CSGO/CS2 observations (2 tweaks for you to try)

[andrelip]

go with a higher refresh rate, 144hz is low for cs2 to run fluent nevertheless. Even 224fps cap is so so to handle fast moves, 260 at 280hz feels noticably better. Unfortunatelly, 360 or even 390hz is tricky to keep stable fps even at 7800X3D with beefy GPU. Its doable but you need to tune your PC to perfection. The FPS mustnt drop below or it instantly stutters / blurs out.

I disagree.
I used to think like you and always had crappy 1080p monitors, but 144hz is excellent in a display with minimum ghost as long as you play uncapped. I had the same numbers in human benchmark and I’m playing better with it. But it does suffer more from the delay v-sync. Without it, the diminished advantage of a 390hz (with a response time insufficient for the speed) does not compare with all the advantages of clarity of a 4K display. My Acer is accumulating dust.

I have a 13700k with 5.5ghz and a 4090, so fps was not the issue.

[Bobo]

dunno if you guys have this issue or not, but for me, my in-game sensitivity is much lower compared to my in menu sensitivity.

[Master_Tinkerer]

go with higher refresh rate, 144hz is low for cs2 to run fluent nevertheless. Even 224fps cap is so so to handle fast moves, 260 at 280hz feels noticably better. Unfortunatelly, 360 or even 390hz is tricky to keep stable fps even at 7800X3D with beefy GPU. Its doable but you need to tune your PC to perfection. The FPS mustnt drop below or it instantly stutters / blurs out.

When I just started playing CSGO in like ~2017, I had a 100-140 fps and 60hz monitor setup and I thought it had to do with the fps, then I got a 300fps 144 hz setup, the problem is still there.

During the rare occasion, most ofter after a windows reinstall, I don't have the delay and I easily get 40 frags on faceit lvl 10. How can a 0.97kd bottom fragger like start dropping life games? And when there's no delay it's just point and shoot, the enemies can't do anything. It's stupid.

Whatever, I've given up on CS, I don't even like CS2 because it's trash and the player numbers don't lie

[joseph_from_pilsen]

For me the delay disappears only at some servers

csgo faceit = aim + movement delay, valve officcial = delay but less but 64tick trash, WASE = smooth when sv is 3ms max
cs2 faceit + valve + most servers = delay, WASE = megalag (but its their side they know it and cant make it working), pracc = smooth (dunno why, the server is no better performance wise but the aim delay feeling and movement delay is day and night, spray spread is less than half and sprays are normally controllable, aim delay and movement delay not present at all unlike at official servers, also i can control sprays during A D steps, they dont do absurd shakes to nonsense patterns).

main accounts with 3000hrs = more delay, smurfs = less delay, new account = 10 minutes smooth

fiber at official servers = delay, LTE 50ms = better movement and aim

deleted userdata folder = a bit lower delay for few hours, reinstall win = the same

[FPSMaster]

I really hope this post is a troll...

[Patrykelele]

Okay, so I've been playing CSGO a lot because I really wanted to get good enough to stream and make some money on the side from something that I love doing. I'm a level 10 on faceit (but with shitty stats), just hovering around 1900-2300 elo for most of my 4800 games on faceit, but unable to get consistent results in improving the delays that I'm experiencing.

Anyway, I've been having this atrocious delay (not input lag), where the enemies would just come out and kill me way too quickly for me to react. For example, I would watch d0cc's videos and it always amazed me how slow his enemies would react even though he's playing pretty high elo lobbies. For me personally, I have to instantly react/flick, or else it would be impossible to outgun the enemy which is why I had to adopt an aggressive playstyle where I'm only able to catch enemies off-guard. The problem with that is, when you get to a high enough level, you need to be able to win other gunfights but in those situations it's just impossible for me to come out on top often enough.

