Advanced NVIDIA Settings guide + personal tips for better gameplay

Please read everything as you should know that I am not talking crap.
Hello, I am Capone, playing CS:GO for like 2 years now, being ranked as Global Elite for like 10 months now without losing it. I work as a programmer (IT) and I have strong knowledge about computer science. I have been struggling alot in the last year finding the perfect duo of settings that should work fine for me: both nvidia settings and game settings. Found out that Nvidia settings are very important for CSGO: smoothness, FPS and even hitbox & bullet registration (yes, trust me, I'm literally testing this things for over one year!). In this guide I will present and explain the advanced part of computer graphics from the NVIDIA Control Panel.

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My PC, my old PC, my current settings and my old settings

Im currently owning the following PC configuration:

• CPU: I7 4790k 4.0GHz
  
• GPU: Gigabyte GTX 1060 3GB 192bits
  
• RAM: 8GB Hyperx @ 1600mhz
  
• HDD: Some old slow western

I get 300+ FPS on any resolution (maximum native) and on any settings (with small drops to ~280 FPS).


My current NVIDIA 3D Settings

(you can find explanations of each of them in the next chapter):

• Ambient Occlusion: Off
  
• Anisotropic filtering: Application-Controlled
  
• Antialiasing - FXAA: Off
  
• Antialiasing - Gamma correction: On
  
• Antialiasing - Mode: Application Controlled
  
• Antialiasing Setting: Application Controlled
  
• Antialiasing - Transparency: Off
  
• CUDA - GPUs: All
  
• DSR - Factors: Off
  
• DSR - Smoothness: Off
  
• Maximum pre-rendered frames: Use the 3D application setting
  
• Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA): Off
  
• Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance
  
• Preferred refresh rate (MONITOR MODEL): Highest available
  
• Shader Cache: Off
  
• Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: On
  
• Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Clamp
  
• Texture filtering - Quality: High performance
  
• Texture filtering - Trinear optimization: On
  
• Threaded optimization: On
  
• Triple buffering: Off
  
• Vertical sync: Off
  
• Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames: 1

My old PC was:

• CPU: I7 ??? ~3.2GHz (I dont even remember)
  
• GPU: Nvidia quadro 2000 1GB 192bits (note: this is not for gaming!)
  
• RAM: the same
  
• HDD: the same

I was getting like maximum 180 FPS with everything on low details, running at a 1024x768 stretched resolution.


My old NVIDIA 3D Settings (of the old slow PC, having the changes bolded):

• Ambient Occlusion: Off
  
• Anisotropic filtering: Off
  
• Antialiasing - FXAA: Off
  
• Antialiasing - Gamma correction: Off
  
• Antialiasing - Mode: Off
  
• Antialiasing Setting: Off
  
• Antialiasing - Transparency: Off
  
• CUDA - GPUs: All
  
• DSR - Factors: Off
  
• DSR - Smoothness: Off
  
• Maximum pre-rendered frames: 4
  
• Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA): Off
  
• Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance
  
• Preferred refresh rate (MONITOR MODEL): Highest available
  
• Shader Cache: On (this was bad for me!! explanations in the next chapter)
  
• Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: On
  
• Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Allow
  
• Texture filtering - Quality: High performance
  
• Texture filtering - Trinear optimization: Off
  
• Threaded optimization: On
  
• Triple buffering: Off
  
• Vertical sync: Off
  
• Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames: 1

NVIDIA 3D Settings explanation: what is the best for your PC?

I will talk about the most important 3D Settings and what should you do:
First of all, open the NVIDIA Control Panel and in the "Adjust image settings with preview" tab
select the "Use the advanced 3D image settings". Now you can either click on "Take me there" link or open the "Manage 3D settings" from the task list in the left of the screen. Once there, lets see what we got.

Lets get to the settings:

• Ambient Occlusion: The best is off, or Performance
  
• Anisotropic filtering: this affects the sharpness and quality of the textures, depending on how far they are from the current viewport. Bigger value -> less perfromance but better quality. I let this on Application Controlled but i play with it disabled, or at a maximum of 4x. Much exactly, what it does is makes far textures render on a better quality or not.
  
• Antialiasing - FXAA: Strongly suggest disabling this. Very high impact on performance. FXAA comes from "Fast approximate anti-aliasing" and what it does (among making the edges of objects smoother - this is what the antialiasing does) is post-processing all the rendered objects before they actually render on the screen, aproximating the edges of them resulting in a smoother model in the end.
  
• Antialiasing - Gamma correction: Does not affect very much the performance overall, it just improves all the antialiasing quality if it is turned on.
  
• Antialiasing - Mode: Application Controlled Defines the 'power' of the antialias. As said before, antialiasing smoothens the edges of the objects. It does affect the performance, but on medium to powerfull PCs you can play with it. It is about the MSAA (Multisample antialiasing) which is giving better quality and does not affect the performance as much as FXAA (talked abit before about this). I suggest leaving on Application controlled and playing with like 2x-4x on medium PCs. If you find better performance on disabled antialiasing, just disable it. Its about your PC, remember!
  
