The best CS2 settings are not the ones with the highest frame counter. They are the ones that make an enemy easiest to see and hear while the game still runs smoothly. The simplest way to get there is to sort every option in the menu into three buckets: settings that change what you can see, settings that only cost or gain frames, and settings that do neither. This guide walks the menu in that order, using the exact option names from the English client.

Best CS2 settings for the Video tab

Display Mode: Fullscreen. Fullscreen Windowed alt-tabs faster but adds latency and costs frames.

Resolution and Aspect Ratio. Native resolution gives the sharpest image and the widest view. 4:3 stretched, typically 1280×960, makes player models wider and buys frames at the cost of field of view. Both are legitimate. Start native and only switch with a reason.

Refresh Rate: your monitor’s maximum. If 144 Hz or 240 Hz is missing, see the troubleshooting section below.

Brightness: high enough that you can read a silhouette in the dark corners of Ancient and Anubis without the bright walls of Mirage washing out.

A practical way to test all of this: load an offline match with bots on Ancient, stand in the dark area near the B site entrance and have a bot walk past. If you can pick the model out instantly, brightness and contrast are right. If you squint, raise brightness one step at a time rather than turning everything up at once, because overexposed light areas hide models just as well as dark ones.

Advanced Video: the visibility settings

These are the options that change what you see. Get them right before you think about frames.

The shadow debate. An enemy’s shadow can give them away around a corner, which is why Dynamic Shadows on All matters more than the quality slider. Some guides run Global Shadow Quality on Low, arguing that player shadows still render with Dynamic Shadows on All. Others prefer High for sharper shadows at distance. On a strong GPU pick High, on a weaker one Medium, then test it: have a friend stand behind a corner and check whether you can see the shadow.

Advanced Video: the frame rate settings

These options change performance and little else. Lower them freely.

If the frame rate is still not where you want it, launch options, the commands that exist and the ones that are myths are covered in our guide on how to increase FPS in CS2.

Settings that do neither

CPU Cores Usage Preference. Only relevant on CPUs with performance and efficiency cores. No Preference is fine. Try Prefer Performance Cores only if you see stutter on such a CPU. It needs a game restart.

Texture Streaming. Leave it on unless you have plenty of VRAM and a fast SSD. Turning it off increases texture memory use.

Presets. Video presets change everything at once, and the higher ones switch Ambient Occlusion back on. Use a preset as a starting point, then correct the rows above.

Best CS2 audio settings

CS2 does its own 3D audio processing, so Valve recommends stereo headphones and turning off external enhancements such as virtual surround in headset software or Windows. Layered on top of the game’s spatial audio, they can shift where footsteps seem to come from.

• Audio Device: pick your headphones explicitly rather than leaving the system default.
• Stereo Headphones as the output configuration, even if your headset advertises 7.1.
• EQ Profile: Natural leaves the sound untouched, Crisp lifts the highs and makes footsteps stand out for many players, Smooth softens harsh sounds. Valve’s tooltip suggests giving yourself time to adjust before judging.
• L/R Isolation: 0% is the physically accurate default. Higher values separate left and right more strongly, which helps with direction but distorts sounds from the front.
• Perspective Correction: Yes, the default, which keeps sound positions consistent with what you see on screen.

Radar and the new Crosshair / Scopes tab

Radar options live under the Game tab in the Radar / Tablet section. The goal is to see the whole map at once.

• Radar Centers The Player: No, so the full map fits instead of only your surroundings.
• Radar Is Rotating: personal preference; a fixed radar is easier to read when calling positions.
• Radar Map Zoom: lower it until the map edges fit inside the square. Around 0.4 works for most maps.
• Radar Hud Size: as large as you can without covering the top-left of the screen.

Since 22 September 2026 the crosshair has its own Crosshair / Scopes tab. Thickness and length are now measured in pixels, so the same value looks identical at any resolution. On 30 September the share code format changed to carry the new options. If the game rejects a code from an older guide as “Invalid or old crosshair code”, rebuild it by hand.

Mouse settings deserve their own page. Measuring sensitivity as centimetres per 360 instead of copying a pro’s number is explained in our CS2 sensitivity guide.

NVIDIA and AMD driver settings

Driver panels can override what you set in game, so a quick pass through them avoids surprises.