I've gone through changing everything I could, all of the tweaks that people post and share (shoutout to people from "My mouse/input lag is killing me" on the Nvidia forum until the thread got locked/Nvidia forums interface turned to shit), and I've only discovered 2 things that actually made a difference for me:

1) Actually try letting windows install the Nvidia GPU driver.
After lurking on the forums, the first thing you would see people mention is "Uninstall via DDU and install the driver yourself". I did that, and while having the driver installed the proper way, I could never get any decent performance for 2-3 years. Then, one time, I just said, "Screw it," and tried letting windows install the Nvidia driver. There was a considerable improvement, however you must not touch the audio driver that gets installed alongside. For some reason, when you uninstall the audio driver, it gets worse for me as if I installed the GPU driver by myself. I know that it doesn't make sense, but we're all dealing with problems that don't make sense in the first place, there are some many factors here that sometimes a less logical solution actually works.

2) Try using a different connection (try sharing LTE from your phone via a USB cable/a TCP VPN connection)
In one of d0cc's videos, I saw him mention that he was actually playing on an LTE connection shared from his phone (he had to temporarily do that for whatever circumstance). I tried it: and even though my ping went from 75 on an ethernet connection to 110 when sharing internet from the phone via USB, it became much easier to hold corners. Before, I always had to play in such a playstyle where I would peek and prefire a certain angle, that was the only way for me to get some kills, but I was able to actually hold corners for the first time in years. Before, I would never be able to hold an angle with a deagle unless I just randomly flick and pray that I hit the guy, now I was able to get 2-3 kills in 1 round his holding the same angle.
This was a nice improvement for some time, but playing with 110 ping still kinda sucks ass so I kept trying to find little edges and improvements here and there but they were just vain.
Then I kinda half-quit CS:GO for a while until half a year ago where I tried to take a more methodical approach. I assumed that there was some bullshit with how my provider handles UDP so I used my surfshark VPN (using it via OpenVPN) and started playing via a TCP connection. Much better. And now my performance was actually better when I installed the GPU driver after a DDU wipe rather than letting windows update install it for me.

My other observations:
1. There is some kind of bullshit/update that makes windows perform worse after an OS install. After discovering that a TCP VPN connection was better for me, I was testing back and forth between Windows Server 2022 and Windows Pro N build 1909, when after installing Windows Pro N build 1909 I decided to play a game on native 1440p (I usually play 4:3) and actually played fullscreen windowed because that's what it defaults to after I do a windows install. The input was horrendous but I actually wasn't getting prefired like I used to. I got a whopping 130 ADR during the game and it felt like most of my gunfights were against bots who had a slow reaction time (even though this is still level 10 faceit in Europe). Then, I kept the game fullscreen windowed and just changed the desktop to 1280x960, had a couple more AMAZING games (39 kills, which is incredible for someone like me who is usuall 18-19 average). I decided NOT TO touch a single fucking, leave it as is, but the next day everything returned to shit. No matter what I tried afterwards, it was garbage after that.

It's either some registry entries that get added and make the hardware perform suboptimally or something, I don't know. I tried creating a restore point after a fresh install and after I install all of the drivers, and I would go back to that restore point at the beginning of every day, but then the restore point would still disappear.

I have to use a newer Windows edition because Faceit anticheat doesn't install on older OS versions, so like right now Faceit anticheat doesn't work on windows 1709/1803 and older.

2. The native network driver gets installed differently to the motherboard-recommended one.
On windows pro N (N edition doesn't have game bar, I'm still not sure if this is actually better or not so do test it), the native network driver (realtek chip) would install in NON-msi mode (box unchecked) with a limit of 1 (I use the old msi util that's very basic). When I install the nic driver from the vendor's site (B550 aorus elite V2), the network chip has MSI mode enabled with a limit of 16 instead of 1. On windows server 2022, however, both drivers would get installed with MSI mode enabled. You can try switching to the driver version that windows automatically installs and see for yourself. It's not that it's better, but the first shot accuracy is more consistent but the spraying gets worse.

On a side note, even before I made any other network-related discoveries, I noticed on my intel systems that the gaming was a bit better when I loaded into windows on one driver version and then switched to another one, so there is something strange with the MSI mode and the limit on both intel and AMD systems.

3. 3.5mm sound and USB sound make a HUGE difference.
This one's obvious and has been talked by many, but try switching from USB sound to 3.5mm and vice versa. For 3.5mm sound, you can test 3 main options:
1. No audio driver (High Definition audio)
2. The realtek driver that Windows installs
3. A realtek driver from your vendor's site
You can try a bunch of different versions and stuff, but in my case they were all just not worth it.

