CS2 at (budget) laptop in 2025 - a pure disaster

[joseph_from_pilsen]

Meanwhile in autumn 2023 was the game still somehow playable at my mainstream laptop with i7 11 gen and 3060.
Now i decided to buy again a new 13gen budget legion laptop to travel (got a good deal) and it was... a cold shower. No matter how i tune it up, its not smooth even as much as it was at my 2 gen older legion over a year ago. The game performance simply deteriorated too much trough many "excellent" patches released reducing performance every patch. Even my desktop rig runs cs2 every month worse and worse, also networking seems to be broken last patches. The game is extremelly heavy on L1/L2/L3 cache and memory speed and incresing CPU frequency does almost nothing to its performance. Most pay2hardware2win game ever see.

Meanwhile... valorant runs butter smooth at this laptop at my external 280hz screen capped to 260fps vsync and when unlimited, the fps doesnt go below 350, keeping in 350-450fps range. Day and night experience, tomorrow i will make a valorant DM recording comparison to mock cs2 even more. Because its a fully smooth game vs fully stuttery mess.

I tested the game in many scenarios:

1) valve DM dust2 at 3am not full server

recording: https://youtu.be/7x6VqTFqR_Q

- somehow playable, with huge limitations, frametime spikes are huge

aim feeling: 3,5/10
perceived frequency: 75Hz outdoors, 144Hz indoors
playable: yes, but no fun to play

2) valve DM nuke at prime time full server

recording: https://youtu.be/w-Dug_1m4hA

- absolutely unplayable, 10-20ms permanent frametime spikes, fps rollercoaster, microaim total ass, unable to hit anything

aim feeling: 1/10
frequency feeling: bruh, 0Hz?
playable: no way

3) warmupserver deathmatch as the heaviest known DM possible (it lags rly bad on any non top tier CPU). Needed to enable vsync with 260fps cap + their fps boost to get somehow playable experience (unlimited resulted into an unplayable lag).

recording: https://youtu.be/8ZQMU5ZwRTo

- playing at 3am, 22 slot, turned their fps boost on
- turned vsync on

aim feeling: 6/10 (7.5 AK, 5 USP, 0 scout)
frequency feeling: 144Hz
playable: yes, but only some guns (scout was unplayable, huge perceived delay and rubberband). Best was AK, usp was worse due to opponent body stuttering as hell.
special issue: opponents animations looking most often like having 30fps max

3) 5v5 scrims xplay.gg 5v5 scrim servers: Unlike previous year, the game is not fully smooth even in 5v5 competitive mode with less players rendered which is the biggest problem and flaw and difference. Even if the game has the similar avg fps, it runs way worse.

recordings: https://youtu.be/46aebmyLCSA and https://youtu.be/lWDAWj-Qx-A

maps mirage and dust, both with similar results, mirage a bit worse probably due to smoke and utility spam at A site

aim feeling: 7/10
frequency feeling: 144-165Hz, without smokes close to 240Hz persistence
playable: yes, relatively well, but with some limitations. Sniper rifles are not sharp enough, and still terrible framespikes.

4) xplay dm server

lighter than warmupserver, playable but running still too heavy. There was permanently a multihacker presence so i didnt make a record tonight.

aim feeling: 6/10
frequency feeling: 120hz
playable: yes, but heavy aim.

[Lev1n]

9800x3d 3080ti 32gb cl30 ram 360 hz monitor playing at 30-35 ping and game is garbage what we should do?

[themagic]

If you believe that Valorant is better...yes you right...performance FPS wise it is (cause its a fucking Cartoon same like Paladins or XIII game if someone remember it ) but everything else is bottom shit from Connection to Hitreg to Peekers Advantage and same problem with random heavy movements while 600fps. Completely Rigged by the Riot Elite without a Replay System and I'm sure that it don't gonna be even released this Year and only what they do...is to somehow keep the Players playing there broken shit and promise them things and changes which don't gonna happen anyway...but just some skins and maybe 1-2 more map and new agent...and misson completed done for the year.



here some nice videos...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCd6KKp8dlY
1:37...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klNMji1JTI4
0:16...2:33...3:03...


...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx2-hMG2zpM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhYvDCandPQ


FPS just a number same like Ping which don't even matters in this rigged trash games and dont matter if 1000fps and 1000hz refresh rate...shit still gonna happen...let's just be honest and talk about reality how it is.