NVIDIA Control Panel. Under program settings for cs2.exe, three entries matter. Set Power management mode to Prefer maximum performance. Turn Low Latency Mode off, because NVIDIA Reflex inside the game already handles this. Set Vertical sync to off so the driver does not force it back on. Leave the rest on Use the 3D application setting.

AMD Software: Adrenalin. Keep the default game profile, then disable Radeon Chill and any driver-forced Wait for Vertical Refresh. Anti-Lag is worth trying, but switch it off if it introduces stutter.

Windows. Turn on Game Mode, set the power plan to High performance on desktops, and check that the monitor runs at its full refresh rate in display settings. A surprising number of 144 Hz monitors sit at 60 Hz for months after a driver update.

Settings not saving, or 144 Hz missing

Settings keep resetting. CS2 stores video settings in cs2_video.txt and everything else in cs2_user_convars_0_slot0.vcfg, both in Steam\userdata\your_ID\730\local\cfg. If either file is set to read-only, the game cannot write to it. Steam Cloud conflicts are the other common cause: close the game, let Steam finish syncing, then change settings. If you keep personal settings in a config file, the CS2 autoexec guide shows where to put it so it loads every launch.

Workshop maps changing your settings. Since January 2026, community maps can save some settings such as radar or viewmodel, but only after a prompt asking for permission. If you clicked yes without reading, set things back manually.

144 Hz or 240 Hz not listed. Switch to Fullscreen first. Then check Windows display settings and your GPU control panel for the correct refresh rate. Finally, the cable: some HDMI cables cannot carry high refresh at full resolution, while DisplayPort usually can.

Frequently asked questions about CS2 settings

What are the best CS2 settings for visibility?

Boost Player Contrast on, Dynamic Shadows on All, medium or high shadow quality and light anti-aliasing. Everything else is about frames rather than seeing enemies.

Should V-Sync be on or off in CS2?

Off. It removes tearing but adds input latency. With G-Sync or FreeSync, keep it off in game and cap frames instead.

Is Ambient Occlusion worth it in CS2?

No. It adds depth to corners but shows nothing you cannot see without it, and the game’s own tooltip warns about the performance cost.

What does Boost Player Contrast do?

It makes player models easier to pick out against backgrounds of a similar colour. It costs a little performance and is worth enabling.

Which EQ profile is best for footsteps?

Start with Natural. If footsteps get lost in the mix, try Crisp and give it a few matches.

Where does CS2 save settings?

In Steam\userdata\your_ID\730\local\cfg, in cs2_video.txt and cs2_user_convars_0_slot0.vcfg.

Last updated: October 2026

The CS2 Armory Pass is a $15.99 item that lets you earn 40 Armory Credits by playing, which you then exchange for skins, charms and stickers from collections you cannot get anywhere else. Whether it is worth buying depends less on the price than on how often you play and which collection you actually want. Below: the costs, the time it takes, what is in the Armory right now, and a release calendar built from Valve’s own notes that shows when the next collections are likely.

How the CS2 Armory Pass works

• Buy and activate a pass in the Armory tab. Prime Status is required to purchase one.
• Earn credits through XP. Every bit of XP on official servers moves the pass bar toward the next credit, up to 40 per pass.
• Redeem credits for items in the Armory. Your balance sits at the top of the tab.
• Clear a finished pass to activate another. Clearing does not touch your balance.

Since November 2024, activation no longer grants the first credit instantly, so all 40 come from play. You can stack several active passes up to a limit set by the game, and XP is shared between them.

Armory Pass price and credit costs

Valve does not list credit prices in its release notes, so the figures above come from community guides. Check the price on the item itself before redeeming. Everything from the Armory, like everything from the in-game store, carries a seven-day trade and market restriction, which works the same way as the CS2 trade lock on traded items.

How to buy and activate an Armory Pass

1. Confirm Prime. Without Prime Status the store will not sell you a pass. The Prime tab in the in-game store shows your status.
2. Open the Armory tab from the main menu. The pass bar and credit balance sit at the top.
3. Buy the pass with the Get A Pass button. Payment goes through your Steam Wallet or a card linked to the account.
4. Activate it. A bought but inactive pass earns nothing. The tab shows an Activate Pass button until you do.
5. Play on official servers. Each bit of XP fills the bar toward your next credit.
6. Redeem credits on the items you want. Redeemed items land in your inventory with the seven-day restriction.

