I hope this thread will help anyone who's having common and weird low FPS and stuttering/bad frametime issues.
When I got the beta on the 1st, the first thing I noticed was that the game was very stuttery for various reasons on my 5700x and 6600xt combo, so I decided to investigate a bit to figure out what and why it's happening. Here's my findings organized in a guide.
For instance, if I unlock my FPS in inferno, I get over 250-350fps at 1080p with almost all settings maxed out, my friend with a slower 9900k and 6600 non xt still gets more than enough for 240+fps gaming with similar settings, another friend has almost no issues with 2600 and rx480, so the problems causing performance issues are most likely why the beta is going in a larger scale in the first place.
Before reading the guide, some important points:
As it's still a beta, this means that:
- CS2 probably has a lot of logging enabled right now, this means that it is generally heavier than a release version, as taking all this info for analysis, technical insight etc is heavier than it looks like. I have a bit of gamedev experience and logging always added that extra performance hit
- Valve WANTS you to tell them about your issues so that they can work on pinpointing the issue and fixing it, before or after release depending on the gravity (MSAA and Reflex are an example). As they said, remember to contact them at cs2team [at] valvesoftware [dot] com with "CS2LT Bug - " with a description of the bug (and possibly any data that can help them recreate it). Example:
ZitatTitle: CS2LT Bug - Nvidia Reflex kills FPS
Description: When I enable Nvidia Reflex, my average framerate consistently drops down by 30fps. I can replicate it by enabling and disabling the setting in any point of the game.
[computer specs here etc etc]
- fps_max IS BROKEN, it doesn't properly lock FPS and is possibly one of the many causes of stuttering
With that said, here's the guide:
First launch/stuttering tips:
Settings to change ASAP:
- Put the game in fullscreen if it defaults to borderless fullscreen
- Not fully confirmed yet, but MSAA may be bugged, so change it to CMAA2 until official updates, it looks almost like 2x MSAA but is super light
- If you have a Nvidia GPU, disable Reflex, as it's one of the bigger causes of these issues
- fps_max looks like it's currently broken as it doesn't limit to the proper framerate and is ALWAYS stuttery
How to reduce shader stuttering:
CS2 doesn't have a precompiled shaders download (hopefully yet), so on first launch (or if you get sudden stutters in matches) go in practice with bots and:
- Go in practice with bots, select unranked and enable infinite ammo and warmup on the left
- Open the console and type:
- sv_cheats 1 (the classic)
- sv_infinite_ammo 1 (lets you shoot forever and have infinite grenades once you buy them)
- mp_buy_anywhere 1 (lets you buy anywhere in the map)
- noclip if you wanna reach areas as fast as possible
- god (godmode so that bots wont kill you randomly)
- Now let the bots shoot you a bit/kill them so that anything related to third person effects is also compiled. NOTE that the game will run like crap because stupidly heavy bots are a CS staple at this point
- Now that the bots had fun, type bot_kick in the console and get ready to enjoy what seems like going from 10 to 800 fps.
- Fly around the map and throw grenades, flashes, incendiaries and smoke wherever you want. Basically have fun destroying everything you see in the map.
ZitatNOTE: it's a good idea to the grenade stuff in other maps, as I experienced some rare stutters on some maps the first time I played in them
NOTE 2: the higher the graphics settings, the longer the shader will take to compile, so if your friends with lower settings have smaller stutters, that's the reason
The importance of limiting FPS and how to do it properly
Some people are saying that they're getting very high FPS but very unstable frametimes, and this may be caused by a framerate that jumps up and down, causing visible stutters. It doesn't matter if your game is jumping in the 250-300fps range or in the 900-1000fps range, the stutter will still be there, therefore:
- Disable V-Sync
- Unlock your framerate with fps_max 0 (unrelated note, fps_max_tools and fps_max_ui default to 120 if your menu feels weird so that may be a good time to change that too)
- Enable the fastest FPS counter you have, the ingame one (cl_showfps 1) is ugly but refreshes ASAP so it's a good indicator. Otherwise the usual afterburner and friends are great as well, especially for the frametime view
- Go in Deathmatch or Unranked matches for the heaviest experience that will surely be more taxing than a ranked 5v5
ZitatWhile making this guide I found out that fps_max is broken and it inconsistently limits. If you put 250 it will limit to a stuttery 230fps, if you put 270 it will limit to a stuttery 250, it's my turn to make a bug report lol. So for now just enable Vsync until that's fixed, it's very low latency and super consistent in CS2 anyways.So just jump to the settings guideGuide updated to include alternative framerate limiters
Crossroad time:
If you want to keep your FPS higher than your screen refresh and as high as possible:
- Look at the framerate and check if it's jumping very fast (example: 300fps max but it's constantly jumping from 250 to 300)
- Lower your FPS gradually by limiting either with AMD Radeon Chill (set min and max to desired framerate), or with Nvidia's equivalent or Afterburner and so on. Make sure that the FPS won't be jumping around constantly. It's ok if it's infrequent rare and small 5-10fps drops (like during 3 granades at the same time or stuff like that) but it's better if there's none AT ALL
- Once you find a value where your framerate doesn't jump around anymore, lower your max framerate to the closest multiple of your screen refresh (for 60 it's 120, 180 and so on, for 144hz it's 288 and so on) for an even smoother performance, otherwise keep it there if it feels better
If you want to lock FPS to your screen refresh
- Just limit the FPS to your screen's refresh rate with external tools and hope that the framerate doesn't constantly go down. If it's still stuttery remove the external limit and just use Vsync as you can't even feel its impact right now. If the framerate isn't high enough, then:
Settings guide, to squeeze those needed 5fps to reach 240fps
The game is supposed to run properly on what is now hardware that isn't even in the minimum specs for some games (like Starfield), like RX470-480 and so on, but even lower than that. Therefore, here's a small guide of what each setting should do.
ZitatNote: don't use the default graphics settings and put it to Custom instead, as Low enables FSR1 which looks like crap, with FSR2 coming in an update as it's in AMD's upcoming FSR2 list.
Vielleicht mag ja jemand den Text ins Deutsche übersetzen.
Bei mir sind jedenfalls die zufälligen Minilags und FPS-Drops verschwunden und das Gameplay fühlt sich viel "smoother" an.
