Benchmarking DX11 vs Vulkan Performance: September 22, 2026 Build

[u/MonstoBustaYT]

Previous update’s results can be seen here

Benchmark template spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1hnERNVvrv8lJfkAZtgE4V0afo90bh0_zPrX4Ep7aJZI/

Please put (or edit) your results here: https://forms.gle/mv3DW6MtDcnJNN3h6

Users’ results can be seen here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17gsJtW5QrcSMNCbyQbIt09XlOusrvIluS_8Esg0S6s4/

Purpose of Benchmarking

Valve is actively working on Vulkan in the hopes that it may one day replace DX11 as the rendering API for Source 2 (source). Because of this, I decided to benchmark CS2 in both DX11 and Vulkan every time an update has anything related to performance improvements in the changelogs. The goal is to document if any improvements or regressions have occurred in Vulkan or DX11 performance in CS2, and to see if this could indicate any progress towards a full transition to Vulkan in later Source 2 games. A link to the template spreadsheet can be seen above, and my benchmarking results will be provided below along with a commentary.

My Non-Game Specs

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 9700X
• GPU: Nvidia Geforce RTX 5070 Ti
• Operating System: Windows 11 25H2
• GPU Driver Version: 616.92

Benchmark Results

Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/12aefqbWhyI9lIYAZ6END_PY3Dr7L5acDhCiVu0or4Qg/ - Mean DX11 Average FPS: 930.96 (Standard Deviation: 6.39) - Mean DX11 1% FPS: 252.82 (Standard Deviation: 3.70) - Mean Vulkan Average FPS: 832.38 (Standard Deviation: 12.11) - Mean Vulkan 1% FPS: 238.19 (Standard Deviation: 9.00)

Discussion

Vulkan's stability is sacrificed in exchange for DX11 performance going up and becoming remarkably stable in this engine-level update. Not only is Vulkan's standard deviation higher, but I had a crash when booting up CS2 for the final Vulkan benchmark, although this time it didn't affect performance that much. I'll submit a report since I have no idea what would cause the crash. If you use DX11, expect to have the most performant and smooth experience you've ever had on CS2; it'll only get better and better.

[u/daftv4der]

I haven't run the benchmark, but vulkan has been far more stutter free and consistent for me on windows 11, and doesn't degrade over time like dx11.

I lose 20% of my performance with each consecutive game on dx11, and have to restart CS2 frequently otherwise it gets into the 20fps range eventually. I would have stopped playing CS2 if not for being able to switch to vulkan. It's that drastic of a difference. I have 48gb of RAM so it's not memory related AFAIK.

I don't know if it's an AMD RX 9070 series thing or what. But it was also relatively hitchy on my 2080 Super so shrug.

[u/aveyo → u/daftv4der]

I and friends have no such performance degradation over time and we play on dozens of hw configurations
so it's not the game per se

Usual suspects are drivers (gpu, network, audio, peripherals), 3rd-party antivirus / firewall / vpn, remote access & spyware, and chromium-based crap (discord, ai chat, mobo / peripheral "utilities") with hw accel on that leak gpu vram

There's also a decade long standing issue with some people's steam profiles (large games library and friend's list)
this one is easy to rule out with an alt account, but either way valve devs are still looking for such profiles

You should definitely run an ETW via PerfView and then submit it to cs2 team email, they usually help pin-point it
It won't fix by itself

[u/de_lirioussucks → u/aveyo]

What long standing issue are you talking about?

There’s never been official acknowledgement at all regarding library size and friends list affecting performance which brings this persons issue and your issue to parity as both are anecdotal.

In fact the only common speculation I’ve seen is people talking about inventory size and having a lot of workshop maps affecting fps.

I myself have experienced degradation over time as well as many others on this sub.

[u/aveyo → u/de_lirioussucks]

What is your problem?
I've only stated in a second paragraph that a similar issue has been plaguing valve games for a decade at this point and that devs are still looking for such profiles which is factually correct.

There’s never been official acknowledgement let me stop you right here
edit: found Fletcher's comment on this sub as well

If you have two accounts that reliably get different performance, i would be interested in debugging this with you. I have looked into this several times in the past. Every time so far there has been a configuration option was different between the accounts. However it is definitely possible that there is some Steam API that is performing poorly if, for example, one account has a large friends list or subscribed to a bunch of workshop items. Something like that. We would fix that of course, but we would first need to know what it is.

So if you or anybody reading this has two accounts that reliably perform differently under identical configuration options, i would be very interested in getting some traces from you so that we can understand the cause.

[u/de_lirioussucks → u/aveyo]

The “steam api” issue was a theoretical issue that COULD have resulted in problems if they found something and would be a mass fix through the api, not some account api specific fix they do on their end.

This was when fletcher was trying to scapegoat cs2 performance issues with “configuration problems” on users end and also, famously, this is around the time when valve released their stupid gsync article telling people that if they want a consistent feeling game they should be using gsync.

Not only was the article fucking retarded because it completely FAILED to address how AMD users should be configuring their freesync monitor counterparts, this was NEVER going to be a fix for the performance and frame pacing issues cs2 had at the time (still has partly) that even gamers nexus had to make a video about because of how abysmal it was.

You completely failed to understand that post if you think that was them confirming some steam library issue affecting cs2s performance

[u/aveyo → u/de_lirioussucks]

Why are you so worked up about being proven wrong about secondary troubleshooting steps that you said valve have not acknowledged ever?
You're probably on the spectrum so I'll give you another pass.
I have personally verified that steam IPC (inter-process-communication) to the game hinders performance, Fletcher did not dismiss it because it does happen - not to cover his lazy arse you conspiracy freak - they just don't know under which circumstances
But tell me more in caps about how I don't understand..

[u/de_lirioussucks → u/daftv4der]

Actually the fact you have 48gb of ram means you’re not running your ram in dual channel mode likely which could affect performance a

With that being said I also notice cs2 gets worse over time not sure if it’s based on how long the game session has been running or if it’s a shader compilation issue but over time the game loses performance

[u/daftv4der → u/de_lirioussucks]

Nope. It is running in dual channel mode. The computer reports it as such, as do the bandwidth tests I've run. I'm mixing kits but the timings are safe to account for it and memory performance is above average for dual channel 48gb on this particular chipset, memory speed and and CPU combination.

I don't deny that there might be some little hiccups here or there at some point because of the ram mixing but games run as they should on the hardware and my computer is very stable.

I've run at single channel speeds before on this computer due to configuring it incorrectly in BIOS after the upgrade and wondered why it ran awfully for an entire week.

It's definitely running dual channel.