But you don't know which reference is the last until you actually get there - that is why you used reference counting in the first place, because you were unable to statically determine which reference will be the last one. So every time you abandon a reference it might be the last one and you might have to spend extra cycles to free the resource. This is no more deterministic than a garbage collector.
You know that releasing the last reference will. That is why the important concept is single ownership of resources and not reference counting by itself.