Passes can also be gifted by a friend or bought from another player on the Steam Community Market. Compare the market price with the store price before buying second hand. The gap is usually small, and the store carries no risk.

Is the CS2 Armory Pass worth it?

The arithmetic is straightforward. One pass equals ten weapon collection items, or forty stickers, or a mix. Most collection items land in the lower quality tiers and sell for cents to a few dollars. The higher tiers of the same collection can be worth tens of dollars, but they are rare by design. Measured as resale value, an average pass usually returns less than it costs.

A simple way to decide: look up the current market prices of the items in the collection you want, then ask whether ten draws from it are worth $15.99 to you as items you will actually use. If the answer only works when you count on the rarest tier, the pass is the wrong purchase. If you would happily use the common finishes and stickers, it is reasonable value, especially since the credits arrive while you play anyway.

It makes sense if you:

• already play several evenings a week, so credits arrive as a side effect,
• want a specific collection that only the Armory offers,
• collect stickers or charms for your own loadout rather than to sell.

It does not make sense if you:

• expect profit, because the average return does not cover the price,
• play once a month, because 40 credits will take long enough that the collection you wanted may be gone.

Low-tier skins that pile up are often better used in a trade-up than sold one by one, as explained in our guide to CS2 trade-up contracts. To see what your redeemed items are really worth, use realised sale prices rather than listings, as covered in how to check CS2 inventory value.

How long 40 credits take

Credits track XP, and XP is front-loaded. The weekly XP bonus makes your first matches each week count for much more, and once it is used up the game shows a reduced XP warning until the reset. A player with a few sessions a week usually finishes a pass in a few weeks. A weekend-only player is looking at months.

Full Competitive and Wingman matches earn the most. Deathmatch and Arms Race have their own XP caps, which Valve adjusted in May 2026. Community servers and workshop maps earn nothing, so they do not move the pass at all.

What is in the Armory right now

• New weapon collections: Arabesque and Spy Tech, added on 8 July 2026 from community submissions.
• New sticker collections: Fruits & Vegetables and Auto Racing, added the same day.
• Removed in July 2026: the Train 2025 and Sport & Field weapon collections, plus the Sugarface 2 and Elemental Craft stickers.
• Latest limited item announced: AK-47 | Aphrodite, added in January 2026. Limited items rotate, so it may not be there for long.

Smaller updates sometimes adjust the list between big drops, so the in-game Armory is the final word.

When is the next Armory update?

Valve does not announce dates in advance, but its release notes show a clear pattern.

Two things stand out. Since 2026, the big Armory refreshes ship alongside a new Premier season. And the pipeline is visible: Valve opened the first “Call to Arms-ory” on 6 December 2025, and those themes reached the Armory on 8 July 2026, seven months later. The second call, for a Fairy Tales weapon collection and Cryptids and Pop Art stickers, opened on 16 July 2026.

If the same seven-month gap holds, Fairy Tales and the new stickers would line up with Premier Season Six around the turn of the year. That is our reading of the pattern, not a Valve announcement, and we will update this page when the release notes confirm it.

Where the new collections come from

In December 2025 Valve introduced optional supplemental terms for workshop creators, paying a flat fee to license items: $35,000 for a weapon finish and $6,000 for a sticker or charm. Items licensed this way can appear in places that were closed to community work before, including the Armory. Arabesque and Spy Tech are the first collections picked through this route, which is why each new call is the best preview of what the Armory will hold a few months later.

Things to watch out for

Anyone selling Armory Credits. Credits cannot be transferred between accounts, so every offer to sell them is an account takeover attempt, usually ending on a fake Steam login page.

Collections leave. Plan redemptions around removals. Valve has retired collections with limited notice, so do not sit on credits for a set you want.

Full inventory. Since June 2026 the game shows an error instead of silently failing when your inventory is full, so clear space first.

Frequently asked questions about the CS2 Armory Pass

How much does the CS2 Armory Pass cost?

$15.99 in the US, with regional pricing elsewhere. The exact local price is shown in the in-game store.

How many credits does one Armory Pass give?

40 Armory Credits, earned by gaining XP with the pass active.

Do you need Prime for the Armory Pass?