[joseph_from_pilsen]

Netcode issue, the opponent had higher ping so he was immune to you. In reality he is not where you see him. Normal in "modern" games.

[themagic]

Netcode issue, the opponent had higher ping so he was immune to you. In reality he is not where you see him. Normal in "modern" games.

damn i wish hard that this was all true and that i would living in your reality where "it is just high ping and just netcode" and that these things matters and makes all difference and bullshit that exist...so easy and uncomplicated and with logic...


lets go change places with you for 1 or 2 days bro ? i am living not far from frankfurt servers and can even find a place for you with under 10 nice ping Provider and then invite some of people with similar ping for an custom fairplay match...I gonna try to make it close to LANtoLAN experience for you all.

or wait...i just pull out my eyes and brain and gonna send it to you per DHL. that will be better and faster...

[SKILLEN]

And this is for 3-4 min of deathmatch,after 5-6min fps drops even more( you can include AVG fps in the hud to confirm). People say its because bullet holes,they are probably right in some degree. Go for example 5vs5 dust2 ,uncap fps look at ceiling and see how many fps,after 5-10 rounds look again in the same spot and you will have lower fps and there are not bullet holes (because new round).

In may 2024 i had 550avg and 200p1 with 5600x , today i have the same fps ,but with 5700x3d.

Also i can't make rivatuner hud to show in cs2 i have -allow_third_party_software in launch options and i add cs2.exe in the program ,but didn't work.

[themagic]

And this is for 3-4 min of deathmatch,after 5-6min fps drops even more( you can include AVG fps in the hud to confirm). People say its because bullet holes,they are probably right in some degree. Go for example 5vs5 dust2 ,uncap fps look at ceiling and see how many fps,after 5-10 rounds look again in the same spot and you will have lower fps and there are not bullet holes (because new round).


Also i can't make rivatuner hud to show in cs2 i have -allow_third_party_software in launch options and i add cs2.exe in the program ,but didn't work.

Finally someone noticed this too...and it's not even about map and graphics or details or skins...

I can even confirm this decrease in FPS too and noticed it (happens mostly at respawns each rounds moments) or at halftime (mid match) and exact same happens in Valorant too...but the more you play the worse it then only gets for all the next Matches with this mystery FPS changes Ingame while everything seems to be default and same... like as example...you play map and after 1-2 hours you get exact same map again but FPS already like different and everything else by feelings and this shit is noticeable...don't know about many others and how they feel but there something going behind the scenes.


call me crazy and shizo but here a another good example from me...
1. You start Game.
2. Join Deathmatch.
3. Having crazy nice good Start and Run and already 10-15+ kills while all others just get there first 2 and 3 and 4 kills.
4. You get killed.
5. Respawn.
6. You get killed again.
7. Respawn.
8. And with each Respawn and Rekt it gets more absurder and you suddenly start to Suck and can't Hit nothing more and something start to feel very different from that point on... disadvantage and everything bad kicks in and triggered...

[SKILLEN]

And this is for 3-4 min of deathmatch,after 5-6min fps drops even more( you can include AVG fps in the hud to confirm). People say its because bullet holes,they are probably right in some degree. Go for example 5vs5 dust2 ,uncap fps look at ceiling and see how many fps,after 5-10 rounds look again in the same spot and you will have lower fps and there are not bullet holes (because new round).


Also i can't make rivatuner hud to show in cs2 i have -allow_third_party_software in launch options and i add cs2.exe in the program ,but didn't work.

Finally someone noticed this too...and it's not even about map and graphics or details or skins...

I can even confirm this decrease in FPS too and noticed it (happens mostly at respawns each rounds moments) or at halftime (mid match) and exact same happens in Valorant too...but the more you play the worse it then only gets for all the next Matches with this mystery FPS changes Ingame while everything seems to be default and same... like as example...you play map and after 1-2 hours you get exact same map again but FPS already like different and everything else by feelings and this shit is noticeable...don't know about many others and how they feel but there something going behind the scenes.


call me crazy and shizo but here a another good example from me...
1. You start Game.
2. Join Deathmatch.
3. Having crazy nice good Start and Run and already 10-15+ kills while all others just get there first 2 and 3 and 4 kills.
4. You get killed.
5. Respawn.
6. You get killed again.
7. Respawn.
8. And with each Respawn and Rekt it gets more absurder and you suddenly start to Suck and can't Hit nothing more and something start to feel very different from that point on... disadvantage and everything bad kicks in and triggered...

