My personal csgo stutter/inputlag/desync solution

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joseph_from_pilsen
Posts: 166
Joined: 01 Apr 2022, 23:51

My personal csgo stutter/inputlag/desync solution

Post by joseph_from_pilsen » 23 Jan 2023, 20:24

So i promised my custom results of my personal elaboration with delagging csgo and making it smoother. Here it is. And yes, many things i did are just by implementing some tips already mentioned at this forum or similar reddit threads. I publish my personal results, findings and possible dependancies.

Testing server: Today i have run the game at near-perfect condition 128t server and keep connected to it.

Condition and connection: Time around 10-11pm, shortly after peak hours. Connected over PtP 110/110Mbps line, 60Ghz PtP personally owned WiFiber, 4ms ping to local country google, vodafone.cz (ex-UPC) connectivity provider.

Hardware: Legion 5 non-pro laptop over external 240Hz Alienware AW-2518F screen over USB-C/DP cable. A little undervolted Intel i7-11800H -60mV due to slowly degrading thermal paste (too lazy to replace it or let it change by lenovo warranty), temperatures stable below 80C, 4.6Ghz manual fixed clock, stock rams (2x8GB 3200Mhz no XMP), RTX3060 130W Graphic card. Local shop custom made build Kailh Red wired usb-c keyboard, Logitech G PRO X Wireless mouse /in wireless mode/, usb-A microphone AVERMedia AM-310 (disconnected), wired headphones over jack (Audiotechnica AVC500), local shop custom made rubber 140x60cm half desk pad. No connected other peripherials. Replacement 230W Lenovo original AC adapter (stock 300W one i have at 2nd location). Digital electric meter behind doors, copper electric wires, 230V single phase electricity in flat was made around year 2000. Around 236V in 230V electric plug, noise/EMI unmeasured /no equipment/. Kinda long 30m cheap grey cat5e ethernet unshielded cable with 0.01c aliexpress connectors, cheap tp-link gigabit router connected to Mikrotik 1Gbps LHG 60cm Ptp dishes over street block. In PC is some common Realtek 8168 network ethernet Gbe card. WiFi disabled, Bt disabled.

Conditions - software: All bloatware disabled, nvidia geforce experience disabled, running only csgo, steam, processlasso, Intel XTU 2.0 and lenovo vantage, actual drivers, actual windows build /W10 22H2 Pro/. Only Bios is not actual (rumors about blocked undervolting in newest version).

Server quality, ping - permanently connected to Warmupserver WASE EU Vertigo csgo 128t server with approx. 16 players and very good server variance below 3ms, and my personal stable <20ms ping:
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So even if i have tuned already my game and system previously, trying many things and tips, i never felt really satisfied, some things helped, but still the game was running weird and i wasnt sure why.
What i tried to get to perfect state is to maximalize the smoothness of game feeling at some reference server (not FACEIT, not Matchmaking! - they suck very often and its server issue!). As a reference server i have chosen Warmupserver.net Vertigo 128t Europe server, as its never overpopulated and lagging due to overpopulation, has decent ping and at prime time its decently populated. I dont pay their oppressive VIP subscription, so it doesnt kick me for slot reservation whenever some legend connects or simply the server is full filled with VIPs.

Today finally my home internet connectivity provider changed connectivity from old semi-amateur fibre provider to vodafone/ex-UPC fibre, so i got rid off weird 0.8 percent packetloss to local google and whole internet (replaced by 0.1 percent one :| ), so now the internet connectivity is at "reference quality" and i dont suspect it anymore from ingame issues or stutters and it allowed me to start any serious tuning here. Previously i wasnt sure if the internet has some negative impact or not due to the weird slight packetloss (probably yes). A little detail: i dont pay for internet, im an retired ISP admin i have it for free maintaining the last mile by myself. My internet is always free even at locations where its not :mrgreen: Unfortunatelly, at second countryside location i live at, the internet is even more crappy than this one, so i cant compare if my game runs better here or there - at 30-120ms jittery static 4G LTE connection borrowed from neighbor it runs.. hell yeah... expectable.