Yes. The game requires Prime Status to buy a pass, and accounts without Prime do not earn XP anyway.

Can you buy Armory Credits directly?

No. Credits only come from playing with an active pass.

When is the next CS2 Armory update?

Valve has not given a date. Based on the gap between the last call for submissions and its release, the next collections are likely around the start of Premier Season Six.

What happens to credits when a collection is removed?

They stay in your balance and can be spent on anything else in the Armory.

Last updated: October 2026

How to unlock Premier in CS2 comes down to three gates, and they only work in one order: buy Prime, reach profile rank 10, then win ten Premier matches before the game shows your CS Rating. The second gate is where most stuck accounts are. Without Prime, CS2 does not award XP at all, so a free account can play for months and never get closer.

How to unlock Premier in CS2: the three gates

The first two open the queue. The third does not stop you playing, but until you clear it you have a blank badge instead of a number and you are missing from every leaderboard.

Gate one: Prime, because nothing else moves without it

This is the part most guides skip. A free account can play Casual, Deathmatch and community servers, but it earns no XP on any of them. No XP means no profile rank, and no profile rank means Premier stays grey forever.

Prime is a one-time purchase of $14.99 in the Steam store, with regional prices in some markets. It stays on the account permanently. Whether it is worth it beyond Premier, including drops and the separate matchmaking pool, is covered in our breakdown of whether CS2 Prime is worth it.

Returning CS:GO players usually kept Prime when the game moved to CS2. Accounts launching the game for the first time since May 2024 no longer receive it for free, so check the Prime tab in the in-game store before you start counting XP.

Gate two: profile rank 10

Profile rank is the number next to your avatar in CS2. It is not your Steam level, not your FACEIT level and not a map Skill Group. Each rank takes 5,000 XP, which puts rank 10 roughly 45,000 XP away from a brand new account.

XP only comes from Valve’s official servers: Competitive, Wingman, Casual, Deathmatch and Arms Race. Community servers, workshop maps, offline bots and private queues pay nothing.

The rate is not flat either. A weekly XP bonus front-loads your first matches each week, and once it runs out the game warns you about reduced earned XP until the next reset. Valve also adjusted the Deathmatch and Arms Race XP limits in May 2026. The practical takeaway: rank 10 comes faster from steady play over two or three weeks than from one long weekend.

• Fastest: full Competitive and Wingman matches, where XP scales with rounds won and score.
• Fine as a warm-up: Deathmatch, within its own cap.
• Wasted for this purpose: community servers and practice maps.

Gate three: ten wins before a CS Rating appears

Once the mode unlocks you play normal Premier matches, but instead of a rating you see a counter of wins still needed. Only wins count. Losses and ties do not move the counter, so a rough start stretches calibration well past ten games.

After the first number appears, it moves in smaller steps. How the rating scale works, what the colour tiers mean and why players plateau inside them is explained in our guide to CS2 ranks.

Ratings can also expire after a long break. In that case the game asks for a single win to refresh it. At the start of each new season everyone re-establishes a rating the same way, so the win counter returns twice a year.

How to unlock Premier in CS2 when it stays greyed out

If you meet both requirements and the Premier button is still inactive, the cause is almost always one of six things. Work through them in order before posting on a forum.

1. Prime bought, game not updated. Close CS2 and Steam completely and relaunch. Status refreshes on login.
2. Rank 9 with a full bar. The unlock triggers at rank 10, not just before it.
3. A party member is not eligible. The queue checks everyone in the lobby. One player without Prime or rank 10 blocks the whole party.
4. Rating gap in the party. Premier will not queue players whose ratings are too far apart.
5. An abandon cooldown. Leaving matches early triggers a matchmaking cooldown that applies to Premier as well.
6. Low Trust Factor. It does not lock the mode outright, but it can stretch queue times until it feels like a lock.

What changed in Premier in 2026

Map pool. Season Four in January brought Anubis back in place of Train. Season Five on 8 July replaced Overpass with Cache. The current Active Duty pool is Ancient, Anubis, Cache, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage and Nuke.

Picks instead of bans. Since 22 September 2026, teams no longer ban down to one map. Each team picks two maps and the game draws one of the four at random. Valve’s reasoning is that time spent learning a map should give you a chance to actually play it.

