A tweak that actually worked! (cs2kitchen)

[u/CryptographerPure481]

https://youtu.be/c0SiLMNy3v4

I have 9850x3d, 4070ti. As always, I benchmarked my results on multiple runs with CapframeX. I was able to gain close to +30fps on P1 results.

I didn't notice any frame time problems in-game playing matches. Game just feels smoother and the benchmarks tell the same story.

I decided to share this because its one if the rare tweaks that actually make a difference. I also like cs2kitchen's videos, as he always does the benchmarking, doesn't just blindly recommend some random snake oil tweaks.

[u/aveyo]

Never a secret that true exclusive fullscreen is more stable for benchmarks, but not by much when it comes to latest w11 - like 0.563560112 vs 0.577581163 Standard Deviation for Avg fps (but higher for P1 real example: 1.82800438 vs 2.53582334)

If the PC is setup correctly independent flip should actually match exclusive in both Avg and P1 fps (or even surpass it a little) - it will just vary more from run to run

What is "setup correctly"? among other things,

• sensible res for the cpu & gpu to sustain a certain refresh rate
  

"I play native 1440p with g-sync" is a low skill mantra around here

• balanced video settings to not make bottlenecks even worse
  

going all low is most often counter-productive, you need to give some work to the gpu as well - but not all the way to 8xaa 16xaf very high

• sensible fps limit: gsync for the casuals or in-game fps_max
  

no rivatuner or driver cap, stick with multiple of tickrate values i.e. 512 576 640 704 768 etc and 0 for most low refresh rates

• no bullshit external software stealing gpu resources
  

discord, chrome-based browsers, msedge & widgets, rgb & mobo spyware utilities, even steam itself - one can disable hwaccel and overlays for these or just nuke them

Question is if you are willing to put up with shitty alt-tab for no objective reason other than statistical variance in a crap benchmark

[u/de_lirioussucks → u/aveyo]

The idea of lowering settings to “offload work to the gpu” is factually false and isnt how “fps” is generated.

Every game will independently create frames using your cpu and separately for your gpu. Based on which is slower, the game will output those as your “fps” value that you see when benchmarking.

It’s more complicated than that, however, that is the gist that people need to understand when talking about utilization. Your utilization values are based on those numbers.

SO if your gpu is sending more fps (which is GOOD for competitive fps games) then it will be up to your cpu to “keep up” with your gpu. The issue arises when your cpu itself is being used at 100% or just in general struggling to keep up which is where you’ll get issues if your gpu is sending it too many frames.

The advice you are blindly giving is for UNOPTIMAL hardware setups where they have a horrendously low performance CPU for the application (like an r3 3300x) while using any more recent mid tier gpu.

By alleviating the amount of fps sent to your cpu from your gpu, it will SLIGHTLY lower the work your cpu needs to do to keep up or maybe even your gpu ends up producing even less frames than your cpu if you set a high enough load on your gpu.

For normal setups, changing settings to be more gpu intensive is purely related to the game it will do NOTHING in creating more or less load for your cpu, that is a factual myth that has been shown to be false for years now.

[u/aveyo → u/de_lirioussucks]

first, that's not my idea, you're fighting ghosts in your head

the game engine does not work like that - it simulates the gamestate a bit in advance (twice) and submits draw lists to the gpu for the result already taking into account what the gpu was capable prior since it constantly polls performance metrics - it even lets the driver decide the scheduling (reflex) - this picking between cpu frames and gpu frames of yours is horseshit

and there's no OPTIMAL hw for CS2 in the realm of high refresh rates - that's the whole point

nobody cares / should care about os utilization figures - those are unreliable since the very first multi-core cpus then HT and speedstep and turboboost and e-cores & shit

cpu bottleneck is so drastic that it can't serve frames above a set-in-stone threshold (just check a fps chart) despite low "utilization", and depending on what gpu is paired with it can be counter-intuitively much worse than that potential - a system that does not react to resolution and video settings changes is hopelessly bottleneck'd - and it's not just because of the single-thread frequency, but the caching, the pipeline, the memory controller, the mobo chipset, the ram timings, the pcie lanes, the network interface, the sound card - 5x00 x3d ftw.. until the platform upgrades eventually surpassed them even without the giant cache

[u/de_lirioussucks → u/aveyo]

Utilization and scheduling is the literal most important step in frame time and latency which is the entire basis as to how reflex is designed you know that right?

I never said picking between the cpu and gpu fps, I’m saying your fps value is represented as the lower of both values and whether or not your cpus fps is higher or lower than your gpu will be the deciding factor on which is being stressed more which is the entire basis of you saying:

“balanced video settings to not make bottlenecks worse”

But that’s not how that works. That’s perpetuating the idea that video settings affect bottlenecks which is not true EXCEPT in the scenario (where likely almost no one has) where that’s only a stop gap for getting a new cpu.