CS2 Best Graphics Settings: Max out Your FPS in Style

The new version of CS does pack a punch

Table of Contents Table of Contents

With CS2 now released, you want to get the best performance out of it.  Since its port to Source 2, there has been a massive overhaul of the game’s graphics, making the new Counter-Strike slightly more demanding than its predecessor. Therefore, we bring you the best graphics settings for CS2.

As a top-tier Esports title, getting the absolute most FPS you can in CS2 rather than caring about how it looks is tantamount to improving your KD, heck you can see that with the 4:3 stretched aspect ratios that the pros play with. Instead, lowering the settings to get that competitive advantage is certainly a good place to start, at least in the old game. However, with a new engine and function of how the game works, including tick rate, there are a lot of new tweaks to learn about, including how to optimize it. Those of you finding out how much more intensive the limited test is will want to find out the best settings for it since the system requirements have been updated and you can find out if you can give it a good.

CS2 best graphics settings

CS has simplified the video settings in the source 2 engine, along with the introduction of upscaling, since it might need a bit of an extra kick on older PCs. We’ve certainly seen an overall drop in performance, expected with the improved quality. The introduction of physics for water, grenades, and improvement to shadows, does tank the frames. However, with some tweaking it can be fixed. Also, one extra tidbit, in the unlikely event it does go Crossplay, running on PC will give you a significant advantage over console, but we’ll speak about that more at the end of this article.

Global video settings

There are some general settings we can tweak for CS2, no matter how powerful your gaming PC is. Under settings and then video, the first tab will give you the options that will adapt the game to your monitor. With the option to change the color mode, brightness, aspect ratio, resolution, display mode, refresh rate, and if you play on one, the laptop mode. For these, we recommend the following.

• Main background scenery: personal preference for the main menu look
• Color mode: computer monitor
• Brightness: 130%
• Aspect ratio: 16:9 is best for normal look, or use 4:3 for a stretched gameplay like Pros are doing
• Resolution: Match your native monitor if 16:9, but at 4:3 we suggest 1280×960 as that is the more common usage in the pro scene
• Display mode: full-screen
• Refresh rate: Match your monitors, or the highest Hz available
• Laptop power savings: disabled

Now to advanced video options, there are still a couple of general options for all gamers to select. These settings ensure you can see your enemies a bit easier, you don’t have any latency problems in your gameplay, and improve the speed between your peripherals and PC.

• Boost player contrast: enabled
• Wait for vertical sync: disabled
• Nvidia Reflex low latency: enabled

CS2 Pro settings

If you’re looking to just copy over what the professionals are doing, ThourCS has gathered up the details of what 25 pro players are using for their settings to get the most out of it. We give you a quick rundown of what they use:

• Resolution: 1280 x 960
• Boost player contrast: Enabled
• MSAA: 4X
• Global shadow quality: High
• Model/Texture: Low
• Texture filtering: Bilinear
• Shader detail: Low
• Particle detail: Low
• Ambient occlusion: Disabled
• HDR: Quality
• FSR: Disabled
• Nvidia reflex: Disabled (Nvidia does suggest enabled+boost though)

Best CS2 settings for low end PCs

When you’re on the lower end of the specs spectrum, you want to get the most out of it and certainly low settings are the best option. Also, Valve has implemented AMD’s FidelityFX Super Resolution, so you can certainly get even more out of your system. You will probably end up needing to get an FPS boost.

• Multisampling antialiasing mode: low
• Model/Texture detail: low
• Shader detail: low
• Particle detail: low
• Ambient occlusion: disabled
• High dynamic range: performance
• FSR: performance

Best CS2 settings for mid-range PCs

With some more resources packed into your system, you have some more processor power to utilize. Therefore, you can turn things up to medium and make your graphics card work a bit more as CS2 has got a bit more intensive with its facelift.

• MSAA: 2x
• Model/Texture detail: medium
• Shader detail: low
• Particle detail: medium
• Ambient occlusion: disabled
• High dynamic range: performance
• FSR: quality

Best CS2 settings for top end PCs

Now when you have the best GPU, CPU, and RAM you really don’t have to skimp out on too much. You can appreciate the highest quality but with a big difference in performance. Your frame rate can suffer, but you can enjoy the new look of the game with these settings.

• MSAA: 8x
• Model/Texture detail: very high
• Shader detail: high
• Particle detail: very high
• Ambient occlusion: high
• High dynamic range: quality
• FSR: disabled

CS2 input lag settings

Moving up to the new engine and functioning of the game, there have been some issues you might encounter or just the difference in how the game feels. But that is to be expected as it changes the whole function of the game like the tick rate that undoubtedly changes how it will feel and perform.

Well, ThourCS over on Twitter has provided a possible fix for the situation. There it is suggested to disable Nvidia Reflex in-game, then in Nvidia settings in the control panel turn low latency on and disable fullscreen optimization. If you have an AMD GPU you can find something similar and anti-lag. The latest patch notes for CS2 also have addressed this.

Even now Nvidia has provided its own optimizations for getting a good experience. Setting low latency to enable improvement of the feel. They also recommend turning off V-sync, turning on max performance in power management, turning on Windows game mode, and maxing out your monitor refresh rate should give you a more responsive feel.

Final word

The new CS2 release has got everyone excited, us included, but it is important to get the most out of any game and the best graphics settings are an easy way to do just that. CSGO was well known for being able to run on almost any device (historically being back-ported onto the Xbox, meaning yup, hope it may come to Xbox One as well), seeing as it was a DX9 game it allowed for huge FPS with little consideration for settings. CS2 on the other hand, while still pretty accessible (I mean, it runs on a Steam Deck), requires a bit more thought into in-game settings to get the best performance possible. With a range of hardware choices to go for, you may consider the best GPU, CPU, or even laptop for the job as well. Don’t worry though, we’ve tested whether CS2 will work on a GTX 1080 Ti as well.

Other modern day consoles though? Well, that’s a bit of a tougher ask. Although Valve hasn’t said anything just yet, we’re pretty certain CS2’s not coming to the PS4 or PS5, or the Nintendo Switch. It also, perhaps unsurprisingly, doesn’t look like it’s coming to Epic games either, although the jury is out on whether Gamepass will get it, particularly with Microsoft’s focus on Call of Duty currently. Regardless, we’re keeping an eye on the situation and will update those pages as and when that changes.

Check out Videogamer’s ultimate guide to the best resolution in CS2.