I updated AMD Graphics/GPU Driver and now CS2 Performance is bad

[Rusty]

Yesterday evening I was still playing CS2 at perfectly smooth 144 fps (capped at 144 using Radeon Chill in GPU settings). Last thing I do on my PC yesterday was to update GPU driver from version 23.7.2 to 23.9.1 because it sounded like they added some good new settings.

Today I try CS2 and FPS won't go above 60, the game lags and stutters. I tried rolling back the driver in windows Device Manager settings, but this didn't help either.

Any ideas how to make CS2 smooth again?

I will try clean installing GPU driver now.

(This is with AMD RX 6800 XT and Ryzen 7 5800X)

[Rusty]

**Performance Troubleshooting for AMD Users**

If you are getting poor performance after updating your AMD graphics drivers, the first thing you want to try is cleaning your shader cache (AMD Software Adrenalin -> Gaming -> Graphics -> scroll to the bottom -> Reset Shader Cache), then start CS2 and see if that worked. If it did, you can ignore the rest of this post and just play the game.

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**Check your in-game settings**

In-game:
	Video
		Display Mode: Fullscreen
		Refresh Rate: 144 (<- set this to your monitor's refresh rate)
	Advanced Video
		Frame Pacing
			V-Sync: Enabled
			AMD Anti-Lag 2.0: Enabled
			Maximum FPS In Game: 144 (<- this should be set to your
			monitor's refresh rate)
			Maximum FPS In Menus: 77 (<- you can set this to half the
			refresh rate because high FPS really isn't needed here)
		Preset
			Wait for Vertical Sync (Enabled)
			Multisampling Anti-Aliasing Mode: 4x msaa
			Global Shadow Quality: High
			Model Texture Detail: Very High
			Texture Filtering Mode: Anisotropic 16x
			Shader Detail: High
			Particle Detail: High
			FidelityFX Super Resolution: Disabled (Highest Quality)

Some tips for the in-game settings:
- Don't judge performance by the preview thing in the video settings, somehow it's worse than in an actual game (my GPU utilization spikes close to 100% in the video settings, but in-game it's below 50%)
- You want "Refresh Rate" set to your monitor's refresh rate (60hz, 70hz, 120hz or whatever it is)
- "V-Sync: Enabled" because otherwise there is screen tearing
- There is now an in-game FPS limiter setting in CS2 which was introduced in a recent updates and wasn't there before. It seems a bit smoother to me, compared to using "Radeon Chill" which I had set previously. Make sure to turn "Radeon Chill" OFF, so you do not have two FPS limiters on.
- The other settings have a performance/graphics quality tradeoff. I would start off with everything set to low, see if you are hitting your FPS target and then set them higher, as long as you are still getting a good framerate.
- The first setting you definitely want set to high is "Texture Filtering Mode: Anisotropic 16x" because it has a low performance impact, but makes distant textures look much better.

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**Check Your Settings in AMD Adrenalin Software**

You don't need any of the settings in AMD Adrenalin Software anymore for CS2 (I was using it previously for AMD chill, but that's unncessary, as the in-game frame limiter option is better).

It makes sense to check that you don't have anything in your AMD GPU settings that could negatively impact performance. Either adjust the options globally and make sure they apply, or you can set individual settings for CS2 specifically by adding the game manually (last time I checked, it was not auto-detected):
AMD Software -> Gaming -> Games -> (press the three dots on the right) -> Add a Game -> Go to the locaiton of the cs2.exe to add:
"<CSGO Install location>\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\game\bin\win64\cs2.exe"

Here are AMD settings that don't mess with anything:

AMD Software Settings for CS2:
	Graphics Options
		Super Resolution: Disabled
		Fluid Motion Frames 2: Disabled
		Boost: Disabled
		Anti-Lag: Disabled
		Radeon Chill: Disabled
		Image Sharpening: Disabled
		Radeon Enhanced Sync: Disabled
		Frame rate target control: Disabled
		Anti-Aliasing: Use Application Settings
		Wait for Vertical Refresh: Off, unless application specifies

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**Clean Installing your AMD Graphics Drivers**

If you tried everything above and are still getting bad stuttering/performance issues, even though your GPU should be good enough for the game, then I would recommend clean installing your graphics drivers (this is what worked for me, but I forgot to clean the shader cache, so who knows, maybe that was all I needed to do).