I start the game with following parameters: -novid -nojoy -snd_mixahead 0.05 -cl_interp_ratio 1 Nothing else as most all older tricks stopped working (were disabled by valve - like cl_interp, mat_queue) or turned to be counter-productive (lowering snd - causes stutter and input lag, -r_dynamic 0 - disables weapon muzzle flash, forcepreload no more works or has negative side effects, -high - may interfere with mouse input etc.).
Config: 1440x1080 stretched, 0.5 sens 3200dpi (raised from 0.34 as i felt too snailish), high details, 2xAA, 4xAF (to better see opponents in distance), rate 300000, m_yaw set to half to have bigger vertical than horizontal sens, but this has no impact on game smoothness at all.

Almost new account, empty inventory, manually deleted 730 folder in userdata, custom config.cfg only, no workshop subscription (all these things are important, every single of them may cause fps drops or stutter). Disabled steam overlay. Fullscreen of course.

Before first run i already have my system tuned in many ways, if i remember something i didnt mention, i will edit this post. What i did:

0) Disabled hybrid mode (MUX switch on), direct USB-C DP output.
1) Tuned drivers - basics like disabled tripple buffering, minimum prerendered frames, none ultra low latency settings as ultra neither low latency mode is not supported by obsolete engine and in best case it does nothing.
2) FPS limited in nvidia control panel to 238 limit
3) G-Sync compatible mode is ON
4) Performance mode on in windows power management, manually set in GF drivers for csgo
5) Laptop in performance (RED) mode
6) Core parking disabled
7) Disabled XBOX gamebar and overlay
8) Windows 10 GPU Hardware Scheduling ON
9) Important: in Processlasso manually set dwm.exe process from default high to below normal priority, all high processes set to normal, except wininit.
10) Debloated (only critical services allowed at startup, no anticheats at startup except VAC, blocked riot anticheat from running at startup). No external firewall neither antivirus. Deffender blocked from random starting and scanning system. Disabled cortana, removed onedrive. Installed many apps, but none allowed to run at startup, also blocked in process manager.
11) Patched monitor parameters (look to AW-2518F threads - this monitor has some bugs patchable by custom config).
12) no custom CRU /no time to try yet/
13) CSGO cpu affinity set to core 4-15 in processlasso only, most system and annoying processes set to 0-2, to not interfere with. Truly hated processes like faceit anticheat i usually set to core 3 with low prio and run high prio stressteste extra only for this single core 3 so they cant run properly (sadly no bigger effect on game smoothness yet). DONT set any system affinity in windows task manager, its bugged and the affinity will be set at next startup wrong and even for processes you didnt set.
14) manually set bcdedit /set disabledynamictick yes DONT use this similar command: bcdedit /set useplatformclock true - unless you want to really fuck up someones computer to troll its owner effectivelly with near zero chance to find out whats wrong, it causes massive lag and computer runs sluggish like infested by many viruses but its clean.
15) disabled energy saving in ethernet settings, disabled green ethernet

I made more runs of csgo since i rebooted my pc (i always reboot pc before running csgo mess at source trash):

Run 1) Instantly after joining server and waiting 20 seconds (first few seconds are a bit laggy due to client var going over 1ms until it settles up) i felt heavy movement and my counterstep simply causing me to move opposite way instead of standing still. Mouse feeling was good (not like at faceit with noticable rubberbanding lag), but keyboard feeling was meh heavy. Bhop nearly impossible, unable to hit anything, crosshair was kicking off whenever i peeked anyone. This problem i had previous week when playing faceit at this location and i dealt several nice hooxis 10 bombs...
I made a search and i noticed that i made a mistake and while in steam i removed the -high parameter in csgo launch settings, in processlasso the game was still set to high prio - changed to normal.

Run 2)After long time i enjoyed FLUENT game. Everything seemed perfect. Opponents reactions belieavable (of course, only at the ones with LEGIT ping, not russkie etc.), picture sharp and fluent, no double edges, no warping movement of other players, counterstep instant when counter stepping, shooting crisp and predictable, sprays controllable, i enjoyed playing for whole 30 minutes with dgl doing flick heads even 90-180 digree nonsenses sometimes, scout noscoping, AK47 doing decent taps and sprays (adequate to my skill of course).

