Does CS2 Have Ray Tracing?

Counter-strike 2 might not have ray tracing, but does it need it?

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CS2 and its predecessors, are without a doubt, some of the true pillars of the PC gaming community. Even if you haven’t played it, you’ve heard of it. The epic tournaments, the grand prize pools, the ridiculously overpriced limited edition skins. Ask any PC gamer what they know about Counter-strike and inevitably these things will float to the surface, time-and-time again.

One of the reasons CS has been and remains so popular over the years has been the incredibly low entry level to the game. We’re not talking skill here, no sir, that’s certainly a whole other story, no what we’re talking about is, very specifically the hardware requirements necessary to run the game.

Don’t believe us? Pop over to Steam and check out CS:GO’s minimum system requirements. CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 (for reference that launched in 2006), 2GB of RAM, and a Video Card with 256 MB of VRAM. If that CPU was a human, it could vote in most countries.

Counter-Strike 2 Advancements

In fact, CS:GO is equally getting a bit long in the tooth now as well. Launching to some colossal hype in August 2012, the game was a successor to both CS: Source and the OG, Counter-strike. But, times have changed, and finally after 11 years, and 7.5 million “very positive” reviews, and with enough condemnation and fanfare alike, the release of Counter-Strike 2 is right around the corner, and with it, comes a flood of new advancements and tech to bring CS right into the modern era.

In fact, you can find out all the details and changes moving from CS:GO to CS2 right here. We also have a list of the most recent patch notes here too. Content people.

Is Ray Tracing Supported in CS2

Does Counter-strike 2 support Ray tracing then? Not currently. As far as we can tell from trying to get the best out of CS2’s settings, right now there’s no support for Nvidia’s ray tracing, path tracing or any other form of direct particle illumination like that. No sir, not a peep. And we don’t expect there to be either.

Surprised? Don’t be. Although we don’t have the official system requirements for CS2 just yet, one thing we can be certain of is that Valve isn’t going to alienate a significant portion of its player-base by enforcing higher-end graphics cards and system specs in the process. 

Yes, it’s true, getting a solid CPU for Counter-strike is always a smart move, the series has been notorious for bottlenecks in that area. However, that’s mostly due to the graphical load being so low that GPUs can finally let loose, and smash out frames faster than the average time it takes for a new streamer to get found out using aim bots, particularly at lower resolutions (we actually have a list of GPUs ideal for CS2 if you’re interested). 

Counter-strike & GPU Statistics

What’s that gotta do with the price of a butterfly knife? Well simply put, at time of writing, right now, there’s over 1.25m people playing CS:GO on Steam. It’s by far the most played game on there, by a factor of 3 (PUBG comes in at about 400K or so).

If you look at the top 20 GPUs, excluding RTX XX70 series or above, they represent 43.81% of all graphics cards.

It might also surprise you to know that, top tier cards (XX70 series or above) count for a phenomenally small number of total GPUs. If we look at the top 20 GPUs used right now in Steam’s August Hardware Survey, and exclude cards that are a 70 series or higher, (including the GTX 1070, which let’s be fair, is being generous) you’re left with a phenomenal number. If you look at the top 20 GPUs, excluding RTX XX70 series or above, they represent 43.81% of all graphics cards. And 11.94% of those are laptop processors as well, (yes you can play CS2 on a laptop just fine).

Of those top 20 GPUs 10 of the most common are technically RTX cards, which do support ray tracing. However, if you take a look at our Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty testing (arguably the big bad of the ray tracing world), you’ll find that without the support of DLSS 3.5, FSR or something similar, you’re likely looking at frame-rates through the floor. Your average frame-rate, even with a dedicated RTX 4060, and unhindered by CPU bottlenecks, will float at around 2–3 fps at 4K in that game. Just crazy.

Top 5 GPUs on Steam Hardware Survey

#	GPU	PERCENTAGE
1	NVIDIA GTX 1650	4.96 %
2	NVIDIA RTX 3060	4.73 %
3	NVIDIA GTX 1060	4.19 %
4	NVIDIA GTX 3060 LAPTOP	4.16 %
5	NVIDIA RTX 2060	3.82 %

Why Ray Tracing in CS2 Probably Won’t Happen

And that’s the point, weirdly, and rather counterintuitively, because CS is one of the most successful and largest PC gaming franchises of all time (sorry Pokémon, give us a decent PC game already and that might change), the simple fact is, the player-base is far too large to even warrant justifying the development time on Ray tracing. Particularly given the impact on performance. And, as we know, in Counter-strike, performance is everything. Heck CS2 even works on the Steam Deck, (although admittedly, despite their similarities, there’s no Nintendo Switch support announced either) so yeah Ray Tracing might be out of the picture for the moment.

Counter-strike 2 is designed to perform as well on a GTX 1080 Ti as it is an RTX 4090

Even the best players in the world, typically set their aspect ratios to 4:3, play at 1920×1080, and set most if not all their settings to low. We have entire fields of monitors built out around hyper-fast refresh rates, pushing 360 fps, purely because of this game, and tech from the likes of NVIDIA and AMD, all centered around reducing latency (Nvidia’s Reflex latency is a good example) as if it was the most important thing on the planet. Heck there are even mice designed with CS2 in mind, to reduce weight and drag. All of which is aimed at making sure that the only thing between you and your inevitable in-game demise, is you, the human.

If Valve really wants to make this release shine, it needs to do far more than enabling Ray Tracing as well. The big focus should be on the console generation as well. We know, CS:GO is available on both the Xbox One and the Xbox Series X, but there’s still no PlayStation support, and whether it’s coming to the PS5 or the PS4 is still up in the air. I mean, you can even play it on a Mac.

Does CS2 Really Need Ray Tracing?

The short answer is: no. It’s not that kind of game, it’s a hyper-competitive fps, not some super immersive warfare simulator complete with blood, guts and gore galore. No it’s not necessary at all. Counter-strike 2 is designed to perform as well on a GTX 1080 Ti as it is an RTX 4090. What the dev team have done with CS2 is take the bones of CS:GO smooth out the rough parts, give it a fresh lick of paint, and bring it up-to-date for the modern era, is it perfect yet? No, there’s still a lot of work to be done, of course there is, but it’s early days.