Whether you’re a Counter-Strike veteran or just picking up the iconic shooter for the first time, we can help you get the most out of your time with the game with our guide to the best CS2 settings. Whether it’s graphics, gameplay, controls, or comms, we’ve got advice that will ensure you are racking up the headshots in no time.
The CS2 system requirements don’t go into great detail on what you’ll need for a high frame rate, but rest assured, you won’t need the best graphics card to get a reasonably high frame rate. We put Counter-Strike 2 through its paces on our RTX 4070 Super test rig and Steam Deck to show you what the best settings are.
Best CS2 settings for PC
- Display mode: Fullscreen or fullscreen windowed
- V-Sync: Off, unless your frame rate always exceeds the maximum refresh rate of your monitor
- Multisampling Anti-Aliasing Mode: Off
- Global Shadow Quality: Low
- Dynamic Shadows: Sun only
- Model/Texture Detail: Low
- Texture Filtering Mode: Anisotropic 16X
- Shader Detail: Low
- Particle Detail: Low
- Ambient Occlusion: Low
- High Dynamic Range: Performance
- AMD FSR: Disabled
Let’s not mess around here. The point of CS2 is not immersion, storytelling, or enjoying its graphical fidelity. It’s to be competitive and win, and to that end, your settings should be laser-focused on maximizing your frame rate.
In order to achieve that, you should start by basically turning down every graphical setting in the game. Turn off MSAA, turn model, shader, and particle detail to low, and keep resolution no higher than 1080p until your minimum frame rate – not your average – is higher than the maximum refresh rate of your monitor.
If you have a very fast refresh rate gaming monitor that has a higher resolution – a 360Hz, 1440p display, for instance – and your graphics card can handle it, then absolutely crank the resolution up so that it perfectly matches your display. Otherwise, though, FPS is king for CS2, so don’t be tempted to run your games at 50fps at 4K instead of 150fps at 1080p.
If your monitor has a higher resolution than 1080p, but your graphics can’t maximize its refresh rate or hit at least 120fps at its native resolution, consider dropping down to 1080p and running the game in fullscreen mode, relying on your monitor to upscale the image to fit its full size. Don’t set the display to your screen’s resolution and use FSR upscaling.
If your graphics card can run the game at a good frame rate at native resolution, then run the game in fullscreen windowed mode.
Using all the above settings, our test system equipped with an RTX 4070 Super hit an average frame rate of 210fps with 1% lows of 99fps, which is performance ideally matched for use with a 120Hz-180Hz display. Admittedly, frame rates don’t drop too much if you enable a few higher graphical settings, which can make the game look a fair bit better, but for peak performance, these are the settings we’d recommend.
In-game settings
We’ve picked out these settings as they should make your experience playing the game slightly easier. The ping setting ensures you won’t be matched to any servers that are geographically too far away. You can use the console and CS2 commands to enable config files, adjust server settings, and enable hidden settings. One of the new options in CS2 is to disable the ability to detach the silencer on the USP-S and M4A1-S – keep this off as it only serves to land you in trouble if you misclick in the middle of a fight.
‘Show team positions on your HUD’ lets you know exactly where your teammates are without having to rely entirely on the radar. Make sure you select the ‘show location and equipment’ option, as this also tells you what your teammates are holding, helping you work out what utility your squad has at a glance. Likewise, you should have the ‘colors and letters’ option enabled, as this makes it easier to communicate with your teammates. Instead of calling your teammates by their names, CS2 players are happy to go by their chosen color.
You can also set the maximum ping your matchmaking will allow for, and this also lists your closest servers to give you an idea of the average ping on each of them. If you don’t want to end up in a team with someone using extremely unreliable internet, this is where you can protect yourself.
Best CS2 audio settings
For the most part, CS2’s default audio settings are fine. The game doesn’t have music during matches anyway, so there’s no concern around needing to turn that down to be competitive. However, you may want to also turn off music in the menus and generally limit audio distractions.
