HELP

We at esport settings have created a complete guide on how to optimize your pc for competitive csgo and we hope you will find it useful. With tons of experience since 1.6 days, Global Elite in MM, 4000+ hours in CSGO, played in semi-professional teams and competed in various leagues. We want to share our knowledge with the csgo community.

Remember:  This guide is focusing on the best performance as well as the lowest input lag, not how the game looks.

1. GPU Settings

1.1 Update GPU Drivers

One thing that can increase your fps significantly is to update your GPU drivers. If you build your computer you most likely know what GPU you have since you picked all the parts. But a lot of people buy their computers pre-built and may not know what GPU model they have. There is an easy way to find out what GPU model you have. Go to windows “Search” and search for “dxdiag”. A window will pop up, press “No” and then go to the “Display” tab where you will find the GPU model name.

Links to the GPU driver downloads page:

Nvidia GPU Drivers: http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us

AMD GPU Drivers: http://support.amd.com/en-us/download

Intel GPU Drivers: http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/detect.html?iid=dc_iduu

1.2 Adjust Image Settings With Preview

What you want to do here is to drag the slider all the way to the left “Performance” and then hit apply.

1.3 Change Resolution

Select your native/default monitor resolution and also the highest refresh rate that your monitor supports.

Note: Don’t go higher refresh rate than what your monitor supports.

You can make a custom resolution for CSGO. Let’s say you want to play on 1440×1080. Click on “customize” and do it in there(there are a ton of tutorials on this on youtube). When you are done, you will have the 1440×1080 option in CSGO video settings.

1.4 Adjust Desktop Color Settings

Increase the “Digital Vibrance” setting. This makes the game look more colorful and also makes it easier to spot enemies which is very important in CSGO. Use a setting that you feel comfortable with. Most of the pro players use anywhere between 70% – 100%. We at esportsettings.com personally like having it on 100%.

Note: (It might take a while to get used to if you have been playing with 50% before).

1.5 Adjust Desktop Size And Position

Blackbars or Native resolution: Select “Aspect ratio” scaling option and then perform scaling on “GPU”. Hit apply.

Stretched resolution: Select “Full-screen” scaling option and then perform scaling on “GPU”. You also want to select “Override the scaling mode set by games and programs”. Hit apply.

1.6 Manage 3D Settings

Now we come to the fun part where we change our 3D settings. This guide is not about making our game look good. It is about making our game have the absolute best performance and the lowest input lag.

These are the settings we want to use for that to happen:

Note: For some people “Shader Cache” ON can make their game stutter and vice versa. If for some reason your game stutters or doesn’t feel smooth. Try changing “Maximum pre-rendered frames” to 3 or application controlled and “Shader Cache” to OFF.

2. Windows Settings

2.1 Power Options

Go to windows “Search” and type “Power Options”. In here you want to select the “High Performance” plan.

2.2 Disable Xbox DVR (Windows 10)

1. Xbox DVR lowers the fps in csgo and other games so we want to disable it.
2. Go to windows “Search” and search for “Xbox”. Open the xbox app. Go to “Settings” and then “Xbox DVR” tab. Disable “Record game clips and screenshots using Game DVR”
3. If you don’t have an Xbox account you can disable Xbox DVR with the “Registry Editor”. See the link below. 

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=6239-DZCB-8600

3. Mouse Settings

3.1 Disable Windows Acceleration

1. Windows does have acceleration and this is something we don’t want to have, especially when gaming. Go to windows “Search” and search for “Mouse”. In here you want to click on the “Pointer Options” tab.
2. To disable windows acceleration you need to untick “Enhance pointer precision” as shown in the image below.
3. Once again go to windows “Search” and search for “Ease of Access Center”, then click on “Make the mouse easier to use”, “Set up Mouse Keys” and drag the “Acceleration” slider all the way to the left, hit apply and ok.
4. MarkC mouse fix disables windows acceleration in the registry so here is a guide on how to do it.

Note: If you use raw_input 1 you don’t need MarkC mouse fix but it can be good if you are playing other games that doesn’t have raw_input 

1. Download MarkC mouse fix from here: http://donewmouseaccel.blogspot.se/2010/03/markc-windows-7-mouse-acceleration-fix.html
2. Go to “Search” and search for “display”, click on “Display Settings”. Check what screen scaling you have and remember that.
3. Open the MarkC fix folder and pick the right version of windows. 
4. Open and apply the right scaling file that you use. You’re done!
5. To check the mouse movements. Open up the mouse movement recorder file and move your mouse cursor left and right. If it shows green and white numbers. You’re all good.