Bomb damage. Season Five reworked the C4 blast into a shockwave that spreads from the site, fades around corners and does not pass through walls. Your health bar now previews how much HP you will have left.

Premier or Competitive once you are in

Rank 10 opens both ranked ladders, and they suit different goals.

Premier uses the full seven-map pool with the pick phase, and gives you one CS Rating shared across all maps. It is the number other players see, the one on regional leaderboards and the one that decides your season medal.

Competitive lets you choose a single map and tracks a separate Skill Group per map, from Silver to Global Elite. It is the better place to learn a map you are weak on, or to play shorter sessions without the pick phase.

A sensible start: a handful of Competitive games on your weakest maps, then Premier once you are comfortable on at least three maps from the pool. Calibration is less forgiving there, because only wins count and the random draw will not always land on your favourite. It also pays to settle your setup first: a sensitivity you can repeat and stable frame rates matter more in ten must-win games than any new crosshair.

Premier on a second account

Prime is tied to a single Steam account and cannot be moved or shared. A second account therefore needs its own Prime purchase and its own climb from rank 1 to rank 10, with the same weekly XP curve slowing it down. Family Sharing does not help here either, because Prime is an account upgrade rather than a shared game licence.

There is also a quieter cost. New accounts start with little history, and the matchmaking system leans on account history to decide who you are paired with. Expect longer queues and less predictable lobbies on a fresh account for the first weeks, even after Premier unlocks. If you want the cleanest experience, put your hours into one account rather than splitting them.

The season medal and private queues

Season medal. At the end of each season, accounts in good standing with at least 25 Premier wins that season and an active CS Rating receive a medal. Its colour follows the highest rating you reached, and it gets one bar per 25 wins, up to five.

Private queues. Premier lets you create a queue with a code and play only against people who enter it. Useful for scrims between two teams, but private matches earn no XP or mission progress.

Realistic timeline for a fresh account: Prime on day one, two to three weeks of normal play to rank 10 without fighting the weekly XP curve, then however many Premier games it takes to win ten. Buying a ready-made account to skip this is a poor shortcut, because the seller keeps access through the original email and inherited Trust Factor problems come with it.

Frequently asked questions about unlocking Premier

Can you play Premier without Prime?

No. Premier requires Prime Status, and an account without Prime does not earn the XP needed for rank 10 either.

What level do you need for Premier in CS2?

Profile rank 10, shown in game as Sergeant Rank 10. Steam level and FACEIT level do not count.

How many wins do you need for a CS Rating?

Ten Premier wins. Losses do not count toward the total.

Does Deathmatch XP count toward rank 10?

Yes, within its own XP cap. Full Competitive and Wingman matches get you there faster.

Why is Premier still locked when I have Prime and rank 10?

Usually the status has not refreshed, or someone in your lobby is not eligible. Restart Steam and CS2, then try queueing solo.

Which maps are in Premier right now?

Ancient, Anubis, Cache, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage and Nuke. Cache joined on 8 July 2026, replacing Overpass.

Last updated: October 2026

Every guide on how to increase FPS in CS2 opens with a block of console commands to paste. The problem is that several of the most commonly recommended ones do not exist in CS2 at all. The game accepts nothing, changes nothing, and says nothing, so you conclude the machine is the problem.

Ghost commands still being recommended

We checked these against the game’s own command and variable dumps rather than against other articles. The first four are leftovers from the previous game, still being republished as current advice.

That matters beyond the wasted minute. Pasting a list of dead lines and seeing no improvement is how people talk themselves into buying hardware they do not need.

The four settings that actually move frames

Almost all of the achievable gain lives in the video options rather than in the console.

Resolution. The single biggest lever. Every pixel costs work, and dropping a step down is worth more than every console line combined.

Shadow quality. The most expensive individual setting relative to what it adds. Also the one worth thinking about twice, since shadows carry information about players you cannot see.

Effect and particle detail. Cheap to lower and mostly invisible during a fight.

Multisampling. Edge smoothing costs a great deal on weaker hardware and changes nothing about whether you hit anything.

Change these one at a time, not all at once. Otherwise you have no idea which of them did the work and you end up playing on unnecessarily ugly settings.

What you can realistically gain

Worth an honest number, because guides promising to double your frame rate are selling something.

