I'd like to point out something specific about windowed mode. Due to DWM, any application in windowed mode while the DWM is enabled is locked to your desktop refresh rate. It basically forces vsync even if it doesn't appear like it is. This is why VSync doesn't appear to work in windowed mode. Due to the game being tied to your desktop, anything else going on on your desktop will affect the performance more than without the DWM. This is especially true if you have multiple monitors. On Windows 7, you can disable DWM by disabling Aero but once you hit Win8 it can't be disabled. Running in fullscreen puts the game into "exclusive mode" resulting in a much more stable environment that isn't affected by Windows anywhere near as much as in windowed mode. Good way to feel the difference is just switch between the two and your mouse/send/responsiveness will probably just feel different
Thanks Phil! I managed to really improve my framerate quite a bit by turning off FXAA, turning shadows down, while turning texture filtering to max. It actually looks every bit as good.
Also, if you have a knife which is affected by shaders, don't use anything below medium. If you have to then sell the knife for a better gpu or just change knife.
jerick umali i mean... in pc terms, i know it doesn’t mean much, but out of technicality..... it’s not one core... so I guess it is physically multicore lolololo
+Yseey Hello, hello, hello, how low? Hello, hello, hello, how low? Hello, hello, hello, how low? Hello, Hello, Hello ! WITH THE LIGHTS OUT ITS LESS DANGEROUS (sorry couldn't resist)
+MannYSJ Yes you are. In other video games (even AAA titles!), I could enable FXAA and the edges were gone. The performance between FXAA off and on was not different at all :D
This video got uploaded within the first hour I changed to 1080, this was extremely helpful to tweak the settings after my first game back on 1080 thanks man!:D
3kliksphilip 128 FPS average, i saw that it never went up 143 (I have a 144Hz monitor, my nVidia settings might be screwed up (v-sync?)) I'm running at max settings too.
+Jerr Bear i think the problem are your nvidia settings! i tested it myself on 1440 and max settings, fps dropping hard in smokes, but average 201fps. And iam running a 970
How to boost fps: -go to your system settings -Energy (saving) options -highest performance setting I was very surprised that I only got 30 fps because of this, even though I am used to like 250 fps
+Headhunter yeah but wrong the human eye can only see 12 FPS we have 2 eyes thats why we can see 24 fps if you lose 1 eye you're fucked you'll get a massive FPS DROP your entire life
I play on an 12 year old pc, turning the resolution all the way down to 640x480 and lowest details gives me 25 fps on the best scenario and.... 5 FPS NORMALLY. Although it can't even play HD video on RU-vid ... Kill me m8....
my name is micah and i suck you should lower the resolution and aspect ratio ( 4:3 and 800x600) enable multi-rendering and disable all kind of anti-aliasing
VERY in depth analysis Philip, I respect all your effort put into this video! However, as you mentioned at the start of the video, not everyone has the same computer. While I am playing at mostly highest settings with a monitor resolution of 1920x1080 it's really interesting how some of the settings barely make a dent in the amount of frames you're producing. I would really like to play in windowed mode, however it forces the brightness to your monitor's and makes the game drop a lot of valuable frames. I would really like to see an improvement in the up-coming Source 2 engine with how it handles the "frame loss", but let's be real here, it's probably another 10-15 years before it becomes the official and better engine over the old Source.
You've actually given a proper scientific presentation. Explaining your hypothesis and background info, showing data in great charts that are instant to understand and recognize and finally made a conclusion. Learned a lot, thx a bunch
You didn't mention that windowed mode AND fullscreen windowed add input delay, pretty noticeable with mouse movement. For competitive settings, it's probably a bad idea to even consider doing this. It might not be the case with ALL computers, but it's an issue with mine, and google search lends a lot of results pointing to the fact that many people also have this issue.
"It might not be the case with ALL computers, but it's an issue with mine, and google search lends a lot of results pointing to the fact that many people also have this issue." Thing is, you are using Google Search. Maybe you could test on multiple computers?
Plus, did those people tell you their specs? Exactly. And don't make it up. Well, you probably can't seeing how you are that stupid to be using Google Search to find out what you're talking about. Maybe you should experiment. (If you don't have multiple computers, borrow a friend's computer or maybe run a VM on the Windows OS's that you don't have.)
One of the best settings nfo video I seen. And yes always keep multicore rendering enabled, the fps also kind of come lock to default by valve when you install the game so you need to use fps_max "0" "300" or "999" in console and disable dvdr recording in xbox if you're on windows 10
Philip you are literally the mind behind csgo, i love that you have put all of this effort in to show us how to improve fps and make sure you have good quality, i appreciate your time and effort putting this together. Thanks.
It may be a bug with a low DPI mouse. To fix it try getting a mouse with a DPI of at least 3 thousand as it will make it very responsive. If you wanna go all out then I would recommend the G506 proteus as it has a DPI of 12 000
The reason texture quality doesn't reduce fps is because it us depending on how much VRAM you have. Most graphics cards have much more then enough, but for people without dedicated graphics, it starts eating up at your actual RAM, because, you know, no VRAM .
Hey Philip!! Can't you start making SDK Turorials again. I know quite a bit but i still have a lot to learn. There aren't many tutorials out on youtube and yours were the ones who learned me everything! Please make more! Love you!
This was actually a big help, I'm getting a gpu upgrade from a rx 460 to a rx 580 or possibly a base gtx 1660. In the meantime, i had to sell my rx 460 so im stuck with a gt 730 that's bottlenecking my i5 3550. This vid helped a bunch
I've never understood why consoles and some PC gamers in general use 4x or 8x AF. There is almost NO impact in performance but improves quality greatly.
