CS2 Input Lag Explained - The Monolithic 64 Hz Client Simulation Tick Stalls the Render Thread

[soul4kills]

These are moontrances readings.

rtss500.png (190.23 KiB) Viewed 242 times

I don't understand how someone with such smooth readings as this would still complain about poor input lag. These readings are perfect and smooth. Are you using gsync+vsync and reflex at ultra?

For myself If I leave my frames uncapped without gsync and vsync. Gaming feels horrible. gsync+vsync does wonders for game feel.

[Moontrance]

I don't understand how someone with such smooth readings as this would still complain about poor input lag.

Cuz smooth frame pacing is achieved thru buffering in this case. Imagine 10ms window, 1 frame takes 4ms, 4 another takes 1.5ms each. Frame limiter buffers those 5 frames and gives you one by one each 2ms. Congrats, you achieved perfect pacing at the cost of 10ms input latency or in another words you get effective input latency of non-buffered 100 FPS. That's fine for non-competitive titles, or at least not FPS genre, cuz aim feels way off.

[ArkoN]

I’ve got a 9800X3D and a 4080 Super. I play at 1280x960 with Reflex On and uncapped FPS.

At low settings, the game doesn’t feel as smooth, even though I’m getting high FPS. It feels like I’m too CPU-bound and the GPU isn’t being utilized enough. When I switch to the High preset, the GPU gets more load and the game feels noticeably smoother, with better frametimes.

Have you noticed the same thing, and what settings are you using for test??

That's basically the only thing you can do right now if you don't want to use external limiter or underclock GPU. I doubt you have better frametimes with more gpu load. That's the whole point of adding more GPU load, your best frametime will be lower and it will smooth out that spike during tick processing. I tried both low and high presets while doing tests and graph confirms what you're saying. It's interesting many pros actually use ridiculous settings that adds GPU load like 8x MSAA and very high shadows, probably they know this issue or just naturally felt it.

You actually get the best 1% lows with 8x MSAA. I measured this many times myself and also just did see it recently in a youtube video: https://youtu.be/7VP0uGLJl_s?t=395 (but pls ignore the other parts oft his video, this guy has no clue about proper settings, he did not set 8X MSAA while knowing that Donk (the best player in the game atm) has set 8X MSAA while showing that this even gives you the best 1% lows...

I tried todo a lot of CS2 Optimization for my System just to figure out, that the Game sucks My current setup is capping frames at 400fps atm, that feels the best. The best Benchmark results on the 1% low side you get with uncapped fps.