On a machine that already runs the game acceptably, going through the video settings sensibly buys somewhere in the region of twenty to forty percent. Noticeable, and not transformative.

The bigger gains almost always come from somewhere else: a background application eating the processor, an overlay hooked into the game, or a power profile throttling the machine.

Check those before touching graphics settings. A browser with thirty tabs and a chat client with hardware acceleration on can cost more than every video option combined.

Settings that cost more than they give

A short list of things people disable and then wonder why they keep dying.

Shadows at the lowest setting remove a source of information. Seeing a shadow around a corner is a genuine advantage and you are trading it for a handful of frames.

Dropping the resolution too far makes distant players smaller and harder to distinguish from the background. There is a point where the extra frames do not compensate for not seeing the target.

Turning off the game’s own frame counter is fine. Turning off every visual cue you use to read the game is not, and that is the trap in guides written as if only the number mattered.

Commands worth having in the config

Two exist and both are useful, which is a short list compared with what the average guide offers.

The frame counter tells you what any change actually did, and without it you are guessing based on feel, which is unreliable in exactly the situations you care about.

The frame cap is the more interesting of the two. Set slightly above your monitor’s refresh rate, it stops the card rendering frames nobody will ever see, which lowers heat and, on laptops, keeps the machine from throttling mid match.

Both belong in a file that reloads at every launch, so an update cannot quietly reset them. How to build one is in our guide to the CS2 autoexec.

How to measure whether anything changed

1. Turn on the counter and note the number in a fixed spot on a map you know.
2. Change one setting. One, not five.
3. Return to the same spot and compare.
4. Test through smoke and in a firefight, since that is where drops actually hurt.
5. Keep whatever helped and put the rest back.

An empty server makes this considerably easier, because nothing else is moving and the numbers are comparable between runs. The setup takes two commands and is covered in our walkthrough of the CS2 practice server config.

The number that matters is not the average

Two machines showing the same average frame rate can feel completely different to play on, and this is why.

What breaks aim is not a low average, it is a sudden drop at the moment something happens: a smoke lands, four players enter your view, a flash goes off. The average absorbs those moments and hides them.

So the useful measurement is the worst moment in a round rather than the number sitting on screen while you stand in spawn. If the counter reads two hundred and dips to sixty when a smoke deploys, that dip is what you are actually playing on.

Which changes what is worth adjusting. Effects and particles matter more than they appear to, because they are precisely what is being drawn during those dips.

Launch options, and how few of them matter

The second half of most FPS guides is a string of launch options, and that list has shrunk far more than the articles admit.

The options that genuinely do something now are unglamorous: forcing a refresh rate the game did not detect, or pointing the game at your config file. Neither of those adds frames, they simply stop the game from behaving unexpectedly.

The rest of the usual string, the memory flags and the threading switches, comes from an engine that no longer runs this game. Steam accepts anything you type, and that is why those lines survive: nothing ever tells you they were ignored.

A short launch line is easier to debug for the same reason a short config is. When something breaks after an update, you want a field you can read at a glance rather than forty characters you copied in 2019.

Frames and how the mouse feels

An unstable frame rate rarely gets blamed for what it actually causes, because the symptom shows up somewhere else entirely.

When the picture stutters, the same hand movement lands differently on screen, and that reads as a mouse problem rather than a performance one. People then start changing sensitivity, which makes an already inconsistent situation worse.

The tell is where it happens. Sensitivity behaves identically everywhere on the map. Frame drops cluster in specific places and specific moments, usually the busy ones.

Fix the picture first and only then touch the mouse, using the measurement in our guide to CS2 sensitivity. Tuning aim on an unstable frame rate means tuning against a moving target.

Where settings stop and hardware starts

The part nobody can fix with a config, and it is worth recognising it rather than chasing settings forever.

CS2 leans on the processor harder than the previous game, so on older machines that is the bottleneck rather than the graphics card. The symptom is characteristic: lowering graphics settings changes almost nothing, because the constraint is elsewhere.

You can recognise it easily. If your frame rate is roughly the same on lowest and on medium settings, going lower buys nothing and costs you image quality for free.

In that situation the only thing that genuinely helps, short of new hardware, is taking load off the processor: closing what runs in the background and disabling overlays. Everything else is decoration.

