How to fix stuttering & frame drops in CSGO

This guide is ment for everyone who had problems with CS:GO after some time of playing (after update or something) - this may not work for everyone so keep that in mind.

This guide will show you how to fix stuttering and weird FPS drops and sound lag. It's ment to low and med-end computers - well, if your specs are high-end and you have these issues you might take a look.

Getting Started

One of the (in my opinion) worst things about Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is... its engine.

Don't get me wrong - Source is pretty good engine, it looks nice and it's pretty nice optimized... but not in CS:GO. There are a lot of unused commands that might even crash your game (for example, try giving yourself weapon_galil). The longer you play, more commands game adapts and somehow they save and overlap (at least i think how is it). So in this guide we'll just cleanup everything and try some tweaks that will help your FPS.

Before these tweaks my FPS was at 50-60. And it dropped to about 15 frames every 5 or 10 seconds. We can't let that happen, can we? After applying these tweaks i got 80-120 on my old, secondary PC. And it's specs... are pretty bad.


AMD Athlon x2 2.71
Nvidia GTS 450 DDR5 512mb
4 GB Ram

Also, before we start, MAKE SURE you updated your graphic card drivers and every other little thing - if issues are still there - proceed.

Sooo... let's get started!

Cleanup!

First thing we are going to do is clean up and reset every setting in our game.

Before we do it, let's do a backup of two files - config.cfg and video.txt. Also, keep your binds in autoexec.cfg (well, you can name it whatever you want, we'll exec it later).

To do it, go to your CSGO directory (STEAMDIR\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo\cfg).

Backup these files or delete them completly:



If you're low on space you can also clean your /cache/ folder - you can find there not-completed downloads of maps or sounds from community servers.

So, what did you we do?

We reseted whole game to the default state - also the lowest graphical options possible. As the settings goes - you can configure it whatever you want, but if you want more fps i'll advise keeping low graphic settings. Well, you can change resolution (or you like playing on 640x480...)

Take care of your Audio-Software

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have some serious problems with... audio. Source isn't optimized for a lot of audio channels at same time (just join DM server, 24 players shooting at once can cause nice stutter).

So, if you're using some software for your headset - for example drivers for Steelseries headsets or Soundblaster for Creative ones or Razer Surround.. Make sure to DISABLE every function - equalizer, surround or every other thing. I assure you you will get quite nice FPS boost.

Before we launch our game...

Wait, that's not everything! Another thing that will help us get some more fps is tweaking our launch command line.

You can find it under "Proporties" on your list. Just right click on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.


And set it up like this:

-novid -nod3d9ex -threads x (x is numer of your cores) -high

Let's run down these commands:

novid - it disables the intro, pretty useful
nod3d9ex - disables some external effects of DirectX - give you more FPS
threads x - threads of your processor (if you dont know it, use core number)
high - sets high priority to CSGO process

There is one more command that's not advised to use, as it was fix to issue that was patched long ago. However, if you get constat FPS spikes every 5 seconds and didn't try it yet - you might as well do it.

-processheap is the command. However, before using it you should check if your PC isn't overheating.

We're almost done guys! Just one more thing...

Check processes running in background

Last thing you need to do is check programs that round in background. You easily do that by opening your taskmangager (right-click on taskbar or CTRL+ALT+DELETE).

Watch out for processes with high CPU usage. And in this category winners are... browsers and anti-virus programs.

I use Chrome - and if i leave it in background it sometimes can cause quite a lag. So remember to close it. Why does such simple thing as browser uses so much resources? Well, Chrome is based on mulitple processes. At the time of making this guide Chrome with 3 tabs uses 177000 kb. Nice.

Also, anti-virus. Before i started fiddling with config files i formated my whole harddrive. Everything was gone - and after setting up my system i installed Steam and CS:GO. And guess what - stutters were gone! And then i remided myself that i need to instal some anti-virus - i chose Avira. And it was bad call as my FPS from 120 fell to... 20-60.

That's it!

After resetting our config, and making sure nothing is stealing our resources in background, we will surely gain some FPS in-game. And by that win some more games. Good luck!

If you have any tips and tweaks - contact me, i'll update this guide.

I also advise against the use of FPS Boost configs - especially these messing with video.txt.

But if you still want to use that - i suggest using friberg config (you can find it here)[www.gamerconfig.eu] - commands that he uses also can give you some frames.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this guide more useful. Matt - thanks for clearing some things up!

[Peter Griffin, M.D.]

necrobump awesome thread

[Rockpuppet]

could not believe, that ive been playing csgo Since 2010 with all these stuttering lags and just saw this post and did follow all the intructions. AND FC*N WORKED! cant thank enough! Dear sir!

[Azuki Sara WAXPEER.COM]

Tento komentář čeká na kontrolu naším automatizovaným systémem. Dočasně je tedy skryt, dokud si neověříme, že nezahrnuje žádný nevhodný obsah (např. odkazy na webové stránky, které chtějí ukrást přihlašovací údaje uživatelů).

[Modularis]

Thanks for the necro guys

[sop]

actually helped pog

[Vestigen]

LIFE HACK: have a fps cap lmao

[Sarah]

i have 400fps usually but today it keeps dropping to like 10 and go back up, that freesez the game for a bit and it plays like dog shit. anny ideas? this didnt fix, sarri maight

[locked in]

Its like my screen freezes for 15 seconds and comes back

[locked in]

I have 600 fps and i still get fps drops

[Elham]

While this guide didn't completely remove the FPS drop, it still reduced it a lot. Thank you for this guide, bro.