3kliksphilip I've done a lot of testing on this across multiple games. The largest FPS drop I've recognized is 3FPS. Blurry textures definitely are more immersive if you are blind IRL and you are trying to role play losing your glasses?
Thanks for that video, funny to see that you have a AMD HD6870 too. When I upgraded from that card to a GTX580 my framerate in CS:Go dropped a good bit, nobody knows why. In all other games the 580 is waaaaaaaaay better than the AMD.
Even though AA options like FXAA and TAA blur the image they are still kind of useful in competitive games if you are not already a pro and used to run without them because they blur the image in a way that your brain better differientiates the different objects in a scene.
I'm not sure if you've done a video on this yet, but RAM clock speeds make a pretty big difference in CSGO as well. I have an overclocked 3770K and a GTX970 and I got a 50FPS boost in that benchmark by moving to 2400mhz from 1600mhz DDR3 RAMs. In normal game, the difference is even higher, the benchmark is quite a bit more stressful than normal 5vs5s.
Texture resolution/settings in general only effect your GPU memory and not the workload it has to handle. That's the same in all games, so in general you can go up with that setting as long as you have spare memory on your GPU. Just FYI. :-)
Based on my observation, when my V-Sync is on Triple Buffering, things were much smoother and it locks my FPS to 75 (because my monitor is only 75hz), and when it's Disabled, it goes down to 50 to 60.
I have a 1440 / 900 moniter, it's lovely for me since I like the 16/10 ratio it gives when games allow it, and I can always use 16/9 if needed with little issue. The side effect of having a moniter with 180 less pixel height as well, is a MUCH better framerate on most modern games. I can run Killing Floor 2, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and even games like Payday 2, which have notable issues with being poorly optimized at around 60fps at minimum. In CS:GO I tend to get 160 with everything on high, and with some options set to low, the options that matter that is, such as shaders, I can get over 200 with ease.
B4nny plays with a 4:3 resolution (+Some low graphics settings) on a gaming rig that can probably run Crysis at 300 fps. I'm not complaining though (even I still play at such settings), I just don't normally see content creators playing at such low graphics settings.
yeah, texture resolution won't really drag the framerate down as long as the GPU isn't running out of vram and paging textures in and out. however I personally prefer lower texture quality because enemies don't blend in with the background as much
The reason windowed fullscreen mode lowers FPS is because(if I remember correctly) the GPU renders both the game and the desktop plus any other window you have open. If you run the game at fullscreen exclusive then the GPU will only render the game.
*IF YOU'RE CONCERNED ABOUT INPUT DELAY @ 100+ FPS, PLEASE ALSO CHECKYOUR FRAME TIMES...& you should be paying just as much if not more attention to your driver settings and software settings relating to the actual frame times and their delays (plenty of benchmarking and overclocking software provides this information), which will probably be anywhere between 3 and 20ms at the rendering level only. At 100fps you're looking at intervals of 10ms between frames, this quickly matters less as although your fps may increase your frame time delay still may be massive). Now, post 100+ fps aside, I personally can conceive the difference between 120 and 144 fps (the highest factory clock my monitor provides) if I'm looking for it. At 100+ in game though, I would never notice a thing, and note that 90 minimum has been the set standard for VR now. Once you've done all you can to tweak your input delay via settings, (this will change drastically depending on the game, removing any prerendered frames via your driver control panel helps substantially in most cases), then you should be concerned about your display and peripherals, 1ms displays are becoming standard, I'm not sure how accurate the response times are, but note that these are ADDED AFTER your frame time delay. Between 144 fps vsync, maxed out AA and post processing and variable 80-90 fps no vsync, no aa, and no post, the frame times and responsiveness of the game will be night and day, (under these total BS numbers for this made up example) with 25ms input delay average on the first and 15 on the second, there is no question as to who gets the headshot first assuming you could control for all external factors. (Best case is obviously the higher fps and the lower frame time, but make no mistake, they are different and provide very different responsive feels to any given game and where FPS gains cap off quite quickly post 100, most people totally neglect that their input delays are approaching a gross 20ms+
The explanation for Fullscreen vs. Fullscreen windowed: In Fullscreen mode, your GPU drops all assets except for what it needs to render the game. In Fullscreen windowed, it's technically rendering both the game, and your operating system's GUI, taking up more video memory than you would in Fullscreen mode.
As the resolution gets lower, the CPU becomes the limiting factor because the GPU will finish its task way faster(fewer pixels to push) and will have to wait around for the CPU. CS:GO is known to be a CPU-intensive game, which means that as long as you have a decent GPU(let's say GTX950+) it won't make that much of a difference whether you own the 950 or a 980ti(unless you're playing at very high resolutions) because frankly it isn't that difficult of a game to run(from the GPU's point of view).
fullscreen window (also known as borderless window) adds vsync-like delay because of aero (windows vista, 7, 8, 10), wich uses some kind of vsync itself. to use vsync off, you NEED to use dedicated fullscreen.
I always knew that Texture quality doesn't change framerates (because it just consumes more VRAM, and for most people they have at least 4gb VRAM, and CSGO doesn't even consume half of that). And this is the case in all games, not just CSGO, if you have enough VRAM set those textures to the max. It is beyond me why pros play with LOW textures and have their games look like cartoons when they get absolutely no benefit from it.
Low effects details gives you smoke hacks by the way. Sometimes you may see level (props, walls, etc) through it (useful for spamming into smoke). Moreover, sometimes you may even see players going out of smoke a bit earlier then you should
you have no idea how much this helped me, i don't have a toaster but i also don't have a high end computer so i found it weird that i would get like ~40 fps. changed some stuff now i can get over 100, if i did not have shitty intel HD i would get way more Q_Q