Monitor and refresh rate

Frames your screen cannot display do not exist as far as your eyes are concerned, and they still cost the card work.

If the screen refreshes sixty times a second and the game renders three hundred frames, you see sixty. The rest turns into heat. That is the argument for a cap set a little above the refresh rate rather than at maximum.

The exception applies to players who feel the difference in input latency at very high frame rates. That effect is real and applies to a minority, so treat it as something to test rather than as a rule to follow.

Frequently asked questions about increasing FPS in CS2

Which commands actually increase FPS?

Essentially none. The frame counter and the frame cap exist and are useful. The classic list of optimisation commands mostly does not exist in CS2.

Does lowering resolution help most?

Yes, it is the single largest lever, and also the one that most affects how easily you can see distant players.

Should I turn shadows off completely?

Only if you need the frames badly. Shadows carry information about players you cannot see directly.

What should I set the frame cap to?

Slightly above your monitor’s refresh rate. Rendering far beyond it produces heat rather than visible frames.

Why did nothing change after I pasted a config?

Most likely because the commands in it do not exist in CS2 and were silently ignored.

Are drops in smoke normal?

Common, yes. Effects and particle settings are the ones that affect those moments most directly.

How do I know if my processor is the bottleneck?

If lowest and medium settings produce roughly the same frame rate, the graphics settings are not what is limiting you.

Last updated: September 2026

The list of commands that do not exist comes from comparing common guides against the game’s own command and variable dumps, checked in September 2026. Valve changes both between builds, so verify in the console before keeping any line.

CS2 sensitivity changes your game more than every other setting combined, and it is the one setting you cannot usefully copy from anybody else. A different mouse, a different mousepad and a different hand produce a different result from identical numbers.

Three numbers people keep confusing

DPI belongs to the mouse and describes how many signals it sends per inch of movement. You change it in the mouse software or with a button on the shell.

In game sensitivity is the multiplier the game applies to that signal. It defaults to 1.25 and the permitted range runs from effectively zero up to eight.

eDPI is the two multiplied together. Eight hundred DPI at 1.0 sensitivity is identical to four hundred DPI at 2.0 as far as the game is concerned.

Which is why comparing raw sensitivity values is meaningless. Somebody playing at 0.8 can be turning faster than somebody at 2.0 if their mouse is set four times higher.

The measurement that beats any config

Rather than hunting for the correct number, measure what your hand is actually doing.

1. Lay a ruler along your mousepad and set the mouse at the start of it.
2. Turn your character exactly one full rotation without lifting the mouse.
3. Measure the distance travelled. That is your centimetres per 360.
4. Write it down along with the DPI and sensitivity that produced it.
5. Compare it against the range most competitive players occupy, roughly thirty to fifty centimetres.

That figure is the only one that transfers between people, because it describes arm movement rather than equipment. If yours comes in under twenty centimetres you are aiming with your wrist and losing accuracy at range, which is the single most common problem among players who cannot climb.

Picking a starting point

Choose one row and stay in it for two weeks. Jumping between values every evening is the most efficient way to learn none of them.

CS2 sensitivity while scoped

A separate setting, and the one people trip over most, because its name suggests something other than what it does. When you scope in, the game applies its own multiplier. It defaults to one, with a range from 0.01 to 3.

A value of one does not mean the movement on screen is identical to hip fire. The field of view narrows, so the same hand movement sweeps a different angle, which is where the feeling that the mouse suddenly accelerates comes from. The practical approach: leave it at one until it genuinely bothers you. If you consistently overshoot with a sniper rifle, drop toward 0.8 and test it against bots rather than in a match.

Now the part no config includes.

The setting nobody writes about

The game carries a separate scale for the vertical axis, defaulting to one, with a range from zero to two. At one, up and down are as sensitive as left and right. Below one the vertical axis slows down, which some players find helps with recoil control, since a spray pulls the crosshair up while you pull it down.

It is not a shortcut to accuracy and it is not for everybody. It is worth knowing it exists, because plenty of people fight their recoil without realising the axes can be separated at all.

A value of zero locks vertical movement entirely, so if somebody’s mouse has mysteriously stopped looking up or down, this line pasted from a config is usually the culprit.

Two more lines to delete.

Two commands that do nothing

Both still circulate widely and both are dead.

