0 |   14 |   14 |    0 |   13 |   33 |   16 |
|           de-fra04c-ri1-ae9-0.aorta.net -    0 |   14 |   14 |    0 |   14 |   31 |   15 |
|                 213.46.179.58.aorta.net -    0 |   14 |   14 |    0 |   14 |   32 |   16 |
|              ae1-br01-eqfr5.as57976.net -    0 |   14 |   14 |   15 |   28 |   38 |   31 |
|         et-0-0-2-br01-eqpa4.as57976.net -    0 |   14 |   14 |   16 |   29 |  113 |   16 |
|              be1-pe02-eqpa4.as57976.net -    0 |   14 |   14 |   15 |   27 |   32 |   31 |
|                   No response from host -  100 |   14 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |    0 |
|________________________________________________|______|______|______|______|______|______|

So the “No response from host” is apparently nothing to worry about. The packet loss also looks fine (AFAICT).

I recently switched my “Maximum Pre-Rendered Frames” NVIDIA settings to 1, which helped immensly with overall smoothness. Is there anything else I can do to optimize responsiveness of the game?

System Information: (dxdiag)

  Time of this report: 12/15/2018, 15:16:21
         Machine name: DESKTOP-LJKBMV3
           Machine Id: {761C78E1-8DD5-47B9-A047-1F332B4E59AF}
     Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64-bit (10.0, Build 17134) (17134.rs4_release.180410-1804)
             Language: German (Regional Setting: German)
  System Manufacturer: ASUS
         System Model: All Series
                 BIOS: 2501 (type: UEFI)
            Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4790K CPU @ 4.00GHz (8 CPUs), ~4.0GHz
               Memory: 16384MB RAM
  Available OS Memory: 16326MB RAM
            Page File: 3795MB used, 14961MB available
          Windows Dir: C:\Windows
      DirectX Version: DirectX 12
  DX Setup Parameters: Not found
     User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
   System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
      DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
             Miracast: Available, with HDCP
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported
       DxDiag Version: 10.00.17134.0001 64bit Unicode