Turn all of the sliders in the music section down to zero, then raise the ‘ten-second warning volume’ slider up to 15%. This plays a track whenever you have just ten seconds to defuse the bomb, letting you know whether it’s worth sticking around, as it takes a minimum of five seconds to defuse a bomb with a kit.
Best CS2 keyboard and mouse settings
The default keybindings in CS2 aren’t particularly useful, but you can adjust them to stop you from having to perform huge stretches across your keyboard. While you have the option to cycle through your grenades, you might want to consider assigning them to accessible keys so you can pick out what you need. For example, setting flashbang to Q instead of 7 makes it easier to use in the heat of battle, though this will mean remapping or not having access to the weapon quick switch function normally assigned to Q.
You’re going to have to speak to your teammates often in CS2, so we would set the ‘use mic’ bind to something easily accessible. This can even include your mouse buttons, like page forward – make sure you pick a button that doesn’t stop you from being able to play the game.
Under communications options, we recommend clearing the inputs for ‘command radio message’, ‘standard radio message’, and ‘report radio message’. If you accidentally press these commands during combat, you might send your teammate a radio command instead of switching your weapon like you wanted. Don’t take the risk, just remove the option to press these keys so it can never happen to you.
Best CS2 Steam Deck settings
- Multisampling Anti-Aliasing Mode: 2x MSAA
- Global Shadow Quality: Low
- Dynamic Shadows: Sun only
- Model/Texture Detail: Low
- Texture Filtering Mode: Trilinear
- Shader Detail: Low
- Particle Detail: Low
- Ambient Occlusion: Disabled
- High Dynamic Range: Performance
- AMD FSR: Off
While it’s not advised that you play CS2 on the Steam Deck in any competitive game modes, you can still have plenty of fun with the game in casual deathmatches.
With the above settings, you can expect a fairly solid 60fps, with slight dips during death animations. Otherwise, the game runs great on the Deck, and you could always hook up a mouse, keyboard, and external display if you are determined to tackle a competitive match under the best conditions possible. That’s why we’ve also suggest turning on MSAA, to make the game look a little smoother.
CS2 graphics presets
There are currently four graphics presets available in CS2.
- Low
- Medium
- High
- Very High
One of the above presets will have an asterisk next to it, and this is the recommended preset based on your PC’s power. Next to the settings menu is a small preview window showing how the game will look as you change various settings. You can see the difference between the low and very high graphics profiles in our image below.
How we tested CS2
At , we use dedicated gaming rigs to test the best performance and gameplay settings in the latest releases. The test rig used to play Counter-Strike 2 includes the following components: Intel Core i7-11700F, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070 Super 12GB, 32GB of DDR4 3,200MHz RAM in a dual-channel configuration, and MSI B560 motherboard. We also test using Windows 11 64-bit.
Does CS2 need an SSD?
Counter-Strike 2 does not require an SSD, regardless of whether you’re aiming for the minimum or recommended system requirements. Still, upgrading to one of the best gaming SSD options from our buying guide will really help keep game loading times in check.
How to monitor performance in CS2
To keep an eye on performance in Counter-Strike 2, you can use the in-built monitoring tools in AMD or Nvidia’s drivers.
For Nvidia cards, ensure you have the Nvidia App installed and the in-game overlay enabled, and then hit ALT + R in-game to bring up your performance monitor. With AMD cards, you can enable performance monitoring via the Radeon overlay using the shortcut CTRL + SHIFT + O.
Alternatively, you can download free software such as CapFrameX or Nvidia FrameView, to get a cleaner, more simplified benchmarking tool that works with any graphics card.
With handheld gaming PCs, most will have a dedicated button to access a quick menu from which performance monitoring, sometimes called real-time monitoring, can be accessed.
Using our custom settings, you should have a smoother experience the next time you boot up Counter-Strike 2. Don’t forget to check out our best CS2 crosshairs guide to see what types of reticles the best players in the world use. We also have a CS2 ranks and rating guide for any competitive players out there looking to climb the global leaderboards.