• Antialiasing Setting: As talked right before, I suggest playing with like 2x-4x if your PC can handle it
  
• Antialiasing - Transparency: Used to minimize the visible antialiasing on objects which have transparent textures
  
• CUDA - GPUs: What GPU's should this PC/application use? Just select everything you got there, as you only have there your current connected GPUs (can have more than one GPU).
  
• DSR - Factors: Off Allows you to run higher resolutions than your maximum (native) resolution. We dont need this, and I dont suggest playing on bigger resolutions than your monitor can handle (its just an effect that makes the GPU render more pixels than needed)
  
• DSR - Smoothness: If DSR Factors is turned on, specify the smoothness of the game objects and textures here. Default: 33%. Much value -> more foggy textures and objects. Less value -> more crispy textures and objects. It immitates the antialiasing effect
  
• Maximum pre-rendered frames: Well this is very important and can affect the game alot! What it does it limits the maximum number of frames per second the CPU can prepare before the frames get processed by the GPU. The most important: its PC dependant. If your videocard is good, modern, all the guides from the internet say that this should be set to "1". I really tried this,
  with alot of other settings among it, but what I noticed is that it literally makes the game feel good but the hitbox registration in CSGO feel so bad. I always had the feeling that the bullets were crazy, going where its shouldnt or passing right through my enemy for alot of times. Tried this with all the resolutions. My recommandation if you have a medium to strong PC is just to "Use the #D application setting" as it showed perfect smoothness, good FPS without drops and good hit registration. If you got a bad PC, with bad videocard, just set it to its maximum value BUT play with everything on low details ingame (and with as a small resolution as you can) because it causes INPUT LAG (delay on moving the mouse left right up down, and the actual move ingame) on high load (when there is much data to process and render). Dont force it up! Let it be smooth, we need a playable game as it is a competitive game, not Crysis to play with good quality! We need smoothness and fastness!
  
• Multi-Frame Sampled AA (MFAA): Another laggy way of antialiasing. Turn this to off.
  
• Power management mode: Prefer maximum performance. Just dont let it be on optimal power, because it causes FPS drops, freezes and small FPS, overall says the GPU to stay chill while affecting performance. Recommended would be Adaptive, so the GPU adapts to the needings of what is happening. I am using "Prefer maximum performance" just because overall I like my PC when its moving better.
  
• Preferred refresh rate (MONITOR MODEL): Highest available. Definetly. If you have 60hz,
  75hz, 120 or 144 (or even 240) just let it be the highest. Note thata if you have a 75/120/144/240 hz display you need to set some launch options to the game ("-refresh 144" for example)
  
• Shader Cache: Off Another VERY VERY important setting that is PC configuration dependant and should only be use in certain scenarious and cases. What it does is it saves on the HDD in some temp folders some needed data, so: if you have an old, slow HDD on which your Windows is installed, but a decent CPU, turn this off. Let the CPU process that data and deny your HDD for processing it. It will slow everything causing FPS drops, small FPS and freezes. I would personally only recommend this if you have your Windows on a SSD! If both your CPU and HDD are bad, this setting would not affect very much the performance. Just see what it works better for you. If you got a very good CPU but bad to medium HDD, let this off. Just let the CPU do that job, is faster! If both your CPU and HDD (not quite recommending for HDD though) are good, see what it works better for you. If your CPU is good or bad, but you got a good SSD, definetly let this On. It will make the game very smooth and fast! Please configure this properly.
  
• Texture filtering - Anisotropic sample optimization: Dont have lots of information about this,
  but what I saw is that is not affecting the performance.
  
• Texture filtering - Negative LOD bias: Let it on Clamp. It disables some operations performing while the image is not stationary. What it does on allow: applies some antialiasing to the textures when the scene is moving, but when not, it sharpens it. We dont need other activities to be performed by the GPU, that are not needed in a competitive game.
  
• Texture filtering - Quality: High performance As I said before, we need smoothness not quality. Let this to High performance. It has a very big impact on the FPS, stuttering etc.
  
• Texture filtering - Trinear optimization: On Improves the texture processing performance, by allowing the texture process to be less quality where it does not need to be quality. Let this to On,
  its helping the performance.
  
• Threaded optimization: On Very important, leave this to On. What it does, it lets the applications take advantage of multiple cores of your CPU.
  
• Triple buffering: Off Check Vertical sync for details, definetly let this off!
  
• Vertical sync: Off Definetly affecting performance. It limits your FPS to the current display frequency (hz) and what it does it does not let a frame override another frame, untill the first of them finishes rendering. Why is this not good? Very high input lag! Turn this off in game as well!
  
• Virtual Reality pre-rendered frames: 1 This does not affect the performance in anyway because we are not using Virtual Reality in this game.

