CS:GO on Intel Graphics (HD, UHD & Iris Pro) FPS/Tweaks/Tipps

CS:GO on Intel HD Graphics (also UHD & Iris Pro). Fix darkness issue & get more FPS.

Install the latest official driver from Intel

This is the most important thing. Many Laptop OEMs use a customized Intel video driver which is tweaked towards battery saving. You want to get rid of that one and use the latest official Intel driver.

Go to the Intel Download Center[downloadcenter.intel.com] and download the correct driver for your CPU/GPU. Be sure to use .zip file and not the .exe (If there only is a .exe, this one is extracable too by using 7-Zip).

• Extract the .zip file
  
• Right click the Start menu Button and select “Device Manager”
  
• Open “Display adapters”, right click the graphics card and hit “Update Driver Software…”
  
• Select the “Browser my computer for driver software”
  
• Select “Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer”
  
• Click “Have Disk…” and browser to the extracted Intel Driver Software
  
• In the subfolder “Graphics” open the .inf file
  
• Now click “Ok” and continue installing the driver by hitting “Next”…

If everything worked you should have a "Intel Graphics Settings" menu entry when doing a right click on the desktop.

Settings in Intel Graphics Control Panel

Right click on the desktop and open Intel Graphics Settings

Note: The 3D Tab can be pretty much ignored as any setting should be at "Application default" by default and "Application Optimal Mode" does not really make a difference, just leave it on.

Navigate to "Power"

Note for PCs: Just set to Maximum Performance

Laptop users:

Open the "Plugged In" Tab
Select "Balanced Mode" *
Open the "On Battery" Tab
Select Change "Settings for the Plan: Balanced Mode"
Enable Panel Self Refresh (disable it if you get occasional display flickering!)
Disable the other settings

* = You can try to use "Maximum Performance" but I prefer balanced as it does not heat up the Laptop as much and still delivers the highest clock rates ingame when required. If you run too hot you risk getting power limit or thermal throttled which is counter-productive. Also since Windows 10 all power plans are derived from the Balanced Mode, if you have the power slider available (the slider when clicking the battery tray icon).

CS:GO Video Settings

Use a low resolution, pretty much all laptops are CPU limited due to power limit or thermal throttling.

1024x768 works well but if you prefer more visibility try 1152x864 for the sake of a few FPS.

Even if 4:3 resolutions are a disadvantage (lower field of view) it has to render less pixles and this it most likely will improve the FPS. Rule of thumb: Just try some resolutions and stick with the Comfortable FPS + Most visibility one.

I play on a i5 with a HD 520, it is possible that with a Iris Pro on an i7 you can play the native resolution at good FPS so really go figure yourself what works for you.

• Enable Multicore Rendering (this will set mat_queue_mode 2)
  
• Disable all other settings or set to the lowest possible value
  
• Texture Filtering: For me Bilinear/Trilinear do not make a FPS difference and Bilinear sometimes gives some odd graphics artifacts, so I go with Trilinear.

Also use fullscreen mode, with any other mode the game does not have exclusive rendering and it has to render the Windows desktop in addition.

Fixing the darkness bug (Important)

There is a bug[github.com] affecting almost all games using the Source 1 Engine in combination with Intel HD Graphics.

Chances are high that you are affected and maybe you even have not noticed it yet :)

Maps which make use of the Ambient Occlusion / Tonemapping feature (like de_lake or de_canals) are way too dark when playing. The maps display correctly when dead/spectating or watching gotv. As soon as you die, the whole map brightens up like it always should be, after spawning it darkens down to an almost unplayable level.

The fix:

Go to

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\<YOUR_ID>\730\local\cfg

Edit

video.txt

Add

"setting.mat_tonemapping_occlusion_use_stencil" "1"

Save and set the files premissions to read only!

Thank me later.

Note that you won't be able to change your video settings ingame after setting video.txt to read only, at least they won't save anymore. With Intel HD, everything should be off or at the lowest value anyways, besides Multicore rendering which should always be on, so set those before making the file read only.