3.2 DPI Settings And Polling Rate

1. When picking DPI settings you don’t want it to be too high because that can cause acceleration due to interpolation which is not good. In CS:GO you want to use either 400 or 800 dpi.
2. To change DPI settings, open up your mouse software. If you have a zowie mouse for example, you can change the DPI by pressing the DPI switch underneath.
3. Change your mouse HZ/Polling rate to the highest it supports.
4. You want your mouse to use its native DPI. Google to find out what native dpi your mouse has. If you don’t know use either 400 or 800 DPI.

3.3 Sensitivity

We recommend you to use a low sensitivity because that will make you land more accurate shots. Try anything between 2 – 3.5 sensitivity.

3.4 Raw Input ON or OFF?

1. If you use raw_input 1 it takes the raw mouse data straight from the mouse instead of windows.
2. If you use raw_input 0 it takes the raw mouse data from windows instead of the mouse.
3. Try both and see which one you like the best. We recommend to use raw_input 1 for best accuracy.

4. CSGO Settings

4.1 Launch Options

We want our launch options to be clean and simple not 100 different commands. Too much stuff in your launch options will mess up your game with lower fps, input lag, mouse lag etc. We only need the most important commands.

Go to your steam library and right click on CSGO. Click on “Properties” and then “Set launch options”.

Recommended launch options: -console -novid -freq 144 -tickrate 128

“-console” opens the console when you launch the game

“-novid” Skips the valve intro when you launch the game

“-freq 144” or “-refresh 144” Monitor refresh rate. Use the highest your monitor supports.

“-tickrate 128” Makes offline servers 128 tick. Can be useful if you want to train your aim vs bots with 128 tick.

Additional launch options that can be useful for some:

“-nod3d9ex” Makes alt tab faster.

“-nojoy” Removes joystick support.

“+mat_queue_mode 2” Multi-threaded mode. For some people this can give a massive increase in fps and for some it can even lower their fps.

Launch options we recommend not to use:

“-threads X” where X is your amount of threads. Not your cores. Don’t use this anymore, it got patched a while ago. It can lower your fps if you use it.

“-high” Makes the game run in high priority. Don’t use this anymore. Even though it can give a slight fps increase, it will mess up your system more than it will help.

4.2 Autoexec

We have made an Autoexec tutorial with recommended settings here: https://www.esportsettings.com/csgo-autoexec-tutorial/ If you stutter and have fps lag, try adding r_dynamic 0 to your autoexec.

4.3 Config

How to find, compare and add a config file here: https://www.esportsettings.com/csgo-config-tutorial/

4.4 Video Settings

1. Start up your game and go to options and then “Video settings”.
2. Choose what resolution you want to play with. I like 1024×768 stretched because of the wider player models as well as the increase in fps.

“Global Shadow Quality” is set to “High” which makes it easier to spot shadows further away. If you have it on “Very Low” you will still see shadows but not that far though. If you feel like you don’t need to see shadows further away and instead prefer more fps, choose “Very Low”.

4.5 Audio Settings

1. Go to options and then “Audio settings”.
2. Turn off all music so that you can hear what is happening in game.
3. The next thing you wanna do is to go to windows “Search” and search 
4. for “Sound”. Select your headphones under the “Playback” tab and click 
5. on “Properties”. In here you want to go to the “Advanced” tab and change
6. the “Default Format” to “2 channel, 16 bit, 44100 Hz (CD Quality).

Reasons for using this:

1. CSGO is made in Source Engine which uses 16 bit 44100 Hz.
2. All sounds in CSGO are 16 bit 44100 Hz.
3. Having it on this setting will get the lowest CPU usage and will not make the sound quality worse.

Update your Audio Drivers:

If you have really old audio drivers you should consider updating them. Some people with really old drivers have actually gotten a 100 – 200 fps increase by updating them.

5. More Tweaks

There are more tweaks you can do.

1. Check your PC for viruses.
2. Updating drivers can give an increase in fps, especially if you have very old drivers.
3. Install CSGO on SSD. Makes it faster to load maps.