My thoughts and tips

I'm currently playing on 4:3 stretched, found this to be the best resolution (recommending 1024x768 or 1280x960) as I feel the game is very smooth (a lot smoother than 1920x1080 or 16:9) and as I feel myself a god. I feel I am fast, the game feels more dynamic and the enemy are easier to target. If you dont play stretch but feel that you are too slow or too bad, definetly give this a try! You just need to get used to it! Stay up to 1-2 hours on deathmatch and play, play, play! Then go rank-up you silver (just kidding, lul :D)

My tips:

• Play what you are confortable with
  
• Don't start trying ♥♥♥♥♥♥ configs all over the internet! it will destroy your settings and then you need to turn back to default.
  
• The celebrity search of "CSGO AIM CFG" does not exists! Those are normal configs that may be alot different to what you are used to (and alot bad as well).
  
• I suggest trying out some crosshairs (you can find on google or on Crashz Crosshair Generator map. Again, play with what you are confortable with, and remember, most pro in csgo scene used to play alot of CS 1.6 (just like me) where the ability to create your own crosshair was not existing. The crosshairs there are just gigantic and they got used to play like this.
  
• In your spare time, if you are curious, study about CSGO (source engine) networking (interpolation, lag compensation, prediction). You can find alot on google and on youtube about this, and its very interesting. I strongly recommend viewing this.
  
• You cannot find the perfect settings on the internet, just make your own depending on what it works better for you!

My tips about CSGO configuration:

• Try to play with a small sensitivity. I personally own a "small edition" of mousepad (razer goliathus) and I need to play with a little big bigger sensitivity than others that have large mousepads. Even for larger, what I found is that an Effective DPI (mouse DPI * in-game sensitivity) would be arround 800 to 1000 (my recommandation, it lets you to flick, to fastly turn arround while having very good accuracy when shooting). So lets say you have 400 DPI mouse with 4 sensitivity, resulting in 400*4 = 1600 Effective DPI (thats.. much, you cant have a proper accurate aim with that, you just move the mouse and start spinning around). Lets say you have 800 DPI and 0.5 sensitivity, resulting in 800 * 0.5 = 400 Effective DPI (that offers you alot of accuracy if you have a large mousepad, but its very hard to fastly turn arround in emergency case.
  
• About the command "cl_lagcompensation" just leave it to 1! Let the client compensate the existing ping, whatever its 20 or 80.
  
• About the command "cl_predict 1" just leave it to 1! Let the client make some predictions on the future position of the moving enemy! The lag affects the game alot if this is turned off, and in a very bad way.
  
• About the commands "cl_interp" and "cl_interp_ratio" and "cl_interpolate". Always let "cl_interpolate" to "1"! Always! Let the game interpolate the precise position of the enemy. This is needed because of the ping! About "cl_interp" and "cl_interp_ratio", carefully read this:
  
  1. Set "cl_interp 0" (it will recalculate to the lowest possible value) and "cl_interp_ratio 1" only if your ping is less or equal (<=) to 45.
     
  2. Set "cl_interp 1" (it will recalculate to the highest possible value) and "cl_interp_ratio 2" only if your ping is bigger (>) 45.
  What I saw is that the hitregistration on moving / action performing enemy is so bad if this is not respected.

In the ending

In the end, I really hope I could help you. If you appreciate this, dont forget to leave a rating. This guide is made entirely by me and should not be reposted anywhere without my permission.
This is what I studied in my free time in the past year. I decided to share with all of you, as much as time let me, most of the knowledge I acquired.
Want to donate me a skin? Here is my tradelink:

https://steamcommunity.com/tradeoffer/new/?partner=97391667&token=q1wuNlFx

Would highly apreciate it, as I'm quite poor :(.


Don't forget to leave a rating and some comments. And maybe share this to your friends! It really might be helpfull!. Thank you!

[mariusica58]

Please spam comments on my steam profile. im trying to collect comments ty

[Goonery Master Sergeant]

You got something wrong next to Negative LOD bias, though your suggestion for setting it to clamp is correct your reasoning is wrong:

"It disables some operations performing while the image is not stationary. What it does on allow: applies some antialiasing to the textures when the scene is moving, but when not, it sharpens it."

It actually sharpens the image whilst stationary but introduces *aliasing* (not anti-aliasing) when in motion, i.e makes edges look jagged when there's movement on the screen.

[999玫瑰]

Thank you! A great guide, I appreciate it.

[Josef]

What an amazing post for those unaware :)

[zaylu]

thank you so much <3 !!!! all these Youtube Videos about Nvidia settings sucks .. i mean i got high fps but with input lags thank you bro !!!!!
What are your Launch Options?

[Floki]

my quadro fx 3700 struggles so badly in csgo

[DaveRampi]

Gypsy stole my kills

[n1cosx9]

niceee!

[t0rpyl4]

eu faceam setarilea astea ca se misca jocu mai repede adica timpu de reactie e altfel nu pentru ca imi aduce mai multe fpsuri tot atatea am si cu ele default

[Archangel of sex]

@Avi Thour I said that that is my old setting from my old PC. Only set it to for if you have strong FPS drops or very low FPS