Graphics Optimisation for Noobs

This guide should help newbies to any PC game on how to optimise their game for a streamline and pleasuring gaming experience in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Know Your Computer

Your Computer Specs

Before you even start, you need to know the specifications (Processor, graphics card etc.) of your computer to know its graphical power. I can't stress this enough as many new players on PC fall into the trap of thinking "every game should work no matter how crap." Entirely false. You need to know how powerful your computer s in terms of graphics. This is important to know how much graphical stress you can put on your computer before it becomes taxing and starts dropping in framerate.

Game Graphics Spec

The game has to fit a criteria of computer specs for it to run fluently or otherwise it wont run at all. The list below is the list of specs that Valve has listed as Minimum Requirements on Windows.

Operating System: Windows® 7/Vista/XP
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom™ X3 8750 processor or better
Memory: 2 GB RAM
Graphics: Video card must be 256 MB or more and should be a DirectX 9-compatible with support for Pixel Shader 3.0
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Storage: 15 GB available space

The specs that my PC has are:
Operating System: Windows 10
Processor: Intel® Core™ i3-4160 CPU @ 3.60GHz
Memory: 8.00 GB RAM
Graphics: NVDIA GeForce GT 705 (4 GB)
DirectX: Version 12
Storage: 1T

I would say that the specs I have are recommended for a good running game to play as the hardware that I have been using has not failed me yet.

AA and AF: What's the Difference?

Anti-Aliasing

AA (Anti-Aliasing) is what makes images smoothen in games the higher the setting. As you can see in the image below, the letter A on the left is aliased and you cansee crisp rugged edges, but if you look at the right of the picture the letter A is anti-aliased, so the edges are smoothened.

Anisotropic Filtering

AF (Anisotropic Filtering) is what determines the sharpness of textures at certain depths of the screen. When a part of the map texture is far away in your sight, the texture filtering blurs to ease stress from graphical power without ever looking like crap. Look at the image in this paragraph and you can tell the difference from low to high (left to right).

(Not my image)

Vertical Synchronisation

Vertical Synchronisation, or VSync, is a feature where the game will match its framerate with your computer's refresh rate. Having this feature turned off will cause rare occurances of visual tearing but if this feature is turned on, it can cause performance issues and drop your framerate below 30fps. My suggestion, keep this feature off as you wont need it. If you have a computer that can be considered as a very expensive computer with the latest state-of-the-art computer tech of all PCs, including a very crisp and high refresh rate monitor.

Models, Shader Detailing and Other Basic Settings

These settings can be changed to test how much graphical strain you can put on your computer for game performance. I would suggest playing around with these settings to suit your games graphical expertise. Push for as high as your PC can without getting a slow framerate.

Global Shadow Quality

I'm not sure what this setting does but to be safe, I have set it to Very Low as it was decreasing the game's performance.

Model/Texture Detail

This setting controls the scale of detail of object and character models in terms of their textures and modelling detail. Depending on the specs of your computer, increasing the detailing will sharpen the detail of models and textures but (if low end) will cost at the expense of performance. My PC is able to push to High.

Effect Detail

THis setting will determine the detail of certain effects in the game or whether or not some effects will be in the game. Decreasing this setting will increase performance but at the expense of weird occurances of models "popping in" when looking around at certain angles. My PC can push to Medium.

Shader Detail

This setting controls the sophistication of lighting effects of surfaces in the game. Increasing this setting will increase visual detail at the expense of decreasing performance. My PC can push to Medium.

Yet again, I would highly recommend you test your game in certain situations of play when changing your graphical settings. So play some casual with bots to get that graphical sweetspot.

Other Suggestions & Thank You

I would also like to make a note that you should disable Motion Blur, FXAA Anti-Aliasing and Multicore Rendering as they too will degrade performance. Yet again, push your PC to its limits for great visuals with a side of excellence in performance.

Just a tip: Sometimes, even decreasing your resolution can help with performance and you can smoothen the image again by increasing the AA function.


Thank you for reading this guide to the very end. It is people like you who I cannot thank enough for showing you care about the help that this vile community can give to others. So with that, I thank you.

Please feel free to join any of the groups I am in and play with me online whenever you want. Unfortunately, that is all. But do feel free to note any feedback or questions in the comments section below.

[phoenix #VACced]

thanks for the tips :D