We hope this was helpful. Feel free to comment if you have any questions. 

OP and credit: https://www.esportsettings.com/csgo-optimization-guide/

 Original post by reddit user u/ImThour 

Link: https://www.reddit.com/r/GlobalOffensive/comments/6pv54h/a_detailed_guide_on_nvidia_3d_settings_for_best/

1. Opening Nvidia Control Panel

1. Close CS:GO if running.
2. Right click on your desktop and select NVIDIA Control Panel.

2. Select the right option

1. Now once you open the control panel, move on to Adjust Image settings with preview.
2. Make sure the option Use the advanced 3d image settings is selected.

3. The Best 3D Settings

1. Make sure you are on Manage 3D Settings tab before going further.
2. Select Global Settings and Change Each of your settings to the below mentioned ones.

Change Your Settings to these:

• Ambient Occlusion: Ambient Occlusion is simply put, a lighting effect that drastically improves shadows on geometries. Select OFF.
• Anisotropic Filtering: It enhance the image quality of textures on surfaces by reducing fuzziness and blur. Select Application Controlled.
• Antialiasing FXAA: It defaults at Off since games naturally had their own AA options. Select OFF.
• Antialiasing Gamma Correction: It refers to the correction of brightness values within an AA enhanced image. Setting this on and off has no performance impact but has an effect on the brightness of some antialiased textures. Select OFF.
• Antialiasing Mode: Select Application Controlled.
• Antialiasing Transparency: This is pretty much another AA implementation. Select OFF.
• CUDA GPUS: allows you to select which graphics processing unit will use CUDA for general computing functions. Games with Nvidia PhysX technology benefits with CUDA enabled GPUs. Select all for the best possible performance.
• DSR Factor: DSR or Dynamic Super Resolution is basically an improved down sampling method. It allows the graphics card to render the game at a higher resolution than your display could provide and outputs it using your native resolution. Select OFF.
• Maximum Pre-rendered Frames: It is a buffer used to store data in preparation to be used by the GPU. How much frame should be prepared ahead is govern by this setting. Set it to 1.
• MFAA: It refers to another AA method, similar to MSAA but it doesn’t feature the same performance impact. Select OFF.
• Power Management Mode: Modern GPUs can set their power usage under various scenarios and this setting pertains to that feature. Select Prefer the Maximum Performance.
• Shader Cache: It is a feature to optimizing 3D application load times and CPU performance. Select OFF.
• Texture Filtering – Anisotropic: Select OFF.
• Texture Filtering – Negative LOD Bias: Negative LOD Bias refers to texture sharpening by inputing a negative Level of Detail value for mipmap selection. Select Allow.
• Texture Filtering – Quality: This setting controls Anisotropic Sample Optimization and Trilinear Optimization. Select High performance.
• Texture Filtering – Trilinear Optimization: Select OFF.
• Threaded Optimization: It is the setting that manages multi-threading optimizations for 3D applications. Select ON.
• Triple Buffering and V-SYNC: Triple buffering allows performance improvements on games if V-SYNC is turned on and V-SYNC is an anti-tearing teachnology, synchronizing the framerate with the monitor’s refresh rate. Select OFF for CS:GO.
• Virtual Pre-Rendered Frames: This limits the frames the CPU can prepare for VR devices. The setting is set to 1 by default. Set it to 1.

Alright, Now you have got the best 3d settings for CS:GO, You can try these things mentioned below to get a little bit boost.

1. Use this command: cl_forcepreload 1
2. Verify Integrity Cache.
3. Run these commands: snd_updateaudiocache and snd_rebuildaudiocache and restart CS:GO.
4. set fps_max to 0 or 999.

Only use these launch options:

1. novid 
2. tickrate 64/128 -freq 60/120/144 +mat_queue_mode 2. Other doesn’t really helps you to improve FPS.
3. Run Disk Defragmenter programs. Don’t defragan SSD. It shortens the life span of the drive as they have a limited number of read/write cycles.
4. Stop unwanted programs from running on system start. Go to task manager -> Startup and disable unwanted programs.
5. Temp Files. Open Run (Win+R) -> Type: %temp% -> Delete everything you can in the folder.
6. Set Power Management Mode to High performance.