Even your microphone input device has an affect on input lag/performance
I use a Blue Yeti for work (a decent USB mic), and I was often too lazy to disconnect it before I played. I actually put my headphone jack into my Blue Yeti because it supports output and I played like that for a long time, then I switched to the motherboard 3.5mm sound, now I disconnect my USB mic every time I play and I just use the crappy built-in mic on my webcam.

Setting up your PC for matchmaking and Faceit are completely different things!
I obviously care (cared) more about Faceit for CSGO, and it baffled me how I would set up my system for Faceit and play somewhat decently, but then I would play matchmaking with my IRL friends and I was an absolute bot on friggin LEM level where the enemies are bots. Likewise, if I set my system up for matchmaking, I suck balls on faceit.

This also reminds me of one of WarOwl's videos where he seemed really disappointed about his performance because he was getting rekt on LE-LEM to the point where I think he was almost in tears because of how frustrating it was to get killed by a random kid and not even having the possibility to react. He also even pondered quitting the game. But of course he can't blame it on input lag because 3000 hour DMG-level redditors are gonna call him a tinfoil hat crybaby and trash him.

Now, onto CS2
my VPN doesn't work properly in CS2, it would disconnect after a round or two so now I have to install the GPU driver via windows again. before I did that, I was bottom fragging like every game on a quite low elo. As soon as I uninstall the GPU driver through windows update, I was able to carry my weight (~1-1.2kd) but not much more which is still disappointing because I'm mostly playing against noobs in the calibration games. But the game actually became playable.

Cs2 settings: disabled Nvidia reflex!!!
I cannot fucking believe that a trillion dollar company's (PUTS ON NVIDIA!!1) "improvement" actually makes this game way more laggier. It just makes me think that if these smartasses can't fix it with decent funding, not one will.

I think that the problem in cases like mine isn't with input lag, it's more with a server-to-output latency which isn't accurately reflected by the ping. Right now, everybody's obsessed with measuring input lag with a 1000 fps camera, but those reading don't reflect the full story.

CS2 shooting mechanic are atrocious, I'm having to change from 600 eDPI to 800 eDPI and the recoil is still fucking uncontrollable. I think the rifle recoils would be controllable at 1200 eDPI for me but at that point I don't even want to play this game because it's not even a game, it's a wrist tunnel syndrome simulator. In CSGO, the game really favoured low sens players (new DUST2 vs old DUST2 has much wider spaces, so the game started to favour lower sens players, de_cache used to be really popular before and that was another one of those map where you have long-distance engagements most of the time and low sens was preferred. It was stupid how low you needed the sens to be to hit shots consistently, but whatever, at least you had to have strong enough shoulders/upper arms to handle that.
Now, with the new mechanics, higher sens players are way more favoured but a high sens your wrists just conk out after 2-3 hours of playing, fuck that.


I still don't know if N editions are better than the Gamebar editions so let me know what you think about this.

I've been experimenting with MTU size at the moment but it doesn't really seem to make a difference.

Had to get this off my chest somewhere, this seems to be the only place.

Good luck, my fellow tinkerers, give yourself a year or two to fix it, if it's not enough, just quit gaming and put your heart into something more rewarding in the long run. Do I regret kinda wasting 6 years of my life? Yes, because I really hoped I would find a fix and make it pro/semi-pro in the end. But at the same time, the game was kind of fun and I think that Faceit gives you such thick skin that this will be useful in real life.

It's either ISP related but really nearly impossible to detect (I have a good 100mb connection with low bufferbloat), or it's electricity related (I think those EMI guys are cuckoo but I realize that who knows, maybe they're right, maybe I'm the cuckooo one).
Either way, the problems are too hard to detect in our time and age because such competitive gaming is relatively new and there isn't enough infrastructure available to monitor it. Maybe when we're like 60 years old this shit will be fixed.

Cheers!

Add me on steam i have 2700elo on faceit and have simular problmes, I can share with you my experience. Don't bother to talk with people in comment who don't play game and expect to be good.
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198202187095

[Light35]

For those who suffer from 60hz feeling.

