Whether or not you are a Counter-Strike veteran or simply selecting up the enduring shooter for the primary time, we may also help you get essentially the most out of your time with the sport with our information to the very best CS2 settings. Whether or not it is graphics, gameplay, controls, or comms, we have got recommendation that can guarantee you’re racking up the headshots very quickly.
The CS2 system necessities do not go into nice element on what you will want for a excessive body charge, however relaxation assured, you will not want the very best graphics card to get a fairly excessive body charge. We put Counter-Strike 2 by its paces on our RTX 4070 Tremendous take a look at rig and Steam Deck to point out you what the very best settings are.
Greatest CS2 settings for PC
Show mode: Fullscreen or fullscreen windowed
V-Sync: Off, except your body charge all the time exceeds the utmost refresh charge of your monitor
Multisampling Anti-Aliasing Mode: Off
International Shadow High quality: Low
Dynamic Shadows: Solar solely
Mannequin/Texture Element: Low
Texture Filtering Mode: Anisotropic 16X
Shader Element: Low
Particle Element: Low
Ambient Occlusion: Low
Excessive Dynamic Vary: Efficiency
AMD FSR: Disabled
Let’s not fiddle right here. The purpose of CS2 is just not immersion, storytelling, or having fun with its graphical constancy. It is to be aggressive and win, and to that finish, your settings must be laser-focused on maximizing your body charge.
To be able to obtain that, you must begin by principally turning down each graphical setting within the recreation. Flip off MSAA, flip mannequin, shader, and particle element to low, and hold decision no increased than 1080p till your minimal body charge – not your common – is increased than the utmost refresh charge of your monitor.
You probably have a really quick refresh charge gaming monitor that has a better decision – a 360Hz, 1440p show, for example – and your graphics card can deal with it, then completely crank the decision up in order that it completely matches your show. In any other case, although, FPS is king for CS2, so do not be tempted to run your video games at 50fps at 4K as an alternative of 150fps at 1080p.
In case your monitor has a better decision than 1080p, however your graphics cannot maximize its refresh charge or hit at the very least 120fps at its native decision, contemplate dropping all the way down to 1080p and operating the sport in fullscreen mode, relying in your monitor to upscale the picture to suit its full dimension. Do not set the show to your display’s decision and use FSR upscaling.
In case your graphics card can run the sport at body charge at native decision, then run the sport in fullscreen windowed mode.
Utilizing all of the above settings, our take a look at system outfitted with an RTX 4070 Tremendous hit a median body charge of 210fps with 1% lows of 99fps, which is efficiency ideally matched to be used with a 120Hz-180Hz show. Admittedly, body charges do not drop an excessive amount of when you allow just a few increased graphical settings, which may make the sport look a good bit higher, however for peak efficiency, these are the settings we might advocate.
In-game settings
We have picked out these settings as they need to make your expertise taking part in the sport barely simpler. The ping setting ensures you will not be matched to any servers which are geographically too distant. You need to use the console and CS2 instructions to allow config recordsdata, modify server settings, and allow hidden settings. One of many new choices in CS2 is to disable the flexibility to detach the silencer on the USP-S and M4A1-S – hold this off because it solely serves to land you in bother when you misclick in the course of a battle.
‘Present crew positions in your HUD’ lets you already know precisely the place your teammates are with out having to rely completely on the radar. Ensure you choose the ‘present location and tools’ choice, as this additionally tells you what your teammates are holding, serving to you’re employed out what utility your squad has at a look. Likewise, you must have the ‘colours and letters’ choice enabled, as this makes it simpler to speak along with your teammates. As a substitute of calling your teammates by their names, CS2 gamers are glad to go by their chosen colour.
You may also set the utmost ping your matchmaking will permit for, and this additionally lists your closest servers to present you an thought of the common ping on every of them. When you do not need to find yourself in a crew with somebody utilizing extraordinarily unreliable web, that is the place you’ll be able to shield your self.
Greatest CS2 audio settings
For essentially the most half, CS2’s default audio settings are advantageous. The sport would not have music throughout matches anyway, so there is no concern round needing to show that all the way down to be aggressive. Nevertheless, you might need to additionally flip off music within the menus and customarily restrict audio distractions.
