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title="Permanent Link to How to configure Counter-Strike: GO for the maximum competitive advantage">

Article by Jonny "Waffles" Fuller


Counter-Strike: Global Offensive s surge in popularity over the past few months makes now a great time to join one of the most competitive multiplayer shooters on PC. This visual guide will teach you how to set up your game for the maximum competitive advantage. There s no singular best practice, as a lot of configuration is personal preference, but there are tweaks you can make to graphics and network settings, keybindings, and more to help outplay the competition.

Understand your graphics settings

But when you re using a 4:3 resolution, your horizontal field of view is just 74 degrees. Some players prefer this narrow view as it allows them to focus centrally on their target, and positions the radar closer to center. At 16:9 the player has a 90-degree field of view, which allows more vision towards the edges of the screen. I value this peripheral vision over narrow focus, and thus use 1920x1080 (16:9). Ideally, you want to use the native resolution of your monitor while maximizing your framerate.


The single best way to increase your FPS is to drop your resolution, so let's dig into CS:GO's graphics settings.

Improve FPS with launch options


Drop all your in game graphics settings to low, disable anti-aliasing, enable multi-core rendering

Add these launch options to your launch parameters in Steam (see screenshot above):

-novid -console -high -threads 4

These commands disable the intro, enable the console, set the process affinity to high, and grant your cores to CS:GO, even though technically Source can only use 3 threads. Some players add the -processheap parameter thinking it will grant better fps, but because this substitutes Windows memory management for Valve s own code it is highly recommend to remove it.

The next step involves modifying CS:GO's config file. It's a bit more complicated, but allows us to make some really useful tweaks.

Adjust graphics settings in the config file


Find your config.cfg in the cfg folder within the game directory (default C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\SteamApps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\csgo\cfg). If you don't already have file extensions enabled in Windows, you should enable them now to make sure that, when you edit the config file, it retains the .cfg extension. To turn on file extensions, click Organize in Windows Explorer, click Folder and search options, tab over to View, and uncheck Hide extensions for known file types. Now let's edit config.cfg. You can open it in Windows Notepad, but it'll be easier to read with a more advanced text editor, like the free Notepad++.


Now, edit these lines in the config file. For most of them, you'll simply be switching out a 0 for a 1, or something similar.


r_drawtracers_firstperson Set to "0" - Disable first-person tracers. Enemy tracers are still drawn.


mat_monitorgamma Set to "2.1" - The brighter the better so you can illuminate enemies.


mat_queue_mode "-1" - Auto-detect multi-core rendering


mat_savechanges Add this line to write video settings to the registry.


cl_forcepreload 1 - Forces the game to load all the sound and art assets on map load. This can help you if you experience stuttering when certain sounds go off, such as throwing a grenade into a bunch of props


cl_disablehtmlmotd 1 - disables those annoying ads when connecting to a server


cl_autowepswitch 0 - Disables automatically switching to a primary gun you pick up off the ground so you don t draw an unloaded weapon


cl_disablefreezecam 1 - Disables the annoying freeze on death so you can make proper calls to your team mates


You can save your changes, but don't close the config file just yet. Next, we're going to tweak the most vital of all CS:GO settings: network settings.


Adjust network settings in the config file


These network settings are the most important commands you will type into your config file. Find the following commands in your config and change their values as noted:

cl_interp "0"

cl_cmdrate "128"

cl_updaterate "128"


Also, add rate to your config file with the following value:


rate "128000"


Think of it like this: there are two versions of Counter-Strike being played, yours and the server s. The client version is (default) 100 milliseconds in the past of the "real" (server) version of the game world. The more updates you have, the less interpolation (prediction) is required by your PC to accurately figure out what the server world looks like. If the server and your client compare data, and the server overrides your hit, then what you think is a hit will be a miss. There may be times when you ll shoot someone and see blood, for example, but then the client reports 0 damage. This occurs because blood decals are client-side. Your client believes you scored a hit, draws the blood, and sends the packets to the server to be checked. If the server rules a miss, then the player takes 0 damage. This is why you want your client s perception of the world to be as close to the server s perception as possible.


Decreasing interpolation runs the moderate risk of experiencing laggy players models jittering. It is beneficial to lose smoothness to gain accuracy. The goal for competitive play is to always have the lowest possible amount of client side interpolation and gain the most accurate representation of the game world. So we set our cl_interp value to 0.


By setting it to 0 the game will automatically set the interp to the lowest possible value allowed by the server.


Next we want as many updates per second as the server will possibly give us. A 66 tic Valve matchmaking server defaults rates to 66. In case you ever play on a higher tic rate server we want to set our cl_updaterate to 128 and our cl_cmdrate to 128. You can use higher values, but it won t matter. With these settings, any time you connect to a higher value server, it will default you to the highest values allowed. The same goes with rate, which is the size of the packets. You want as much information as possible so we set this to 128000. Again, this will default to the highest amount a server will allow. You can never have too much of a good thing!


"Now," you might ask, "my monitor's refresh rate is 60hz and thus those extra frames are not drawn, do I still benefit?" The answer is yes.


There are other variables to consider, such as input lag, mouse polling, and a general overall smoothness. If you have a high framerate, your input lag will be infinitely lower, and your mouse will feel smoother, even if your monitor is not actually drawing those frames. The physics, the tics, all the send/receive commands are still triggering themselves at a more rapid pace, and thus your representation of the game world is better, even if the frames are not technically being projected into your eyeballs.

Customize the HUD

hud_scaling (0.5-0.95) - Allows you to change the size of the HUD
cl_radar_always_centered “0” - A lot of players prefer the default “1” but as in-game lead I like being able to see the entire map on the radar
cl_radar_scale ".4" - changes the radar zoom size so you can see more

Customize your crosshair

There is no best crosshair, but I prefer small classic static. A static crosshair does not expand during movement. As the crosshair’s expansion does not accurately reflect current accuracy values I recommend using a static crosshair.

Again in the config file, change these values to customize your crosshair.

cl_crosshairdot "0" - This command disables the center dot
cl_crosshair_drawoutline "1" - I recommend everyone turn this outline on so the crosshair is more visible
cl_crosshair_outlinethickness "2" - Set to 1, 2, or 3 to adjust thickness. I prefer 2.