TURN VSYNCC ON !!! in drivers, VSYNC + GSYNC + REFLEX + LLU (not needed as reflex overrides it automaticcally). All in drivers (NOT INGAME !!! INGAME VSYNC causes huge input lag as its SW and not HW vsync).
Im surprised how many people still didnt learn this fact, cs2 has bugged frame pacing so only vsync removes this issue (vsync paces frames in fixed stable interval as its how it works, input lag increase is near zero (1-2ms) as it just paces frames at correct time and not as they come (and they come always wrong in cs2 like italian public transport - nothing an hour, then arrive 3 buses at once, then again nothing an hour). This setting will also automatically limit your fps in directx11 mode (dont use vulkan except AMD GPUS, its always worse with -vulkan + you need manually limit fps as the autolimiter doesnt happen in -vulkan). With AMD GPUS you can try -vulkan but you need also manually assign fps limit.
I didnt find ANY working settings without vsync on, whatever i tried, suffered from 60hz feeling and the difference between vsync on and off is ridiculously high. Very easy to test - try a setting, start training offline, shake mouse at spawn, even offline the difference is day and night.

And another tip - dont play after you alt-tabbed out once from game. The game will no more be fully fluent and fully synced, after alt-tabbing the game gets broken and needs restart. It was even measured, after alt-tabbing the game renders worse with worse low percentile fps. But its not the only negative effect of alt-tab. So avoid alt-.tabbing.

With other things you dont need to bother so much as they are not on your side. Netcode is bad, servers are dogsh...t, steam routing is crap especially for cs2 caussing slight loss at steam routing side, all netgraphs obfuscated by valve to not reveal you any relevant info... Also desyncc even at LAN when peeking which nobody knows how to fix, the only thing i discovered is that its not (obfuscated value) interp based as the community was mainly thinking but something else. Current meta is to read reddit csgo/cs2/faceit 24/7 and use the actual workarounds here. Or simply buy SMG and push +W.

Registered to vouch for this.

I'd be the last person to recommend this, I usually never use g-sync and vsync unless its for single player games.
But for CS2 is a game changer.

My 280hz monitor with gsync + vsync nvcp + reflex boost locks my framerate to 260 and the input lag its only 4ms as per frameview.

Much better feeling than unlocked with 1 ms penalty.

Everyone should try this out at least.

[joseph_from_pilsen]

Another CS2 trick.

INCREASE YOUR LATENCY !!!! 65ms feels like a sweetspot (interp ingame is set to similar value). Just a little test, i was really annoyed. Faceit, 2 games (lvl6-8, im not a wondrous player)

First game with ping 15... skill OFF. Prefired at every corner. Killed before i even cross the edge. Uncomfortable aim. Top fraggers ping 105 and 65, what a surprise. Being a burden support throwing flashes and hoping allies hit something instead.



Secong game with ping 65 (increased on purpose)... skill ON. Yolo double opening banana with mac10 without any opponent reaction... Hitting flickshots which i never hit with 15ms. And no, i really dont usually 30 bomb in MR13 at faceit. Enemy 4men premade ping 5ms (sadly they left before i screened).




And another observation, sincce some update approx. 14 days ago, valve servers suffer from constant loss and all platform sometimes lag (netgraph goes insane mostly on corners). CIS ping helps a LOT with this issue too, game is not so much stuttery with high ping (it obviously buffers in your favour and un-favours low pingers putting them behind).

[Master_Tinkerer]

I really hope this post is a troll...

I wish this wasn't a troll post, man

[bestchucky]

Another CS2 trick.

INCREASE YOUR LATENCY !!!! 65ms feels like a sweetspot (interp ingame is set to similar value). Just a little test, i was really annoyed. Faceit, 2 games (lvl6-8, im not a wondrous player)

First game with ping 15... skill OFF. Prefired at every corner. Killed before i even cross the edge. Uncomfortable aim. Top fraggers ping 105 and 65, what a surprise. Being a burden support throwing flashes and hoping allies hit something instead.

How did you increase your ping?