Windows 10 Addendum

Power Slider

If you click the battery tray icon and you see a slider where you can change the Power Mode, set it to "Better Performance".

If you have not seen this yet and the slider is there, chances are that it is at the lowest value.

The settings when plugged in and when on battery can be set independently.

Fullscreen Optimizations

Note: Also see Game Mode below!

The Setting can be found at: Right Click the csgo.exe -> Properties -> Compability -> Disable Fullscreen Optimizations

This is a hit and miss. It seems to work correctly with Fall Creators Update and all available Updates installed, but may have caused problems before. Still I get a FPS increase from it being disabled.

You have to try for yourself if it is better when enabled or disabled. Let me know in the Comments.

Game Mode

I get the best results when game mode is enabled and fullscreen optimizations are disabled.

This is a fairly new feature and can be hit or miss as well. Just try it and let me know in the comments if it increased or decreased your FPS.

In Windows Settings -> Gaming -> Game Bar, set it to "On"
In CS:GO press WIN+G (if nothing shows up / the screen flashes you have fullscreen optimizations disabled so you need to set CS:GO to windowed mode and try again)
The game Bar Shows up.
If there is a button which says "Enable Game Mode" -> Enable it
If there is a settings wheel click it and check "Use Game Mode for this game"

After that you can change CS:GO to fullscreen again, Game mode should stay enabled.

Do not confuse this with Game DVR though, that one should be disabled.

Limit your FPS

We probably won't get stable 300 FPS with a Intel HD GPU on a latop so check how many FPS you get on average and maximum. Either in the net graph or with cl_showfps 1

With all the settings in this guide I for myself get an average of ~100 FPS, peaking at ~140 (This is on a Surface Pro 4 Tablet w/ i5-6300U, HD520, 8GB RAM at 1152x864!). As I get the 110-150 FPS only when looking at the sky or the floor I just capped the FPS a bit over my average value:

fps_max "120"

This is an example, use a value which works for you.

Color Goggles (Vibrance GUI)

AMD and NVidia people use Vibrance GUI, Intel users use Color Goggles:

https://dan.salvagni.io/s/color-goggles/

Miscellaneous

Mouse Hz: I've noticed my FPS will drop way harder with 1000Hz mouse polling rate than with 500Hz. As laptop CPUs are mostly maxed out during gaming a very high polling rate can hurt the performance. Just try moving your mouse ingame at 1000HZ and at 500Hz and while doing it monitor the FPS counter. I go with 500Hz since I noticed this.

On laptops with Windows basically everything boils down to using the correct video drivers, power and thermal management and avoiding getting throttled.

Experienced users can try undervolting the CPU and GPU with Intel XTU, this can help to reduce the temperature and thus getting power/thermal throttled less. I'm not going to covery this here though.

Let me know if you have more tipps but I guess I should have everything covered.

BTW: There are way too many guides which give you crappy or even wrong advice especially when it comes to FPS improvement etc. (Shady Windows Registry settings or launch options which are making stuff worse (legit ones are "-no-browser -console -novid")) Just don't blindly do that random crap.

<3
https://steamcommunity.com/tradeoffer/new/?partner=35572583&token=XuU8jFPs

[nugus]

omg man u just changed my rank from MGE to GE <3 luv u bro

[76561198359397708]

Nice

[elpupper]

When i turn down met settings nothing feels like its changed it still feels high qualitiy and my fps goes up to 60-120 then back down to 30-40 fps never drops below 30 any help?

[Chelo]

"In the subfolder “Graphics” open the .inf file"
In the subfolder Graphics are many .inf files... not just one.

[la flame]

good shit man thanks

[M`sharp]

this guide helped me so much

[incognico]

It is written for Windows but may apply to Macs tot.

[Wait... it's a 7.92, PewPewPew]

Is this mostly a guide for Mac users?

[✪ 𝒟𝓀 ✪]

Thanks man it worked like charm

[Titan-18]

NICE FUCKING GUIDE MAN :p