It work better for me in first minutes too i dont know why ,but i dont think its just because respawn. It could be ,because server is not full in the beginning ,but still i tried at night when dm servers have 5-10 people and still performance is degrading every minute.



Even in 5vs5 in warmup before the game start is noticeably better for me(still very bad of course) and when the game start its immediately worse.

[joseph_from_pilsen]

So... i finally made it to much better state... Im proud to run the crap at least 240Hz capable... 280hz is too much, it barely keeps above 230fps but its finally PLAYABLE. With terrible frametime spikes, but playable. Just look... (yeah its recorded with nvidia overlay input lag causing silver aim but still...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZI90OlHUbk

- the CPU is set manually to run at 4.8Ghz all cores, 0,1V undervolt, disabled c1 states and speedsteps to not throttle
- custom performance mode, disabled¨
- manually banned all innecessary processes from running automatically (including nvidia bloatware, google services, intel bloatware, lenovo bloat...)
- all innecessary processes have set affinity to run either at efficient trash cores or not at all
- "efficient" cores (call them just trash cores) are running 200Mhz less than default
- disabled reflex + boost which is bugged in cs2, using LLM ultra + vsync + gsync (with 260fps autolimit at 280hz - it has 2 positives, it runs smoother and it doesnt generate excessive heat from rendering excessive frames
- GPU RAMs overclocked for 400mhz
- custom purple performance mode with fans around 70-80 percent at 80 digrees step (still bearable noise unlike the 90 and 100 percent level).

aim feeling: with shadowplay 6/10
without shadowplay 8/10 (!!!!). Still worse than 7800X3D of course, but finally CLOSE enough, considering its 1000 eur laptop...
playable: yes, with 240hz monitor (280Hz is already too much).

Weird thing: its fresh win11 installation so i can use DOT crosshair and hit something. At my desktop i simply cant... its... weird.

The biggest hassle was to force the laptop to NOT throttle clocks... Undervolting was only a workaround because with 150mV undervolt it stopped downclocking due to power draw being low enough BUT it also started to be unstable (logically). So i had to block lenovo drivers from touching the clocks and TDP + disable C1 states and speedsteps in throttlestop. And undervolt and set clocks in lenovo vantage first, then finalize them in XTU app...
Another problem, every app for tuning does change only some parameters, while others in reality are ignored no matter how you change them. And changing one thing in one app affected other app where different thing started miraclously working which did nothing before (or the right opposite...). So its a big wizardry and rabbits hole... And a big mess.

However, the biggest issue of cs2 is the CPU cache + RAM speed bottleneck. The game hiccups simply because it cant get the data trough + the game is lame developed so its extremelly heavy on the cache + ram. 24MB L3 cache of the 13650HX is simply not enough and 4800MT rams give it a final blow. Thats why it doesnt run well at non 3D processors and at laptops its even bigger problem because they usually have slow RAMs and smaller cache. At the moment whenever i try to transfer more than 180-200fps at full server, the game simply hiccups and hard lags due to overloaded bus causing ridiculously long framespikes.

But what baffles me the most, my aim at laptop is way more responsive (in the short intervals between lags lol) THAN aim at my main rig, i can use dot crosshair there which i cant use at my 7800X3D+4070S desktop because its not so snappy. Time to reinstall my main rig and see what happens...


I also added Valoranta... In comparison with cs2 its butter smooth. However even valoranta runs better with fps cap than unlimited. Sadly, im xp level 13 only in valorant and im not gonna to get higher, whenever i turn the game on once per a year to give it a chance... nope. Gunhandling and movement is so unfun and bad and maps are worse than bad. So sad its like the joke about 3 buses which all 3 suck different way, third game - fortnite ballistic - looks kinda bad too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5sfa6ThD0E

[agendarsky]

i was always saying that input lag and performance decrease after time is two separate problems. U can have pretty much smooth game with fps_max 0 and rivatuner fps cap at cost of the little input latency that actually feels very little, rivatuner scanline is insane fps limiter. As for the mysterious input latency that feels like whole game engine is broken, u guys go downgrade usb speed from hispeed to fullspeed in usb 2.0 controller mode, unfortunately yes you needs either scewin or in worse case manua, l bios mod (which is pretty easy with boingboredom's utillity ). This will raise your questionmarks, i believe its something in usb packet scheduling being messed up. With fullspeed mode , usb queue is more saturated with less bulking , interupts and obviously latency . This lag is feature of modern usb standarts.