The raw input command does not exist in CS2. It is a menu option now, and the config line does nothing at all.

A separate scoped multiplier ending in “mouse” does not exist either, despite appearing in guides. Only the base one works.

We checked both against the game’s own variable dump. It is the same mechanism that leaves other people’s configs full of lines from the previous game, covered in more detail in our guide to the CS2 autoexec.

Windows breaks more than the game does

Before hunting for a perfect number, check that the operating system is not rewriting the signal on the way through.

The pointer speed slider has eleven positions. Only the sixth, the middle one, passes the signal through untouched. Every other position rescales movement and destroys repeatability.

Second, enhanced pointer precision, which is acceleration. With it on, the same hand movement produces a different turn depending on how quickly you make it, which is the exact opposite of what you want.

Third, mouse software with its own acceleration or smoothing. Open it once and turn off anything that sounds like assistance.

Frame rate changes how sensitivity feels

Before concluding your mouse is too slow or too fast, rule out the thing that impersonates a sensitivity problem.

With an unstable frame rate, the same hand movement produces different results on screen because the image cannot keep up. It reads as a mouse that drags in one moment and skates in the next, so people start changing sensitivity instead of looking for the cause.

You can tell them apart easily. Sensitivity behaves the same everywhere. Frame drops happen in specific places on the map or through smoke.

What to do about it, and which settings genuinely add frames, is in our guide to increasing FPS in CS2. Stabilise the picture first, then tune the mouse.

Grip is the other half of the equation

The same centimetres per turn produces very different results depending on what moves the mouse.

Wrist aiming gives you a few centimetres of travel and excellent precision on small corrections. Arm aiming gives you a dozen or more, slower but far steadier across long sweeps.

Most people use both alternately, which is the crux: a sensitivity tuned for the wrist kills arm movement and the reverse is equally true. Extreme values only work for players who genuinely commit to one.

If you are unsure which you are, look at your mousepad after an hour. Wear concentrated in a small patch means wrist. Wear spread across half the surface means arm.

Changing mouse without losing your aim

New hardware is where most people quietly ruin their settings, because they carry over the numbers instead of the movement.

A different mouse at a different DPI with the same in game value gives a different turn speed. Rather than copying the figures, measure centimetres per turn again and adjust the sensitivity until you land on the number you had before.

A change of mousepad works the same way, more subtly. The hand travels differently across a different surface, and after a few days most people want a few centimetres more or less than they did.

Which is the argument for keeping your figure written down alongside the settings in your config file. It is the one value you will not reconstruct from memory.

Testing whether a change helped

Any new sensitivity feels good at first, because novelty forces concentration. That wears off in a few days and only then does the truth appear.

A reasonable test is twenty minutes of deathmatch and one question afterwards: were you overshooting the target more often, or undershooting it. Overshooting means too fast, undershooting means too slow.

The second test concerns turning around. If you need two mouse lifts to face behind you, you have gone too far the other way and will pay for it every time somebody flanks.

Both want an empty server with bots, since in a match you are also measuring somebody else’s play. The commands for that are in our walkthrough of the CS2 practice server config.

Frequently asked questions about CS2 sensitivity

What DPI should I use?

Usually 400 or 800. The product of DPI and sensitivity is what matters, so DPI alone decides nothing beyond how finely the mouse measures movement.

What eDPI should I aim for?

Most players sit between 400 and 1600. Rather than targeting a number, measure your centimetres per full turn.

How many centimetres per 360 is right?

Typically thirty to fifty. Below twenty you are aiming with your wrist, above sixty you lose the ability to turn behind you.

Should I change the scoped multiplier?

The default of one is a fine starting point. Change it only if you consistently overshoot while scoped.

Why does my mouse feel different after a Windows change?

Because outside the middle slider position the system rescales the signal. Set the sixth of eleven positions and disable enhanced pointer precision.

Can vertical sensitivity be set separately?

Yes, the game has a vertical axis scale ranging from zero to two. Zero locks vertical movement completely.

How long does adapting to a new sensitivity take?

Around two weeks of regular play. Changing it again before that means starting from zero.

Last updated: September 2026

Defaults and ranges come from the game’s own variable dump, checked in September 2026. The distances quoted per style are observations from published player settings rather than a rule, so treat them as a starting point for your own measurement.