In various examples, a low-latency variable backlight liquid crystal display (LCD) system is disclosed. The LCD system may reduce latency and video lag by performing an analysis of peak pixel values within subsets of pixels using a rendering device, prior to transmitting the frame to a display device for display. As a result, the display device may receive the peak pixel value data prior to or concurrently with the frame data, and may begin updating the backlight settings of the display without having to wait for a substantial portion of the frame to be received. In this way, the LCD system may avoid the full frame delay of conventional systems, allowing the LCD system to more reliably support high-performance applications such as gaming.