I alt tabbed to windows and informed my friend that i finally managed the game to run well. After i alt tabbed back, the game wasnt so smooth and so perfect, it was the same what describe people suffering from EMI - opponents moving dizzy, when turning or moving all the environment looks like at 60, maybe 120hz but not more, you see everything and nothing at once, when moving, you are unsure what is really going on, everything is blurry, opponents dont move fluently, they warp, nothing is possible to hit, corners are unsharp with ghosting. I would compare it to feelings whenever i have headache and aura from migrenna - the same feeling. I see but i cant say exactly what and everything is hidden in a haze of bad persistence.

I alt tabbed back to windows and after few unpublishable words at facebook /chrome was open all the time/ and alt tabbing back to the game the game was suddenly running perfectly again without doing anything. It only darked out (bug of csgo - changing randomly brightness from 130 to 80 percent - simply increased back). There i ended my exploration as the things seem to be obvious now. The alt-tabbing does the same what did an old source engine trick - to change resolution ingame to "reset" the rendering of the game and "input lag", however at my PC this trick doesnt work (changing resolution when connected to server crashes the game), but alt tabbing from fullscreen (with black screen for a while as the resolution differs from desktop) seems to do the same job.
Also it doesnt seem that EMI could be an issue here.

I didnt solve the common and annoying problem of csgo - opponents instakilling you by uncounterable peeks before you even see them with absurd peekers advantage on their side due to their high ping as this is unsolvable at client side. Its server which delays the info about these high pingers for other clients due to this parameter which has NOTHING to do in fair competitive environment as it simply favours peeker whenever he moves or does any action: "sv_maxunlag 0.2s" and the only help is force valve (and custom online platforms like faceit, esea) to lower the parameter to more fair value /much much lower, 20-25ms max/ - by leaking and mass abusing this exploit: viewtopic.php?p=89164#p89153 As soon as everybody will do it at competitives, valve will no more have any other choice because the exploit is unpatchable and resistant to any detection as it runs at network infrastructure and not in client computer and as an (badass) ISP i can simply exploit my users to lag that way without even willing to. The same way like i punished once few years ago one known and popular "game" developer and provider by lagging their game for few thousand users simply by marking their game packets and giving them trash priority after they banned my main acc unrightfully just to show their dominance not knowing that i have access to large scale BGP gateways for easy revenge. And yes, it ended with happy end and double unban. Some people call for network neutrality, i call it network causality. And believe me, at large scale gateways/nodes are MANY such network/firewall/mangle rules serving the "principles of causality", and you would also be surprised how often the data packets flow a much slower or longer or simply nonsensual way instead of going straight simply just because some subject doesnt like some other subject or refuses to pay him "tax for content" and similar tries of stronger "partners" to oppress weaker ones. But thats a different story for different (telco) web but it may help for those who have lags at some exact servers while others run fine for them or in some games and at only exact locations.

I also didnt solve another problem as this is the same kind of issue - its not on your side but at other end of internet cable - bad servers. Faceit and matchmaking, are both the same, they have better, worse and truly bad servers, sometimes with bad connectivity /faceit delegates most of their games to external hiperz provider which is known for lagging nodes causing lags for all or only specific players behind laggy nodes/. Second provider for faceit is your-server.de and they lag sometimes too. There are 2 kinds of lags - networking (laggy connectivity) and performance (overloaded hardware, mostly server CPU, and inefficient game engine). In terms of performance both providers suck, most common issue at faceit is that sv goes randomly noticably up from 0-3ms range or server var is unstable and game starts running weird. At valve its permanent issue, their servers lag performance-wise even as they are only 64tick (look at my other posts where i described it), only esea doesnt lag (in EU) cuz its... empty. And empty servers dont lag usually. Dunno how its at esportal and other platforms, as i never visited them.
At server with non zero server variance or non zero server var will the game never be guaranted to run really well. Same like it runs crappy with high client var but there the issue is most likely on your side - bad PC performance except the specific situation when its caused by server causing your client to be unable to render the game properly (then both variances are bad, and the source of issues may be both - client neither server). Easiest way how to recognize laggy server from laggy client is to download a replay from server and play it at beefy PC which runs CSGO guaranteedly without any issues. If sv or var is high even in replay, its server sided problem, if there are no spikes, its either your connectivity or your PC. But also it may be server connectivity of course (server replay cant notice any connectivity issues as it runs locally).

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