Flip all the sliders within the music part all the way down to zero, then elevate the ‘ten-second warning quantity’ slider as much as 15%. This performs a observe every time you’ve got simply ten seconds to defuse the bomb, letting you already know whether or not it is price sticking round, because it takes a minimal of 5 seconds to defuse a bomb with a equipment.
Greatest CS2 keyboard and mouse settings
The default keybindings in CS2 aren’t notably helpful, however you’ll be able to modify them to cease you from having to carry out enormous stretches throughout your keyboard. Whilst you have the choice to cycle by your grenades, you would possibly need to contemplate assigning them to accessible keys so you’ll be able to select what you want. For instance, setting flashbang to Q as an alternative of seven makes it simpler to make use of within the warmth of battle, although this can imply remapping or not gaining access to the weapon fast swap operate usually assigned to Q.
You are going to have to talk to your teammates typically in CS2, so we’d set the ‘use mic’ bind to one thing simply accessible. This could even embrace your mouse buttons, like web page ahead – ensure you decide a button that does not cease you from with the ability to play the sport.
Beneath communications choices, we advocate clearing the inputs for ‘command radio message’, ‘commonplace radio message’, and ‘report radio message’. When you unintentionally press these instructions throughout fight, you would possibly ship your teammate a radio command as an alternative of switching your weapon such as you needed. Do not take the chance, simply take away the choice to press these keys so it could possibly by no means occur to you.
Greatest CS2 Steam Deck settings
Multisampling Anti-Aliasing Mode: 2x MSAA
International Shadow High quality: Low
Dynamic Shadows: Solar solely
Mannequin/Texture Element: Low
Texture Filtering Mode: Trilinear
Shader Element: Low
Particle Element: Low
Ambient Occlusion: Disabled
Excessive Dynamic Vary: Efficiency
AMD FSR: Off
Whereas it is not suggested that you simply play CS2 on the Steam Deck in any aggressive recreation modes, you’ll be able to nonetheless have loads of enjoyable with the sport in informal deathmatches.
With the above settings, you’ll be able to anticipate a reasonably stable 60fps, with slight dips throughout dying animations. In any other case, the sport runs nice on the Deck, and you might all the time hook up a mouse, keyboard, and exterior show if you’re decided to sort out a aggressive match underneath the very best situations attainable. That is why we have additionally recommend turning on MSAA, to make the sport look just a little smoother.
CS2 graphics presets
There are at present 4 graphics presets obtainable in CS2.
Low
Medium
Excessive
Very Excessive
One of many above presets can have an asterisk subsequent to it, and that is the really useful preset based mostly in your PC’s energy. Subsequent to the settings menu is a small preview window displaying how the sport will look as you modify varied settings. You’ll be able to see the distinction between the low and really excessive graphics profiles in our picture beneath.
How we examined CS2
At PCGamesN, we use devoted gaming rigs to check the very best efficiency and gameplay settings within the newest releases. The take a look at rig used to play Counter-Strike 2 consists of the next elements: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Tremendous 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration, and MSI B560 motherboard. We additionally take a look at utilizing Home windows 11 64-bit.
Does CS2 want an SSD?
Counter-Strike 2 doesn’t require an SSD, no matter whether or not you are aiming for the minimal or really useful system necessities. Nonetheless, upgrading to the most effective gaming SSD choices from our purchasing information will actually assist hold recreation loading instances in verify.
How one can monitor efficiency in CS2
To keep watch over efficiency in Counter-Strike 2, you should use the in-built monitoring instruments in AMD or Nvidia’s drivers.
For Nvidia playing cards, guarantee you’ve got the Nvidia App put in and the in-game overlay enabled, after which hit ALT + R in-game to convey up your efficiency monitor. With AMD playing cards, you’ll be able to allow efficiency monitoring through the Radeon overlay utilizing the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.
Alternatively, you’ll be able to obtain free software program corresponding to CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, extra simplified benchmarking software that works with any graphics card.
With handheld gaming PCs, most can have a devoted button to entry a fast menu from which efficiency monitoring, generally known as real-time monitoring, could be accessed.
Utilizing our customized settings, you must have a smoother expertise the subsequent time you boot up Counter-Strike 2. Do not forget to take a look at our greatest CS2 crosshairs information to see what sorts of reticles the very best gamers on the earth use. We even have a CS2 ranks and score information for any aggressive gamers on the market trying to climb the worldwide leaderboards.