I made the mistake of not backing up my AMD settings before doing this, so I lost a lot of settings and had to change them again manually
Don't make that mistake!
Back up your settings, before running the cleanup utility, so you can restore them again afterwards.

How to backup, export/import AMD Settings:
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh-003

After doing that, run AMDCleanupUtility, located at
"C:\Program Files\AMD\CIM\Bin64\AMDCleanupUtility.exe"

Then I restarted my PC and downloaded AMD Software again to finish the clean reinstall:
https://www.amd.com/en/support/download/drivers.html

Remember to import the settings you backed up earlier.

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Currently my game is running perfectly again near 144 fps. CS2 continues to be one of the most smooth and satisfying FPS ever, it's worth it to tweak a couple settings for that perfect gameplay. GLHF!

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Edit: I revised this comment to include the in-game frame limiting option from a recent game update, instead of using "Radeon Chill"

[Nutsnut]

Check in game, make sure video settings haven't defaulted to 60hz, mine did that after the last udpate.

Check your desktop frequency to ensure the monitor is set to 60hz and ensure v-synce/Radeon chill etc. is disabled.

[baconnice]

try and use DDU to completely clean remove the driver, and install an older driver, use this tutorial for DDU, it helps alot https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XlwirtWs_c&

[baconnice]

Originally posted by Rusty:

After doing all this, I realized that maybe it was just the shader cache thing. I should have first tried clearing that to see if it fixed the stuttering + low fps.

yeah I also got stutter issues with an nvidia gpu, resetting shader cache sorta worked, but if I changed any video settings, it would stutter again

[MrHustler]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3043370278

[TrapKlaus]

Originally posted by Rusty:

I ran amdcleanuputility, located under "C:\Program Files\AMD\CIM\Bin64\AMDCleanupUtility.exe"

Then I rebooted and downloaded AMD Software again to reinstall.
I made the mistake of not backing up my AMD settings, so now my per-game settings are lost and I had to set things like Global Graphics profile and Hotkeys manually again. Back up your settings, before running the cleanup utility, so you can restore them afterwards!

How to backup, export/import AMD Settings:
https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/dh-003

These are the settings that are working for me now:

In-game:
	Video
		Display Mode: Fullscreen
		Refresh Rate: 144
	Advanced Video
		Wait for Vertical Sync (Enabled)
		Multisampling Anti-Aliasing Mode: 4x msaa
		Global Shadow Quality: High
		Model Texture Detail: Very High
		Texture Filtering Mode: Anisotropic 16x
		Shader Detail: High
		Particle Detail: High
		High Dynamic Range: Quality
		FidelityFX Super Resolution: Disabled (Highest Quality)

To change settings in AMD Adrenaline Software graphics panel for CS2, you need to add the game manually (it is not auto-detected).
Here is the location of the cs2.exe to add:
"<CSGO Install location>\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\game\bin\win64\cs2.exe"

AMD Software Settings for CS2:
	Graphics
	Super Resolution: Disabled
	Anti-Lag: Disabled
	Radeon Chill: Enabled
	Min FPS: 144
	Max FPS 144
	Image Sharpening: Enabled
	Sharpness (%): 80
	Radeon Enhanced Sync: Disabled
	Wait for Vertical Refresh: Off, unless application specifies

Before the driver update, AMD Enhanced Sync was working well to prevent screen tearing, but now it's not working for me anymore, so I use the in-game VSync instead which gets rid of the tearing completely.

Now my game is running perfectly smooth again around 120-144 fps. Looks and plays great as before.

This really helped a lot! Thanks...